Boxing Buddy to sue Travel Agent!

My new Boxing Buddy — Britannia Bear has arrived. With a name like Britannia she thought she should come to absorb all things British, and in particular British Letterboxing, before she continues her travels elsewhere.

On Monday we had the worst floods I have ever seen. A large proportion of the East Riding, and 96% of Kingston Upon Hull is below sea level. In addition the city is built on both the Humber Estuary and the River Hull, therefore you might think it is not surprising that we have had floods. This flooding however was not caused by rivers overflowing, but by rainfall. We had two months worth of rain all in one day. It was torrential, and never eased in the entire 24hrs.It was the continued ferocity which was so unexpected. I often think news reporters find the only bit of flooding for miles around and stand in it to make the news worth broadcasting. This was not the case on Monday, the floods were all over the city, trains in and out of the city came to a stop and I have friends whose houses and cars are still, 5 days later, standing in 4 foot of water. Thankfully all that happened to my own home was about 4 inches of water flooding the garden and garage, just missing the tumble dryer that is on blocks in the garage.

Prior to setting off Britannia had seen photo's of the high life Boxing Buddy : Goldie was living and so it came as something of a shock to find herself sat in an old margarine tub, wearing a newspaper hat to protect herself from the rain, rescuing scrappy bits of PZ Kut from the debris in the flood water around her :-( Just wait until she gets home to sue her travel agent. FlyGirl409 had better get herself a good lawyer!

So what do all good letterboxers do when it is wet?

Go letterboxing of course! Britannia and I decided to stay local in view of all the recent rain and at the earliest opportunity we set off to find some letterboxes. Unfortunately, we had only just got out of the city when we encountered a diversion on the road due to flooding, cutting off access to the areas we wanted. Knowing my way around very well I thought I would just wriggle around the back roads to where we wanted to be. This worked very well until we came out further along the main road, this time to find the police diverting the traffic again. Sat in my nice dry house I hadn't appreciated that almost a week after the floods the main roads are still affected, and it was at this point we decided give up trying to do any letterboxing in the wild.

Nevertheless there is more than one way to skin a rabbit and hardened letterboxers like myself and Britannia easily found other ways to letterbox. First we ventured out into the garden where, as mentioned before, there are some 'Other' letterboxes. Next Britannia asked me to get out my Personal Traveller — "please". She had heard that English Personal Travellers mostly only had to be asked for and was relieved that she didn't have to learn a poem, sing a song, or worse still do a dance in order to obtain it.

Once all the logbooks and pens had been put away Britannia thought we should switch the computer on and have a look at Atlas Quest for some clues to letterboxes which we would hopefully be able to search for soon. Britannia found an empty Coke can to sit on. The can was empty as the contents had been spluttered over the keyboard whilst reading some funny remark made by one of many witty Atlas Quest members. Spluttering coke is a common occurrence on AQ by all accounts. How can you have laughter on a virtual message board I hear you ask? I have no idea, but one thing I do know and that is loads of laughter and great friendship can be found on AQ, which totally justifies it being called a community.

Looking at the computer, Britannia found a clue to a letterbox called Atlas Quest, which is hidden up on the moors. Writing the clue down for future use, the time had come to teach Britannia how to read Ordnance Survey Maps. (Click on the photo to enlarge it if you wish) These are topographical maps and without them, and a compass, it would not be safe to go walking on the moors. Britannia opened out the map, which was huge! How she would cope if it was windy she didn't know. The red and yellow lines for the major and minor roads were obvious and she noticed at once that there was a sharp bend in the main road. Blue lines indicated becks and rivers and the black dashed line is the railway line. Brown lines were contour lines, and the closer together the brown lines are the steeper the hills. The groups of tiny black dashes everywhere were symbols which indicated heathland. I instructed Britannia that she should be careful to watch out for areas where this symbol changed to a blue colour as this indicated marshland and was to be avoided at all costs. She didn't like the sound of that and even worse — she had found an area between her paws, marked in red, which said DANGER AREA. I explained that this was Military land, often with unexploded ordnance on it, although there were still a few footpaths across it that we could walk on as they were rights of way. However I reassured her that I had no intention of taking her to that area, in any case it would be a waste of time as there are no letterboxes on Military land here in Yorkshire.