EXPECTANT dad Mark Creech and his nine-months pregnant girlfriend Emma Hadfield dropped a real bombshell on family and friends on Sunday - but it was not quite the news they were hoping for.

The Minehead couple had headed off to Porlock Hill for a countryside walk in the hope the exercise would encourage their baby - due any day now - into the world.

But as they walked along a footpath near Larksborough Ruin the pair stumbled across what turned out to be an unexploded World War Two bomb.

And Mark only realised what it was once he had started to try and dig it up.

"We thought a walk would bring on the baby when we literally stumbled across this bomb," he said.

"We saw something sticking up through the footpath so I started digging around it but I stopped as soon as I realised what it was and telephoned the police."

Mark showed the officers what he had found and they kept guard on the device overnight until members of the Royal Navy's explosives ordnance division were able to carry out a controlled explosion the following day.

"From what I can gather, there was an old farm there that was used as a firing range by the British and Americans during the war," said Mark.

"It's absolutely amazing to think it had survived for 70 years buried in the ground and was still intact."

A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Constabulary said experts had identified the device as a 100lb German aerial bomb from World War Two which had failed to explode when it hit the soft marshland in the area.

"Instead, it had stayed there undisturbed until the recent rain and erosion of a footpath uncovered enough of the device for a hill walker to notice it," said the spokesman.

"The bomb was destroyed by the explosives ordnance division during a controlled explosion at the scene."