A STUDENT who lost his camera in Israel will be reunited with his holiday memories thanks to coincidence and the kindness of strangers.

Patrick White, from Salisbury, was hitchhiking between Eilat and Jerusalem with his girlfriend, Jenna, when he left his camera in the back of a car in which they’d been given a lift.

He realised his mistake within minutes of getting out of the car, but the pair were only in Jerusalem for a few days before flying home and didn’t have time to look for it or find out if it had been handed in to the police.

As Jenna’s camera had been stolen during their trip, the disappointed couple returned home without any photographs by which to remember their trip.

Then, last week, the Journal was contacted by Anna Littlechild from Chippenham.

Mrs Littlechild had recently visited family in Israel and while she was there her nephew, Yuval, told her about a young English couple who had left a camera in his car.

She offered to take the camera with her when she returned to England and, on arriving home, contacted the Journal in the hope that through its pages, she could trace its owner.

Within hours of publication the phones in the newsroom began to ring and then Patrick himself got in touch from Warwick, where he and Jenna are both at university.

He said: “It’s unbelievable. It shows you how nice people are. There were absolutely loads of photos on it, not just of Israel, and some of them would be impossible to get again.”

Mrs Littlechild, who works for the Alzheimer’s Society in Chippenham, now plans to pass the camera to a colleague who works in the Salisbury branch so Patrick’s parents can then collect it from the Journal office, She said: “It’s nice that the story will have a happy ending.”