Letterboxing in Lundy

So we thought we would tell you about this in a little more detail. We got quite addicted and it was really good fun. So what is letterboxing?

Well at the most basic level it is traipsing around the countryside looking for ice cream containers, that have been hidden, sometimes really well. You get a basic description of where they might be, with either a mapping coordinate or a cryptic clue to help you. Inside the container is a stamp, an inkpad and a little book which you sign and make comments in. The aim is to collect all the stamps. which ended up being 28 in total.

I had read about the game before coming, so thought it could be a good way of seeing the island. Well that really turned out to be right. I don’t think there is; a path we did not visit, including many bits of heath, cliff, bracken, gravel and grass that had no paths, a stone left unturned, nor a crevice not looked in. We’ve been there, seen it, probably groped around the odd hole and collected the stamps to prove it.

Approximate location of letterboxes that took us to each and every point on the island

So it started at the little shop. Nigel , the shopkeeper, told us about the game and went through the instructions with us. Reading Susana’s scepticism, the look on her face suggested this would be anything but fun, he warned me that those with a negative attitude at the start could be the most competitive by the end, he knows Susana all to well, it took me 14 years to work all that out. Nigel also told us other facts and stories about the  island, both entertaining and informative. He told us as a full timer, there are three things to do; stay in, go to the pub or go for a walk. It was that simple on Lundy. We would see a lot of Nigel over the four days and he would share our adventure., but for the time being we bought some supplies and started our quest.

Day 1

It was the afternoon of the day we had arrived, below you can see the map showing all of the letterboxes and the list of stamps by the side. You do not have to do them in order, so it was getting on in the day, so we decided to head for the centre of the island.

Felix Gade hut and the clue was, ‘between two rocks above quarry pond. Quarter wall cottages 160°, Old light 220° an easy find, didn’t take long, first stamp in the book.

The second stamp was just as easy coming and took us to a beautiful cove down some steep steps where the box was hidden. This was only spoilt by the discovery of a dead seal washed  up on the shore, the conservation crew were aware of it though.

It was at our next stops where we really struck gold, one of the stamps was know as the Lundy Bunny as it hopped around the island, so you never knew where it was. The idea was there was this extra stamp, and when you found it you could move it to another box. Now as you can imagine this might happen while other people are looking so the stamp ends up in one of the boxes you have already found! If you don’t find the bunny by the end of the list, you will have to retrace all your steps. Our luck was that we found it on our third box, at the Tavern, our third easy stamp, we now had four and the Bunny was in our possession ready to be put on the hardest box we could find. Whilst at the Tavern we came upon another puzzle, a wooden padlock beautifully made that unlocked itself when you had discovered a word and rotated it spelling out the letters, ingenious.

The day was drawing to a close, so we headed home to our castle, picking up a couple more on route, and in the process seeing more of the island and a beautiful sunset.

“Day 1 has been relatively easy; obviously this game has been catered for children. We should be able to collect the remaining stamps tomorrow”, we thought.

Route of day one:

Day two

One of the clues suggested there was a box right outside our accommodation. We also still had the bunny. We found the stamp a few metres from the castle and temporarily, deposited the bunny there, until we found a more difficult hiding place for it. At least we weren’t going to spoil other people’s fun. We trusted that no one would find the rabbit and move it in the meantime.

We then headed to the South Light house and the jetty, which were just south of us. Two more easy stamps.

 

We was nearing our first fail. We had heard that Rat Island would be difficult. You could only get there when the tide was out. We saw someone on the island, looking for the stamp and as we were in the area, also decided to try and give it a go. However, we did not know the exact position of the tide. We spent forty minutes scrambling over wet rocks and seaweed, then decided that the tide was probably coming in and a hasty retreat we made. That one would have to wait another day.

We decided to head to the north of the island as it was still quite early. On route, there were several stamps. The first one was in a quarry. We thought we knew where but just could not find it. We spent sometime above the quarry before returning, still to no avail. Re-reading the instructions, we realised that the stamp would be in an adjacent quarry, we had wasted a couple of hours. Perhaps this game is not so easy after all. We started to realise that we may have been a bit greedy the day before.

We were soon to get our second defeat of the day. One that would turn into our nemeses: Gull’s Rock still makes us shiver. On the side of the cliff the clue suggested you could approach it either from below or from above. We traipsed the cliff up and down for hours, never finding it. Two more letterboxers appeared and told us they couldn’t find it either. They headed off before we did. We eventually had to move on too.

We caught up with the other two who were searching for our next stamp. We left them to it and headed onwards to stop for a very late lunch as it was already past five. However, in the meantime we were able to glance where they had found that stamp! That was easy, we needed the help

It took us a while to find the next stamp but we eventually did. The others had re-joined us, got bored and gone onwards. They returned to see that we had found it so we repaid the complement of them finding us the previous stamp. It looked like they returned to the civilization of the Tavern but we continued onwards, ever northwards.

Around Gannets’ rock the path suddenly stopped but with great views. We ended up spending quite a bit of time wading through deep bracken to get back to our path. Close to the end of the island were three more stamps. John O’Groats proved to be difficult as we maintain, the direction given was wrong.

Another misreading of the instructions wasted another half hour. The final stamps were relatively easy and a relief. The swelling water around the north of the island were most dramatic and maybe deserved a bit of kayaking!

On the way back, we picked up another easy one, Wendy’s Mitchell memorial so the day hadn’t been that bad after all.

It was really late now, we had spent twelve hours outside and we were exhausted. We had planned to eat in our castle. The idea of cooking didn’t appeal so a change of plan. Why not go to the Tavern and see what they had to offer? We still had a forty minutes walk to get back and were discussing what each of us would have should it be on the menu. We were starving!

We walked into the Tavern as they were cleaning away the food, they were just serving desserts. We missed it, we returned to the castle and had left overs from the day before.

Route of Day 2:

Day 3

Would this be a repeat of yesterday or more likely the successes of the first day?

One stamp filled us with fear, even the clue says that many have found it impossible to find: Jenny’s Cove. We headed to the West coast but on route, checked whether the bunny was still outside our door. It was! That was coming with us today to find a more secure burrow. We will leave you to guess where we left it. On route, we picked up Benjamin’s chair, which disturbingly gave us a clue for an additional stamp. Would this game never end?

The Battery and Forgotten Heinkel were easily found. Curiously, the latter happened to be a crashed WWII German plane. The engine lodged between two rocks. The stamp had been placed behind it.

Was Earthquake our second nemeses? Another couple came and left. Had they found it? After hours looking, we had to leave. This was the second stamp we had give in to and we still had Jenny’s cove to battle with which we headed to next.

She did indeed prove difficult, with little more than three coordinates to go by. Eventually, we realised we were probably on the wrong outcrop. Soon after we moved to the new rocks. Lodged deep inside a crevice we found the much missed ice cream box of Jenny’s cove. Aleluya!  (in Spanish). On route back over to Gull’s rock we picked up Centre of the Island and Lost Heinkel. This time, a fully crashed war plane.

The day was once again nearing its end and we had had some success but also some failure. Could we end the day well? Susana pledged she would get drunk should we succeed to find Gull’s rock. Not a very expensive pledge these days as it only takes a couple of glasses of wine. A systematic approach eventually led to success and we returned to eat at the Tavern to celebrate. Susana is still suffering the hangover!

Route of Day 3

Day 4

We only had three stamps left to collect but one of these was Earthquake that we had spectacularly failed to find the day before. We had timed today around the tides but also the arrival of the MS Oldenburg, which we would return on in the afternoon. In the meantime, we would have to persuade the captain to give us the stamp which was on board. Before that, we needed to scale Rat Island. We returned over the slippery rock and scrambled the sharp, vertical rock face to get the box which was placed at the top of the island. We had one hour to do this before the tide returned. As we got to the top the Oldenburg pulled up to the jetty. Our time on Lundy Island was nearly over.

We had two hours before we left and one more stamp to get. There were now many more people on Lundy Island, both day trippers and those people that were taking our accommodation. The island looked positively crowded. We headed back to the west and systematically began to search the Earthquake. Interestingly, the feature known as Earthquake is actually part of a landslip.

The new arrivals, out to explore for the first time, looked at us perplexed and probably wondered what the hell we were doing. We didn’t care, we just wanted our last stamp. Suddenly, I noticed down a deep crevice an old plastic lid. It must be around here somewhere. Could someone have dropped it down the crack? As I tried to reach it with my arm, my eye fell upon a small piece of plastic wedged in an adjacent rock, well hidden behind several stones. We had found it! We had completed the letterbox challenge!!

Bizarrely, only now did we realise that the strange letterbox we found on Dartmoor was probably a similar game. Subsequent research proved we were right. Here we are celebrating our success with lunch on this awesome spot before collecting our certificate from Nigel.

Nigel gave us two bunnies on our certificate because we were the 2wanderers.

We are now looking for more letterboxing games around Europe. We enjoyed it that much! If you know of any, please let us know

Route of day 4:

GDR & SM