Can you log them online anywhere

Hi I have just joined this forum and think it is great. I am actually a avid fan of geocaching but find many Letterboxes too. I would love to be able to log them online. Is there anywhere we can do this. If not I think I might just scan my stamps into my computer and upload them into a database of some sort. Any ideas welcome.

uploas you geo or your letterboxers? i knoe geo have a web site database but as for letterboxers i dont think there is one on the www

It would be great if we could get them to let us log our letterboxed on there too. I can log the hybrid letterboxes that are geos and letterboxes in one. I may have to explore this idea futher. Nice to meet you on here. I have logged 261 geocaches on the the geocaching site but have not logged my letterboxes. Might buy a scrap book and put them in there.

I would dearly love a site where they could be logged in but there is a down side to this...
1. The letterbox theif is very active and to be able to source clues online would make him/her more invisible
2. The number of letterboxes is reaching massive numbers and every box from the word go would have to be listed online
3. WOM boxes count towards the total of Dartmoor letterboxes and you wouldn't be able to get a list of them online

Some years ago there Dennis the Menace produced a cryptic clue solutions catalogue with a little help from me and my brother we produced it in the grid reference format.
Having got the software to sort it out I applied the same format to produce a one off (single copy) WOM map reference catalogue (something like 5- 6000 clues it might have been more). However, I was under the threat of death and only a few people at the time knew about this catalogue. Though it was there I never published this catalogue for anyone else, I still have it somewhere - chronically out of date and never replicated...
Though sometimes I would like to reproduce it - but would require far too much work to do that.....

I would love to see the 100 club catalogue produced so it is available online as well as a hardback version. And also made avaiable to work in conjunction with GPS systems.... but having said that - it would destroy a lot of the magic about letterboxing

I don't think putting the letterbox catalogue online is a good idea. For one, you would need to get the owner of every box to consent to their clues being reproduced in this way. Personally, I have had so many instances of my boxes going missing in recent years that I would not want my clues on an online database.

Are there more boxes on the moor now than ever? I was under the impression the number of boxes were in decline - don't find as many as I used to.

An interesting point; are boxes in decline? Certainly a few years ago I picked up a whole load in the Vixen Tor area; a month or so back I got just one. Just scavenging around generally seems to result in a low count and catalogue clues I find are almost invariably gone. Also, most of those around seem to be in accessable places, few in the wilder parts of the moor. So, maybe a lot are stolen/vandalised, but is the number being put out actually decreasing? The box I put out a couple of years back disappeared within six months; it puts me off placing another. But heck! Nil desperandum! We have to support our hobby through thick and thin and I'm hoping that boxes will keep on springing up!

Duckpool

When I scavenged around the Vixen Tor area in the summer I came across about 10 boxes. I've also put my own out just near there as well which is in the catalogue.

I'm not sure that numbers are diminishing as usually find a fair few when out and about. I think the hobby seems as popular as ever.

we have just had someone asking how to get into it, so it is getting popular, just a shame have the ones out of the catalogue have gone missing.

Maybe the fact that many boxes are placed in small containers makes stumbling across boxes less likely.

When I started letterboxing in the early 90's the majority of boxes were still housed in ammo boxes (imo, still the best receptacle for a letterbox) and were often, but not always, easier to find.

On the whole, it seems to me that 'charity walks' or whatever you like to call them have largely taken over. Do others see this as a true reflection?I remember trekking miles just to get one stamp and still prefer quality over quantity.

Was at Honeybag Tor recently, an old haven for boxes and not even half as many there as in the past. Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough, but I would also say there seems to be a lot more large scale thieving than of times gone by.

I think boxing is actually on the decline, in a lot of cases the challenge of looking for them has gone with the use of the GPS and ridiculous use of 10 figure references. The day Wistmans Wood and the area around itwas made a Newtake and boxers were asked to remove their boxes was also another contributing factor to the drop in boxes ( I can recall collecting about 40 boxes up there). Then there was the thing about the ownership of Vixen tor and no boxes again, the mass clearance of all boxes from North Hessary to Kings tor (that one I can understand from the farmers point of view). And of course the letterbox thieves (I am positive there is more than one). And the massive increase in the number of "tourist boxes" which are cheap and 99% of the time a waste of time.
Charity walks are an easy target which makes me worry about setting out a walk because they are disappearing so quickly. I can see one day walks becoming more of a norm - just top protect the walk and permission from the DNP isn't required to set it out either.
WOM clues - these used to be handed out as photocopied sheets and not done by the use of email which can be forwarded to anyone willy nilly, the saving grace in those days was the annoyance of paying for photocopying - especially in bulk so clues were limited to a handful of people

I think letterboxing reached its peak in the late 80's early 90's and since then it has been on a general decline with more people giving up (note the number of posts of people getting back into it which isn't very many) compared to the number just stopping either through death, sickness, injury, disillusionment or just cant be bothered to go out on the moor again. It is even noticeable at the meets where I recall the days you couldn't move in a meet due to the number of bodies and the closure of the POSC didn't help either!

Well that is my rant over - letterboxing will never die but will just become leaner

i think it is coming more wom, and only using the catalogue if you dont want the boxes any more, with it being the easiest way to bring them off the moor. thats my point

Nik - KOTM wrote: the mass clearance of all boxes from North Hessary to Kings tor (that one I can understand from the farmers point of view).

I didn't know about this (explains why I haven't found anything there!); what happened? For that matter how was a new Newtake established at Wistmans Wood?

Duckpool

brockie wrote:I don't think putting the letterbox catalogue online is a good idea. For one, you would need to get the owner of every box to consent to their clues being reproduced in this way.

If the catalogue did go online then I would think that the owners would enter the clue details themselves not the club organisers, they would just be there to monitor the info. Geocachers do this now you have to submit you 'clue' to an administrator who takes things into consideration like your home location and the distance the cache is away from you for maintenance purposes.

This will never happen with letterboxing though...the trust has gone!

I agree Letterboxing has hit quite a few hurdles in the last 10 years. Having to re-register boxes, the ammo box argument, and the issues Nik mentioned.

In terms of thieves, it's always been a problem but now it seems they are getting further into the moor. It always used to be the ten tor kids, taking the stamps as souvenirs and a few old letterboxers who turned to the darkside but now there seems to be people searching out boxes to vandalise on purpose - Two years ago I found a note in one of my boxes which was situated on the north moor from someone telling me he had stolen my stamp and that maybe one day he would return it! I replaced it and then a few months later the whole box went. Suffice to say I didn't replace it again. Maybe one day.

In the tourist areas - Haytor, Saddle Tor, Bonehill, Yar Tor, I remember it always being a problem, even in the early 90's. My first box which was placed in 1993 was hidden deep behind Haytor and went missing after about six weeks. My brother's - around Saddle Tor as I remember, vanished long before then. After that we began siting our boxes in more remote spots. Less visitors but those who did find the box were appreciative.

I really wish people would revert to the old days and start putting out boxes named after locations and placed in the traditional spots that no longer have original boxes - Cuckoo Rock, Potato Cave, Great Kneeset, Watern Tor etc. Then once again I can get a new A4 envelope and spend the summer wandering the moor filling it up with beautiful stamps. The problem is (for me personally) the culture has changed and alot of old boxers have like Nik said, either left us or given up. Bless them all.

Would love to see the spirit of the golden era return.

I wouldn't say letterboxing is in decline but I would say the areas where letterboxers go has contracted. I have noticed with my letterboxes that the ones sited within a couple of miles of a carpark get many more visitors than ones placed well into the moor. This has had the effect of concentrating large numbers of boxes in certain areas which then leads to easy pickings for the 'letterbox lifters'.
In theory an on-line database should be possible if catalogue, WOM and charity boxes all became one. But to do that it would be neccessary to convince the people, like myself, who site WOM boxes that there is no risk of theft. The only way that can be done is by letterboxers themselves acting more responsibly. This would involve taking greater care when replacing boxes, ensuring lids were secure and the box properly hidden etc, etc. It would also entail all clues being compass bearings only and other boxers not passing on GPS bearings of boxes they have found, (after all why do you need GPS co-ordinates for a box you have already found?). Also it would be necessary to implement some kind of quality control for the stamps that are put out. As Brockie rightly said, all boxes should have a Dartmoor place-name and pertain purely to some aspect of Dartmoor, they should also be well designed and collectable. This would then cut down the numbers of letterboxes on the moor which over time would deter anyone intent on taking them. Why? simply because it would mean that instead of going out and having the opportunity of 'lifting' 20 boxes in a day it would be reduced to a few which would make the practive less appealing. If in addition the boxes were being properly hidden etc this too would reduce the number of chance opportunities the 'lifter' would have of finding boxes.
The biggest problem with an on-line database would be cost and time for whoever undertook the task. It would mean charging for access to the database which ironically could make it work. If boxers were prepared to pay a sensible 'membership fee', say £50 a year would they not then take greater care with who they passed the clues to, tend to take greater care of the boxes which they visit and think twice about giving out GPS co-ordinates of boxes they have found? After all people take greater care of something they have actually paid for as opposed to something that is virtually free. I expect many people would be horrified at paying £50 but it would roughly work out to £1 a week and where else can you get a days enjoyment for £1. Every stamp would be vetted before going onto the database which would then mean all the stamps would be collectable. Think of the time that would save, you would no longer spend 10 minutes searching for a box only to find that the stamp isn't worth wasting ink on. It would also be possible to limit the number of boxes in each area which would avoid the overcrowding problem. The only problem with this is, what poor soul would be daft enough to undertake such a large task?

I agree, there are far too many poor quality stamps in poor quality containers shoved under a rocks near carparks, no wonder people pick them up as rubbish. But what can we do about it? Who would decide whether a stamp is good enough?
Brinnie

I agree with Brinnie also, a good stamp to some people is a bad stamp to others. Welcome Sonatellas I am sure that we have met you on the carry on camping geocaching weekend last June at Princetown am I right?

sonatellas wrote:Hi I have just joined this forum and think it is great. I am actually a avid fan of geocaching but find many Letterboxes too. I would love to be able to log them online. Is there anywhere we can do this. If not I think I might just scan my stamps into my computer and upload them into a database of some sort. Any ideas welcome.

I just did a search on Atlas Quest and came up with over 200 loggable letterboxes in the United Kingdom. Here's the list: http://www.atlasquest.com/lboxes/result ... ntryId=231
Maybe some of the letterboxes you have found are listed there.

As a premium member of Atlas Quest you can log unlisted finds -- I log my geocache letterbox hybrids, letterboxes published on the LBNA list and not on AQ, and WOM letterboxes. You can't list the clues - AQ only gives you just enough room to list things like the name of the box, city/location, hider.

You'll find more about Premium memberships here

Lone R (from Canada)

Here is a prime example of what becomes and may still be a litterbox
http://www.atlasquest.com/lboxes/showbo ... oxId=13544

Just to remind people the original idea of the 100 club was to bring the letterboxing community together and to bring the WOM boxes into an orderly fashion.

Another problem with putting clues online, which no one has yet thought about about are phantom clues - I believe this will happen - which is why I think clues should be sent via snail mail to the organisers with copies of the stamps included and for the database to be updated by a minimal number of individuals.

I believe £50 a year membership to the site would be prohibitive and boxing would go underground, £10 a year is a much more realistic figure perhaps £50 for a lifetime subsription - the idea is to make it comparible to purchasing 2 clue books a year with free updates. I know the beauty of having a website is that it would be constantly "in date" by being updated daily instead of waiting for updates every month. If you think about it - letterboxing isn't exactly free - wit the cost of fuel to get to and fro from your designated parking spaces and it could be more than 60 miles for some "locals" let alone those who travel long distances to get to the moors.

Having the clues published online would be highly practical but a nightmare to police unless there were some serious security were in place as I see it being a target for trainee hackers - sites like this one were a target for many juvenile hackers. I still believe trying to have an IP access only code - the idea to prevent people giving out their password for others to use - otherwise the site would have to be free!

And then you would have opposition from the establishment - the rule being if it works don't touch it or change it!

I google bashed it when i decided to get my family out on the moor again and was supprised to find so little on it, all i could remember from being a child was how much fun we had. As a one income family we dont have the money to go to activity centres, and to be honest I think letterboxing is way more satifying. I think web listing of clues and boxes would be great, it would give you something to do when you cant get out, and paying a fee for it would be ok, all clubs charge something, password protection for members would help. there is a generation of boxers coming through i think there is even some groups on Facebook, who claim to love it as well. Regulation of boxes would also be good, we where gutted on our first trip out to find a perished box.

Good luck TQs - I hope you are able to soon get back into it and enjoy boxing with the family.