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Early in September, I was able to visit the Colne Valley Postal History Museum in Head Street, Halstead. This privately owned museum only opens twice a year. I'm a member of the Letter Box Study Group and this interest has come about due to geocaching. As I was hunting for caches, I would pass by many letter boxes; some caches were actually on the boxes. I began to notice that many of these were very different. This began my interest In letter boxes.
During the visit, the curator asked me what I thought of the museum and I said that it was fantastic. I told him how my interest in letter boxes had started and he said that he'd heard of geocaching. Then came an offer that geocachers never get, "Do you want to hold an event in my front garden and afterwards I could open the museum for those attending." After quickly taking him up on his offer, I cheekily asked if I could put a geocache in his front garden and he agreed. 😀
The meeting - VangeRover On Tour #1 was due to start at noon so I took the opportunity to grab some caches on the way up to Halstead. I found 13 trads including a Fine Pair at and the seven strong Oak Road Circular series. Now was the time to set off for the meeting. I parked up in Head Street and noted Wandafree from Ipswich waiting outside the museum. As I got out of the car, I bumped into the OG&Bs and tigerlilly6 from Sudbury. It looked as if this meeting was going to be busy. 🤗
I should say that I was unable to put a cache in the front garden of the museum. I had got all the stuff together for a decent letterbox 📮 cache including a pukka Post Office ink stamp. However GZ was only 137m from the nearest cache - Beer Bottle - so my plans had gone out of the window.😥
Anyway, back to the event, cachers kept turning up and I was putting faces to names, limpyles, IndisVanyar, Zeus241, TheStowMartians and MummaD spring to mind. The TB bucket was filling up including a large wooden spanner called Needs Maintenance. Then came the moment that Mr and Mrs Knight were ready for us and let us all in to their museum. I was waiting for everyone to be "blown away."
And they were, everyone was in "nostalgia city" including me. There are about 160 different letter boxes, two telephone boxes, over 50 AA direction signs and so much Post Office memorabilia including bicycles and uniforms. Andee from BTL101092 found the sign from the Post Office up the road from where he was brought up in the West Midlands! Everyone's memory was jogged in more ways than one.🤔 Suddenly tea, coffee and chocolate biscuits appeared courtesy of Mrs Knight to the amazement of everyone. I was only told that the biscuits were there as they had disappeared by the time I'd got there.🙁
After an hour, the meeting broke up and people started to drift away. Many cachers came up and thanked me for organising the event. Some said that was the best meeting that they'd ever been to and what was I going to do for #2 to top it.☹️ I counted 25 attendees which broke my event attendance record by threefold.👏
With the meeting over, I got some shopping in Sainsbury's in the middle of town and used the car park as a base to get some more caches. I picked up two more trads, the Really SideTracked multi as well as the Public Gardens multi in the park until I had to call it a day. I think that this was my best event Geocaching day. 👏
1 Event, 2 Multi, 16 Traditional
#6137