Former pen pals who lost touch with each other decades ago met face-to-face for the first time thanks to the Keighley News.

Stella Caldow, from Australia, wrote to the paper to try and contact mother and daughter Margaret Sayer and Catherine Hall, who used to live in Keighley.

Margaret died in 2008 and Catherine now lives in Settle. But thanks to Catherine’s Keighley-based father spotting the letter, his daughter was able to e-mail Stella.

The two women, who were teenage pen pals and had never actually met, arranged a get-together last Thursday while Stella was on her first ever visit to England.

And the meeting came quicker than they expected.

Catherine, 51, said: “We hadn’t planned to meet until later in the day, but we ended up bumping into each other in the street in Settle.

“I’d finished work and was about to go home and we just recognised each other from the photos of us in the last Keighley News story. It was a bit emotional!”

Stella, 48, was born in Australia, but explained her English mother had been good friends with Catherine’s mum before migrating to Australia in 1951.

Stella and Catherine visited Keighley on Friday, and paid a visit to Emily Street and Bradford Street where their parents had once been neighbours.