AN ELDERLY couple's holiday has been saved despite the collapse of holiday firm Travelscope.

Ray and Margaret Young said they were delighted to learn their three-month round-the-world cruise was back on.

The pensioners, from Milton-under-Wychwood, feared they had lost their £15,000 holiday when the business folded.

And the blow would have been made worse by the fact they had been paying off for the past two years.

But on Thursday the couple were over the moon after they received a call informing them the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) had arranged for the trip to go ahead.

Mr Young, 85, said: "We were obviously very nervous when we learnt about everything that had been going on.

"We started paying for this trip in July 2005 and we planned it as our last big trip.

"We read about the couple this week that were left stranded in town, and we feared we had lost our cruise.

"It's absolutely fantastic that it is back on now and we are looking forward to heading off in the new year."

The trip, departing on Friday, January 4, will take the couple to the Azores, Antigua, the North and South American coast through the Panama Canal to Fiji.

From there they will go to New Zealand then on to Australia and Tasmania, South Africa, then various islands in Atlantic before heading to Madeira and then back to the UK.

Mrs Young, 73, said: "We have been paying for this trip for two years, but we had been planning long before that.

"It is fantastic that it is going ahead as we were both looking forward to celebrating our birthdays while on the cruise."

Sean Tipton, a spokesman for ABTA, said he was very pleased that everyone would be able to go on the cruise, but admitted this trip had been an exception.

He said: "We are dealing with thousands of people who lost their holidays following the collapse of Travelscope and it has not been possible to arrange holidays for all those people.

"In this particular case we already had a good relationship with the Dutch firm that owned the cruise ship and they said they would be happy to allow the cruise to take place provided we reimbursed them."

Anyone who has lost a holiday as a result of the collapse of Travelscope is able to claim their money back.