By: Blonde One
There are always lots of people telling all ages of youngsters that they should get off the sofa, get outside and do stuff. Blondes One and Two are unashamedly guilty of this! One activity that tends to be used by local families to get their xBox generation kids outside is letterboxing. This is an activity that started back in the 1800’s and is a system similar to orienteering where clues are used to find a hidden box with a stamp and notepad inside. The idea is you leave a message in the book and put the stamp into your book which has your collection of stamps. Apparently letterboxing is now nation wide but I’ve never heard anyone outside of Dartmoor talking about it. I guess now geocaching has taken its place but there is still something special about accidentally stumbling across a letterbox whilst taking a well deserved coffee ribena break. The Two Blondes are hoping that soon we will have our own letterbox for you to find. The only problem is deciding which fabulous part of Dartmoor to hide our letterbox! If you’re out on the moors and find a letterbox, have a little look just in case it is ours!
Letterboxing is what my mum and dad used as an incentive to get me and sis walking on Dartmoor when we were little. Unfortunately it became a little disheartening when the ones you were looking for were missing. Back then letterboxes were “proper” (excuse the english) and had beautifully handcrafted rubber stamps in them and a log book full of “letterboxers stamps”. I think letterboxing has lost some of this. Hound Tor is littered with letterboxes but many are just old ice cream containers that aren’t waterproof and just have a manky old log book in it with handwritten scrawl. Not quite the same!!! Sadly there are also those that seem to have no respect for the past time. I remember a couple of years ago heading up to Hay Tor just after an August Bank Holiday and it was like a bomb site. Obviously all the bank holiday chavs had been up there and there were letterboxes strewn all over the place. Some were smashed, some just had contents scattered all over the place, others were in tact but not rehidden and fortunately the geocache we were searching for was well hidden away! It makes me so cross that people have to ruin what gives others great pleasure.
Needless to say, we gave up on letterboxing when I was a kid and it was a good 20 years on that I discovered geocaching. Yes, some people accidently find these and ruin them too, but generally they are much better hidden and away from the crowds. I have used geocaching many a time as an incentive to get my own girlies walking – an incentive not needed quite so much now as they are pretty good walkers, but 3 or 4 summers ago when my youngest was only about 5 or 6 we did an 8 mile walk collecting 25 geocaches on the way, were out for about 7 hours and she didn’t moan once. Not bad really!!!
I am impressed with the lack of moaning – I am looking forward to putting a couple of Two Blondes letter boxes out.
That’s how I came to be introduced to letterboxing too. It is a shame that people vandalise them. Perhaps those are the people that we want to stay at home on the sofa!