A travel loving tortoise has been reunited with his owner after he made a great escape from his garden and travelled half a mile across Bradwell, near Great Yarmouth.

A travel loving tortoise has been reunited with his owner after he made a great escape from his garden and travelled half a mile across Bradwell, near Great Yarmouth.

Basil, who is thought to be 70 years old, managed to tunnel his way out of his garden and trundled his way slowly over a nearby building site.

After he disappeared, Basil's owner Jane Taylor launched a desperate search for the reptilian Houdini and was joined in her frantic quest by dog walkers and builders.

But as the search went on Basil, who is named after Basil Fawlty because of his strange looking jaw, was exploring a garden half a mile away.

Last Friday Basil was reunited with his delighted owner after his seven day disappearing trick after an appeal appeared in the EDP's sister paper the Yarmouth Mercury.

He had been found in the garden half a mile way by Doll Humphries.

Ms Taylor said: 'I cried tears of joy when I saw him. I did not allow myself to hope I would find him again and there he was.'

It is not the first time that Basil has made a break as he was found along a tractor path in the 1970s and wandered near the A12 twenty years ago.