STUART PATTERSON and CAROLYN CHURCHILL

It is a love story for all ages.

When Erin Toner and Bradley Lindsay met at playgroup they struck up an instant friendship and quickly became inseparable.

The three-year-olds spent their days playing together at the group in Macduff, Aberdeenshire, and were looking forward to remaining firm friends.

So the lovesick pair were devastated when they were told that, on graduating to nursery, they would be separated into different classes and forced to spend their nursery days apart.

They burst into tears on hearing the news and were so desperate to be together that they soon hatched a plan to "elope" and therefore avoid separation. They fled the playgroup hand-in-hand, escaping through three doors and a waiting room before heading straight for a road. They were stopped in the car park when another parent came across them.

Erin's mother Emma Morrison and Bradley's mother Rachel Lindsay said the pair were devastated that they would not be together when they joined the council-run nursery.

Mrs Lindsay, 27, said: "Staff told us that in 11 years no child has ever managed to escape the playgroup.

"But Bradley and Erin managed it no problem. For a start I thought they would get over being split up, but this shows how desperate they are to be together."

Both children have now started a new term in their separate nursery classes, although their mothers claim that they are struggling without each other.

They have requested that education bosses change their decision and put the pair into the same class.

However, a spokeswoman for Aberdeenshire Council said: "Currently, both nursery classes at Macduff are at capacity and a waiting list exists for them. To move any child at this stage would mean disrupting several children's nursery experience."