Field of dreams with a buried £35,000 car

While some people have fairies at the bottom of their garden Gareth Andrew, 19, Paul Cook, 20, and his fiancee Kirsty Dewell, 20, found a £35,00 Mercedes SLK convertible buried in the Scottish countryside at Kelso.

The trio followed clues to crack the Texaco Buried Car Treasure Hunt, discovering the last of five Mercs to be buried across the UK.

They made their discovery at midnight, by flashlight, in a field next to where a bull had been put out to pasture - after running out of petrol and after three hours of searching Kelso from top to bottom.

Paul, assistant manager at the Black Bull, Yarm, where he lives, said: "When we found it, it was obvious what it was: a massive mound with loads of mud everywhere. We still could not believe it. It was about midnight, pitch black. We could do nothing but come back again the next morning, just hoping no one else would discover it in the meantime.

"There were celebrations in champagne after we found it and there will be more when we get back home," said Paul, speaking from Kelso.

Newcastle University architecture student, Kirsty, from Stockton, said: "We nearly ran out of petrol with going round and round Kelso. We had to go into Jedburgh to find a petrol station open and it was about midnight when we got back to the field. We are just in a daze. At first we thought it was a hoax.

"We had been looking for a house on a hill near a great mound, but there were houses on hills everywhere we looked."

Sailor Gareth, of Craigwell Crescent, Stockton, who is on leave, said: "We could not believe it. There was a little bit of the container sticking out of the mud and we were just singing and dancing as you do."

The trio are to sell the car - they have already received offers - and will split the proceeds three ways. Paul intends to buy a house to rent out.

Mick Jones, of Texaco, said: "The treasure hunt has really captured people's imagination, but I don't think people believed they had actually been buried.