How do you do?

So you find the letterbox, now you need to stamp up.

Over the years, WITC has considered a couple of ways of doing this.

Stamping directly into a note pad or plain jotter ensures the correct order of finding boxes is maintained.

Its also allows for notes and scribbles to make the walk a proper letterboxing journal. However it does put the pressure on getting a good imprint first time, and it isn't so user friendly when you have or intend to find thousands of stamps.

We settled on postcards in the end, and the purchase of wooden boxes at the Meet back in the mid 90's to separate blank cards from stamped cards just complemented the choice.

At the end of the day though, we only have a small pile of postcards to show for our efforts, yet we still want to show them off.

Using large scrapbooks, we photocopy the section of the OS map we walked, highlighting the route taken, note the date, weather and distance walked (thanks GPS!) and arrange the stamps around the page(s), sticking them in.

OK, so we have 40+ scrapbooks piled in the attic, which has the fire brigaide a little nervous, but our accounts of walks completed are well recorded for the future.

Spring is in the air

Spring has sprung. The flowers are beginning to bloom, the lambs are bouncing around, and the long cold Winter seems but a distant memory.

The Met Office say that the Winter of 2009/10 was the coldest in a decade and the snowiest in 18 years. Not letterboxing weather, by any means! WITC managed just 2 letterbox walks in the past 4 months due to poor weather. We did get out for some photos of the snowy conditions though... See the images of Cox Tor, and Yar Tor from Laughter Tor's slopes below.


This week, we're told, will see our warmest day of the year so far - Wednesday will see 23 deg C in some city centres. Last Saturday, the thermometer topped 16C on Dartmoor - a 2010 high.



Who is the challenger enjoyed the weekend at Down and Combeshead Tors. The last time we were here, the bracken was head height, and with several letterboxes missing, the whole walk was a big disappointment in the incessant drizzle which fell.

This time around, in glorious sunshine, charity walk on site and bracken invisible, we reached a total of 28 boxes for the day. Well impressed.

The first days of April 2010 were snowy. On the whole though its been a dry month. Which has been welcome. However...



The 10 driest Aprils the last 100 years have resulted in 9 of the wettest Summers of the last 100 years. Most recently in 2007, with the devastating floods (Tewkesbury and all).

I cling to the forecast of 'Positive Weather Solutions', who promise us that this year, we really WILL have a barbeque Summer.

Fingers crossed.