The truth behind the mystery bottled messages found on Swanpool Beach last month can finally be revealed.

Despite theories that the empty whiskey bottle filled with tightly wound scrolls was a creative arts project or a so-called “geocache” - hidden for others to find in a kind of high-tech Easter Egg Hunt - the messages were in fact written by a group of schoolgirls.

Hannah Woods, aged 16, said she and her friends had created the message in a bottle “as a fun activity” at February half term, but although they did put it into the sea it was discovered by Pip Carlton-Barnes and the team at Visit Falmouth just a day later.

“We’re awfully flattered with all the interest our little experiment has gotten,” Hannah, from Truro, said.

“It’s a shame the bottle didn’t get very far - not across the Atlantic as we’d dreamt - but yes, we did put it in the water.”

The contents of the letters tightly rolled into scrolls by Hannah and her friends Mo Fox (from Feock), Rhiannon Wardle (from Truro), Chimé Rainbow (from Penzance) and Grace Perryman (from Truro), remain a mystery but they did include “a little bit about ourselves, why we were sending the message in the bottle and what we hoped it would achieve,” Hannah said.

Pip, who found the bottle on February 20 and returned it to the sea last week, was relieved that she had given the messages a fitting end.

She said: “It was a lovely story and I am pleased to have been a part of it.

“I am glad that they are happy I gave it the right end. The contents remain a mystery and I hope one day we hear that it has reached across the Atlantic.”

Hannah said: “We’re glad that it's been thrown back in the water because now it will remain a mystery and hopefully it’ll have the journey we hoped for.”

Read more: Mystery message in a bottle discovered on Falmouth's Swanpool Beach