Postcrossing Blog

Good news, everyone! After a short hiatus, the Little Mail Carriers have written back from the UK, where they were hosted by Sophie (aka FlyingGiraffe). They loved it so much that we’ve had to break their stay in 2 posts! :) You can read all about the first part of their journey below, and stay tuned for more adventures in Leicestershire!

Hello again, everyone!

In September we visited the UK, staying in the county of Leicestershire, in the East Midlands region of England. We stayed in a village and our first job on arrival was to help in our host’s vegetable garden, where we picked home-grown produce such as rhubarb, tomatoes and some purple carrots! We found out that traditionally all carrots were purple; the modern day orange carrot wasn’t cultivated until the end of the 16th century by Dutch growers – interesting! We especially enjoyed climbing up the apple tree to pick some lovely English apples which we then used to bake (and eat!) a delicious apple cake; it was worth all of our hard work!

Bitten by the baking bug, we also helped to make and decorate some delicious vanilla cupcakes which we sold at a charity bake sale held at our host’s workplace to raise money for the charity Jeans for Genes. We even helped make some little jeans out of fondant icing to decorate the cupcakes; they suit Little Paulo don’t you think?!

It was great to visit our host’s office; she works part time at an architectural company. Whilst we were there, we were interested to look at some drawings. Little Ana also helped answer the phone and Little Paulo had a go at some audio typing – it’s harder than it looks!

We enjoyed exploring the Leicestershire countryside, including going on lots of autumnal walks with our host’s dog, a Jack Russell named Ruby, who helped us sniff out some brilliant conkers! Public footpaths in England are marked with distinctive yellow signs so you always know which way to go!

Apparently Leicestershire is well known for many foods, including Red Leicester cheese, Stilton cheese and Pork Pie from the town of Melton Mowbray. Pork Pies are a traditional British meat pie made of chopped meat and pork jelly sealed in a crust pastry. They were tasty but very filling for little people like us!

Our host’s local town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch has lots of interesting things to see and do and we really enjoyed our visit to Ashby Castle, originally a Norman Manor House which is now in ruins. There is a tower to climb and an underground passage to walk through. To round off our visit, we visited the gift shop where we bought postcards of the castle (of course!) and some very special English Heritage stamps which feature images of the castle and are especially designed for use on international postcards – perfect!

Their adventure will continue in a few days… stay tuned!

The Galápagos islands are known for their diverse wildlife, studied by Charles Darwin on his trip around the world. Every year, many people visit the archipelago to get a glimpse of the giant turtoises, penguins or unique bird species… but also to send and pick up mail!

It all started a couple of centuries ago, back when the island was regularly visited by whaling ships. The ships stayed at sea for long stretches of time, often years, and so communication between the fishermen and their families was difficult. To solve this problem, in 1793, Captain James Colnett established a post office of sorts in Floreana island — a simple wooden barrel where mail could be left to be picked by other visitors. Ships often stopped on Floreana island to do repair works or pick up water and food, so sailors started taking the mail which was destined to their home ports with them, hand-delivering the missives to their intended recipients by hand.

Photo by claudiah on Flickr.

The place became known as Post Office Bay and to this day, visitors still rely in the kindness of strangers to bring their letters and postcards home (mailing items with stamps is considered cheating!) — and to tell the story of how these missives made it home! :)

There’s no place like home… unless you take a tumble and the doctor orders you to stay put for a few months, right? This is what happened to Lynn’s friend Lucy earlier this year. To cheer her up, Lynn enlisted the help of her “other friend” Morris Mouse, who agreed to send Lucy some postcards or letters from his travels.

Turns out, Morris is a great artist, and his missives are beautifully illustrated and filled with witty humour! Have a look:

Morris visits some of his friends around the world, joining cricket matches, conservation studies, or just distracting the odd cat. Everywhere he goes, there seems to be an adventure waiting for him, and he writes Lucy about it on old postcards, letters, book pages and covers… anything he can get his tiny paws on! :)

You can catch up with Morris’ delightful missives on the blog Lynn keeps for him at morrismouse.wordpress.com or even get in touch, if you’d like.

We look forward to his next adventures and wish a speedy recovery to Lucy as well! :)

Good news, everyone! After many requests, we finally opened a proper PO box for Postcrossing. So, if you’d like to send us a meeting card, show us some cool mail-related item that you found, or just say hi using a postcard, feel free to do so!

Here is the address:

We look forward to hearing from you! :)

P.S. – Depending on the volume of mail we receive, we might not be able to acknowledge all of it. So if you require an answer from us, the Contact form is a better way to receive a reply.

Hurray! October 9th is World Post Day!

This is the day to celebrate traditional mail, and the important role it plays in connecting the world… not to mention making sure our postcards reach their intended destinations, in all corners of the planet! So we invite you to celebrate the day, pat your mail carrier on the back and send a few extra postcards on this very special day. :)

With your help, we’ve contacted many postal operators and museums worldwide to find out how they were commemorating World Post Day. Sadly, most seem to have forgotten their own day… but a few replied, so here is the list of the events taking place this year:

If you find any more, leave us a comment below and we’ll add them to the list.

Today is also the day in which the new Ukrainian Postcrossing stamp makes its debut! If you’re in Lviv and Kiev, don’t forget there will be launching events in your city, which you can attend. Elsewhere in Ukraine, you should be able to spot the new stamp on your local post office. If you do, please share a photo with us — we’d love to see how it looks on a postcard!

Happy World Post Day everyone! 📯