The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
A turn-up for their book
Record: New publication chronicles 500 adventures of schoolboy brothers
Two schoolboy brothers from Turriff have sailed into the record books after launching a toy pirate ship thousands of miles around the world.
Ollie and Harry Ferguson, aged 10 and seven respectively, have been dubbed Britain’s most adventurous kids.
One of their most successful enterprises began in May 2017 when they sent a Playmobil
“We just take advantage of any opportunities there are”
pirate ship out to sea from Peterhead.
The colourful toy, which was fitted with an internal tracking device, bobbed along the waves for a year before it was picked up off the coast of Mauritania in north-west Africa.
Its 3,773-mile trip can now be read about in the 2020 edition of the Guinness World Records book, under “world’s most travelled toy ship”.
But that is just one of the boys’ exploits.
They visited Waterstones in Aberdeen yesterday to celebrate the release of a new book delving into much more of their activities.
Ollie and Harry’s Marvellous Adventures, which was written with the help of their dad, Macneill, and popular children’s writer Garry Jenkins, documents the 500 exciting enterprises they undertook in the space of a year.
The projects ranged from setting up a wildlife reserve to building an igloo.
Their proud dad, who was at the book launch along with mum Vicki, said the close-knit clan does everything together as a family.
He added: “We both work full-time and fit the adventures in during the weekend.
“Ollie goes to Cubs and they both do judo and swimming, so they still do the same extra-curricular things that other kids do.
“We just make time at weekends to do things together as a family. We went to America on holiday and we just made sure that while we were there we did adventures – for example, we went swimming with manatees.
“We take advantage of where we are and what opportunities there are.”
While Harry thought walking across Scotland was the toughest adventure they had been on and Ollie thought making flint arrowheads was the hardest, they were both in agreement as to which they hated most – eating surströmming, a Swedish delicacy of fish fermented for six months.
“Horrendous,” was how Harry described it, with Ollie adding that it was “disgusting”.
Mr Ferguson said: “We try to give them experiences that encourage them to explore and immerse themselves in the world.
“It’s an excuse to do fun, exciting activities together as a family while building memories that will hopefully last a lifetime.”
Ollie added: “We have a great childhood and our family is always together.”