10/19/03

Letterboxing is an activity that can be enjoyed by anyone. It is very similar to orienteering except that the whole family can join in with you irrespective of their age group - and its SLOWER!. It involves solving clues, walking the fells and finding hidden boxes containing a stamp and a visitors book.

Believe it or not there are boxes sited on the summits of some of the most visited mountains of the Lake district within a stones throw of the summit cairn and which can lie undisturbed for many weeks until the next intrepid letterboxer pays his or her visit. It takes the ancient custom of placing a rock on a cairn upon reaching the summit of a mountain to an artform.

Letterboxes are all different, many contain very decorative stamps and some are quite humorous, others are informative of the history and legends of the locality.

A typical letterbox is a container secreted on the fell, containing a visitors' book, a rubber stamp and occasionally an ink pad. Upon finding a 'box' the visitor stamps their own book with the rubber stamp found therein and either signs the visitors book or stamps it with their own 'personal' stamp.

The containers, themselves, were originally old ammunition tins but this practice has now all but ceased and are now more frequently of 'Tupperware', pill pots or similar. Although they come in all shapes and sizes.

There are also 'Travellers', which are never sited on the moor and are carried by the Letterboxers themselves. Another kind is the 'moving box' (or hitchhiker in the USA) which, when found inside another box, should be moved on to the next box visited and thus is constantly on the move around the moor.

Boxes are typically sited in any handy nook or cranny in the mountains or on surrounding scree (or clitter in the Dartmoor vernacular), although they should never be sited in any of the sites of historical interest, or where it would disturb the wildlife. There are also many pubs, public buildings, cafes, etc that also have their own stamp.