Gill Thompson, 73, has been reunited with her half-brother, Michael Bardsley, after nearly eight decades apart. The reunion was made possible after Thompson encountered a man with the same surname as her brother at a bowls tournament in August 2025, which spurred her to renew her search.

Thompson, a retired PE teacher from Llandudno, north Wales, only learned of her estranged father, Colin Bardsley, at the age of 25. She received a Christmas card from her paternal grandfather, which led to the discovery. Later, she found out her father had moved to Cape Town, South Africa, where he remarried and had a son, Michael. Thompson had previously searched for her half-brother in the late 1990s but was unsuccessful.

After the bowls tournament encounter, Thompson's 31-year-old daughter, Sammy, utilized LinkedIn to trace Michael. She identified him by recognizing the family's distinctive nose, a feature shared by her father and grandfather. Michael Bardsley, a sports film producer from Cape Town, had always known he had a half-sister but lacked sufficient information to find her.

The siblings met for the first time on June 8 at Colwyn Bay railway station. Thompson described the meeting as emotional, stating, "We embraced as only a long-lost brother and sister could do. We had a happy evening catching up on a lifetime of memories."

Michael Bardsley, 64, called the journey to meet his sister "worth every mile," despite facing train cancellations. He recalled the profound emotion of the reunion, saying, "As we hugged the reality sank in, after a lifetime apart I was now holding on to my closest living relative."

Thompson's parents, Joyce Priestley and Colin Bardsley, married in 1952 after discovering they were expecting a child. However, they separated before Gill's birth and later divorced. Thompson stated she knew nothing about her father, as she never asked and her mother never told her.

She first saw her father's photograph in 1986, after her mother died at 56, when she discovered a picture from her parents' wedding. "I felt as though mum wanted me to find it eventually," Thompson said. "I was amazed and excited to see it. He looked quite like me."

Thompson discovered Michael's existence 27 years prior when searching birth, marriage, and death records. Her search was interrupted by her then-husband's diagnosis and subsequent death from esophageal cancer in 2004.

Following their FaceTime conversation in September, the siblings spent two weeks together in June, during which they also met other newly discovered relatives, including three cousins from their father's side of the family. The siblings now maintain regular contact through texting and video calls. Thompson credited the internet with making the reunion possible, stating, "This wouldn't have been possible at all without the internet."