Letterboxes, mountains, orchids
Great reasons to go for a walk.
“AN OBJECTIVE IS an ambition, and life without ambition is... well, aimless wandering.” So said Alfred Wainwright, capturing a truth that will be familiar to parents who have ever proposed anything so aimless-sounding as a Family Walk to a dead-eyed panel of offspring. For Wainwright, the objectives were the summits of the Lake District and the completion of his handwritten guides. For us, the climactic view, coveted spot or Cornetto all do the job of providing micro-impetuses on walks. But combine an objective with aspects of puzzle and treasure hunt, and you have an irresistibly attractive cocktail to the British walker, shy as they aren’t of arbitrary and whimsical quests.
Letterboxing – the accidental precursor of geocaching – began in 1854 in Dartmoor, after local guide James Perrott (a genial man by repute, who once fought off the moor’s Black Dog of folklore) left a bottle containing calling cards at Cranmere Pool (since 1937 it’s been marked by a stone-built box with a metal door). Into the bottle soon descended visitors’ own cards, and gradually a convention developed that walkers would leave cards or letters addressed to themselves or friends in one of what became (after 40 years mind you) two boxes on the moor, for subsequent visitors to find and forward at unpredictable intervals. By 1976 there were 15 letterboxes, spread in remote and hard-to-find locations. Today there are thousands, and though they house rubber stamps and visitors’ books (stamp your notebook with one and record your visit in the other) rather than acting as intermittent postal exchanges, they command a bigger fanbase than ever before. There’s a club of over 15,000 members who have visited 100 boxes, and you can join too on provision of £3 and a list of your finds. To be a letterboxer is to enjoy adventurous days of discovery on Dartmoor (and a sense of superiority to that arriviste geocaching). But perhaps most of all it’s to uphold a long British tradition of purposeful mucking about – of getting a good thing done for body and soul, while convincing your brain (or your kids) it’s all a jolly game.
You can buy a catalogue of letterbox locations from the hobby’s homepage – letterboxingondartmoor.co.uk – for £9.54, or consult an online database of clues to 417 boxes at www.gamblenet.me.uk/clues_ list.asp.