511 – Finnish letterboxes

Card no 511 – Esa

Finnish letterboxes in the snow

Country Card Sent From: Finland

Place that Card Sender Lives: Vihti

Date Received: 25th April 2013

Distance Travelled: 1,137 miles

Time Taken: 3 days

Postcrossing id – FI-1739584

And a lovely stamp of a blue tit.

493 - Old style European brass letter box

Card no 493 – Artem and Nastya 

Ukrainian Letterbox 

Country Card Sent From: Ukraine 

Place that Card Sender Lives: Sebastopol 

Date Received: 13th April 2013 

Distance Travelled: 1,740 

miles Time Taken: 8 days 

Postcrossing id - UA-564090

It took me a while to realise that this was a letter-box. I then spent a long time researching the coat of arms without success. I traced some similar boxes labelled as ‘old style European brass letterbox’. I also found one for sale in the Ukraine. So this post, brief though it is, has taken ages to do. Any ideas about where and when this letterbox (or where the coat of arms) was used would be helpful.

These were the attractive stamps -

455 – A British pillar box

Card no 455 - Danielle 

A British Elizabeth II double pillar box 

Country Card Sent From: USA 

Place that Card Sender Lives: Omaha, Nebraska 

Date Received: 26th March 2013 

Distance Travelled: 4,122 miles 

Time Taken: 10 days 

The UK has a wide variety of different pillar, lamp and wall letter boxes so it was by pure chance that Danielle sent me one that showed the type my cards to her are often posted in. This is a photo of it done in the same style as Danielle's postcard.

Because I don’t postcross with people on the UK I don’t get British pillar boxes. Perhaps I should start including the UK in my postcrossing.

This was the stamp - for once the beautiful new round USA stamp was not obliterated by the franking process. 

Letterboxes

Card no 431 – Kaija  (FI-1687911)

 Letterboxes

Country Card Sent From: Finland

Place that Card Sender Lives: Hameenkyro

Date Received: 6^th March 2013

Distance Travelled: 1,135 miles

Time Taken: 7 days

These stamps are quite unusual. I like the cross shape of the left hand one. The right hand one shows a scene from the opera ‘L’amour de Loin’ by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. The words that can just be seen in a circle are from a libretto in the fifth act and read “ma priere s'eleve vers toi qui es” (my prayer rises to you who are).

Gold Post Boxes

Royal Mail has painted some of its iconic and much-loved red post boxes gold to celebrate every Team GB and Paralympics GB gold medal win during the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.

 

Here are four of them that I hunted down this week (thanks to Jo driving and some dodgy navigating by me).  If you want to find one yourself you can visit the Post Office site and look at the map. It helps if you live in the UK, of course!

Newent - Gloucestershire, England - Charlotte Dujardin

Olympic Gold medal Equestrian Individual Dressage

Trull - Somerset, England - Deborah Criddle

Paralympic Gold medal Equestrian: Mixed Individual Freestyle Test - Grade III

Hay-on-Wye - Powys, Wales (though the Post Office call it Herefordshire, England!) - Josie Pearson

Paralympic Gold medal Athletics: Womens Discus

Flint - Flintshire, Wales - Jade Jones

Olympic Gold medal Taekwondo Women's 57kg