A mother has thanked farm staff who helped find her diamond engagement ring after she lost it in a huge straw pit on a family day out.

Lynn Stevenson, her husband and four-year-old daughter Arya were in the straw area at Briarlands Farm near Stirling when she realised both her wedding and engagement ring had slipped off her finger.

Her husband David quickly found the wedding ring but there was no sign of its partner.

The couple, who also have one-year-old son Arthur, spent the rest of the afternoon sifting through the straw helped by staff, with no luck.

Mrs Stevenson, 35, said: "I had been in the pit for a while playing with my daughter and my husband started to brush down the woolly cardigan I had on and I felt my ring come off my finger.

"As soon as they were in the straw pit they were just gone, we could not see where they were. It was like a needle in a haystack.

"We went to the reception to see if they had buckets and they gave us a couple of buckets so I started helping my husband to search, then some staff came up to help."

Farm staff borrowed metal detectors and donned head torches as it got dark to carry on looking through the afternoon and into the evening on Saturday November 4.

The following morning Mrs Stevenson, who lives in Glasgow, returned to the farm and was overjoyed to find the ring with the help of Mary Inglis, who runs Briarlands.

She said: "On the Sunday morning it was just me and Mary and we were searching for a couple of hours. The pile of straw was getting smaller and smaller and then we were onto the last bit of straw we would have been looking through.

"Suddenly the metal detector beeped. We kept going for ten minutes, we were trying to sieve the straw to try to hear if it plopped into the bucket.

"Then Mary pulled out a handful and it plopped into the bucket.

"I could not believe we had found it because I had given up hope. It's a horrible feeling losing anything, especially when it's something so expensive and with so much sentimentality attached to it.

"I was just so relieved and happy to find it."

Mrs Stevenson, who runs the Glasgow with Kids blog about fun things to do with children, estimates they searched through around three quarters of the straw pit before finding the missing ring.

She praised staff for helping her get it back, describing them as "absolutely amazing".

She said: "They could not have done more to help. They were fantastic."

Briarlands Farm offers a range of outdoor activities such as sand pits, climbing frames and a tyre maze.