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About Letterboxing

Letterboxing is an outdoor activity that involves searching for hidden boxes (usually plastic or metal containers) via a combination of orienteering skills and gut instinct.

Letterboxing began on Dartmoor, in southwest England, in 1854. Its founder was a local tour guide and hill walker called James Perrott, who placed a bottle at Cranmere Pool (the most remote and inaccessible place on Dartmoor.) The idea was that hikers who found the bottle would leave a stamped postcard or letter addressed either to themselves or to their friends and family. When the next visitor to Cranmere Pool found the bottle, they would take the letters and post them back to the person who left them.

The concept was initially slow to take off, mainly because there were so few visitors to Cranmere Pool, and those who did get there often arrived many weeks apart. William Crossing, a celebrated author on Dartmoor, wrote about Perrott’s idea in his book ‘Guide to Dartmoor’ published in 1909. Crossing now has a commemorative letterbox of his own at Duck’s Pool, widely acknowledged to be the second-most difficult location to access on Dartmoor.

In more recent years the tradition of leaving letters and postcards has declined, indeed most letterboxes now have a guestbook instead. Generally, a regional guidebook is published to give hikers clues as to the location of the letterboxes in a particular area (letterboxing is popular on the North York Moors and the Pennines as well as Dartmoor and the Isle of Man.)

Guidebooks tend to use local landmarks and features as the starting point for clues. Searchers are then directed to follow a certain compass bearing and distance (usually measured in paces) in order to find the letterbox. This is only half the skill though, as letterboxes are hidden either under rocks or in holes. Finding the right rock is often more problematic than measuring the right number of paces!

Letterboxes nearly always contain a handstamp with an image or symbol relevant to the location or the history of the box. Many guidebooks have space for walkers to record the handstamp, so a typical letterboxing kit often includes an inkpad and paper as well as a pen or pencil.

 

Letterboxing on the Isle of Man

Surprisingly, letterboxing only started on the Island in 1996. Originally, 12 boxes were commissioned and placed along the Millennium Way, which runs from Sky Hill in the north right down to the south of the Island. The most southerly letterbox is at St Luke’s Church, in the central valley of the Island, which gives an idea of the far greater number of hills in the north.

As Scout and youth groups became aware of the ‘letterbox trail’, a new ‘collection’ of boxes was established especially for the Ten Peaks Challenge. This involved teams of young people reaching the summit of 10 of the Island’s hills in 2 days. Although only 10 hills needed to be conquered, a vastly greater number of letterboxes were commissioned, allowing teams to select different routes.

The popularity of letterboxing was growing, but it really took off with the publication of a guidebook detailing clues to all of the Millennium Way and Ten Peaks boxes. The book was very popular as it not only contained space for handstamps but also gave historical information on each box location.

In recent years many more boxes have been established, often celebrating local people or institutions (such as the Norman Wisdom box at the summit of North Barrule and the Manx Airlines box on South Barrule.) Other boxes have also been put out by Scout groups with the result that there are now over 70 boxes dotted around the Island. Snaefell Mountain, for example, boasts 9 letterboxes of its own.

To keep up with the vastly increased tally of boxes, a 2^nd edition of the guidebook is due for publication in early 2008, twelve years on from when it all began.