Boy's balloon finds pen-pal Britain's Queen

LONDON, May 31 (Reuters) A 4-year-old British boy who released a balloon with a message hoping to find a pen pal in a foreign land ended up having a correspondence with the Queen.

Tom Stancombe let go of his helium balloon in Hampshire, west of London, but rather than flying across to France or half way around the world, it ended up just 32 km away, landing inside Windsor Castle, the Daily Mail reported.

The Queen instructed her personal assistant to reply and so the monarch and the boy, helped by his parents, exchanged a series of letters, mostly about the fact that one of the boy's ancestors, an artist, had works in the royal art collection.

''She (the Queen) was delighted to find that your balloon had travelled all the way to the gardens at Windsor Castle,'' the monarch's assistant wrote.

Asked if he thought his son would be exchanging any more letters with the Queen, Tom's father said: ''I don't expect we'll get another one, but I think it's incredible they bothered replying at all.'' REUTERS CS SBA BST0428