Megan Stammers and teacher Jeremy Forrest found in France Martin Stammers, stepfather of Megan Stammers, at Sussex police headquaters in Lewes after the schoolgirl was found in France. Photograph: Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images The 15-year-old schoolgirl Megan Stammers and her 30-year-old married maths teacher Jeremy Forrest were found "safe and well" in central Bordeaux on Friday lunchtime, apparently on their way to a job interview, according to French police. Their discovery ended an eight-day international hunt involving Interpol and brought huge relief to their families. Megan's stepfather, Martin Stammer, spoke of "pure elation" at the news that she had been found, while Forrest's parents, Jim and Julie Forrest, said the pair's flight had been "an ordeal for all the families concerned." Stammers was put in the care of British consular staff and Sussex police child protection officers in Bordeaux, while Forrest was held in French custody where he is expected to remain over the weekend until a formal hearing on Tuesday intended to authorise his extradition to the UK. The schoolgirl and the teacher fled their separate homes in East Sussex on Thursday last week on a Dover to Calais ferry shortly after it appeared the police may have become aware of their potentially illegal relationship. They were stopped by French police at 12.15pm on Friday on Rue Sainte-Catherine, the main high street in the centre of Bordeaux. They were walking hand in hand, one police source was reported as saying. The prosecutor's office said they had been found thanks to "an interesting and credible witness" who contacted them 48 hours earlier. The witness was "not anyone close to the couple," it said. The couple's disappearance had triggered the issue of a European arrest warrant for Forrest on suspicion of child abduction. Members of both families made emotional televised appeals urging them to get in touch and return home. Forrest's black Ford Fiesta was reportedly found 350 miles away in Paris. Chief Inspector Jason Tingley of Sussex police said there had been four possible sightings of the pair in France - two in south-west France. On Thursday, there was a third in Bordeaux by a member of the public who recognised Forrest from TV coverage. Tingley said the sighting was confirmed and the pair were picked up in an operation led by French police with assistance from the UK's Serious and Organised Crime Agency and Sussex police. On his return, Forrest, a keen amateur musician, from Ringmer near Lewes, is likely to face questioning about the nature of his relationship with Stammers who is below the age of consent in the UK. Stammers is not thought to have committed any offence. Terry Boatwright, headmaster of Bishop Bell Church of England school where Stammers was a pupil and Forrest taught maths, said everyone in the school community was delighted that Megan had been found and could now be reunited with her family. "Clearly, much needs to be done now to support Megan, and her family, as they seek to return to some sort of normality and we will do all we can to play our part in that," he said. Martin Stammers appealed for his family to be left in peace "so that we can bond again as a family in private." Stammers' natural father, Barry Wratten, 41, said the discovery of his daughter was "the news he had been hoping and praying for." He said: "The past week has been absolutely terrible. You don't want to say it, but sometimes you think the worst ... I am not angry with her at all - we all do silly things when we are young without thinking about the consequences. School authorities are also likely to face questions about their handling of the situation after it emerged the school and the county council had been investigating concerns about the relationship between the 15-year old and her teacher when they fled, and her family were not told. Pupils said this week they had seen the pair holding hands on a flight from Los Angeles following a school trip in February. Earlier this week, one school friend of Stammers said: "They would always text each other. The pair communicated on Twitter and in late June, after Stammers tweeted: "I just want to runaway forever," Forrest wrote: "Me & you. Let's just run away. On 1 July, she wrote: "I just want to get on a train / in a car and go somewhere with you." There has been wider concern about child protection measures at Bishop Bell school after supply teacher Robert Healy was jailed in 2009 for grooming and having sex with two girls at the school. Separately, Canon Gordon Rideout, who chaired the school's governing body until 2010, is due in court charged with 38 child sex offences over 11 years from 1962. "Bishop Bell school has a robust safeguarding policy in place, takes safeguarding very seriously and the effectiveness of its safeguarding procedures is rated outstanding by Ofsted," Boatwright said this week. The alarm was first raised when Megan failed to attend school last Friday and it was discovered that she had travelled with Forrest on a ferry from Dover to Calais the previous evening. They had tickets to return to the UK on Sunday, but did not use them. On Monday, Megan's mother Danielle Wilson appealled to her directly on television saying: "Sweetheart, I don't care what you've done or why, I just want you home." Forrest, an amateur singer songwriter who performed under the name Jeremy Ayre, wrote a blog post earlier this year entitled "You hit me just like heroin ...." It was about "a bit of a moral dilemma" he had had recently. The overriding question it left me with was this: how do we, and how should we, define what is right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable??? I came to a few different conclusions, mainly that actually we get a lot of things wrong, but at the end of the day I was satisfied that if you can look yourself in the mirror and know that, under all the front, that you are a good person, that should have faith in your own judgement.