2,752 miles !

Farley is fed up with travelling around Great Britain! It has been most unproductive on the letterboxing front. First he went to Dartmoor, where he only had time to find one letterbox — and even that was a pub one :-(
Then he travelled around Scotland, from Loch Lomond at one end to Dunnet Head at the other. Whilst Farley longed to find Scottish Letterboxes, the people driving the car didn't seem to understand the necessity of going out of their way to get to the clue starting points, and sadly he had to content himself with admiring the scenery.
So.... it was something of a relief when Farley found himself back in Yorkshire! Hurrah, he knew he would find letterboxes here. The very next day he packed his bag and set off for the moors. Farley liked to find letterboxes about the moorland crosses as they usually contained some interesting history. The first one he was searching for was named after Ernaldus de Percy, a local landowner in ancient times. The cross used to stand on top of a howe, but was moved to it's present site in 1961 when the howe was excavated. The cross at that time did have a shaft, but sadly all that remains now is the base socket stone.
Farley dug out his clue which began at the cross. It led him to the exact spot and the box was safe in it's hiding place. Hurray a letterbox at last! Then within a few minutes he found two other letterboxes nearby. Fantastic, Farley was so pleased with himself, it was a wonderful feeling to find so many after such a famine. He sat down to take his time with them, reading all the information where it was readable, looking at each stamp and adding them to his own logbook, whilst also admiring the countryside around him. Farley could even see the sea in the distance from where he sat. The first of the letterboxes had been planted here in 1992. Sadly everything was very wet and the visitors book unreadable, but the stamp was still there with no wear and tear - just a little grubby. We had supplies with us including a nice new Lock n'Lock, so we were able to completely refurbish it. The other two letterboxes were dry and their visitor books had quite a few signatures in them.

Packing away his felt-tips (yes, Farley is learning to speak English too! Felt-tips = markers) into his bag he decided he wanted one more Cross letterbox before he went home. We set off to find White Cross. This is a rather different type of cross, squat, fat and without the usual long shaft. Once again, following the clue, Farley eventually found his letterbox. In the front of the visitors book it told of old legends about the cross and how it got its local nickname. A name which comes from the stone's considerable girth and probably would not be considered politically correct nowadays! One legend is that there was a boundary dispute between Baysdale Abbey and Rosedale Abbey. Old Ralph was the guide who took Sister Betty up to Rosedale Head to meet Sister Marjory. They were all lost in a dense sea roak, so Old Ralph left Sister Betty at the White Cross and set off to find Sister Margery. When the mist cleared Sister Betty climbed onto the top of the cross and was able to see Ralph and Margery standing at 2 separate stones only a few hundred yards away. Ralph is reputed to have marked the position of the stones and given them their names.

That was the end of Farley's letterboxing day this time, but he is already looking forward to finding more at the weekend.