Friday, March 8, 2013

Interesting discussion going on across the pond...

There has been a short but interesting discussion over at the Dartmoor Letterboxing forum that I've been following.  It started with some comments regarding Tanda Stamps closing its doors.  Tanda was a supplier of custom stamps - I surmise that a lot of the Dartmoor stamps are not hand carved - but not commercial buys of Hello Kitties either, more machine-made custom stamps.  (Google is your friend.)

Anyways, the discussion veered on a tangent into a discussion about the state of the hobby there and whether or not to move to an electronic-based system (and the costs of implementation if it were to come to that).  Although I follow the forum there from time to time, I certainly won't be pipping in on the discussion (with: hey, come on over to AtlasQuest! it's lovely and allows box restrictions...) as I feel that the tenor of the hobby might be different there and who am I to have an opinion anyway?  As a relative late-comer to the game, I do feel that the North American letterboxing community owes itself to the original Dartmoor crew, and I certainly wouldn't want to be airing my opinions on how they might want to move forward in the future. I can see the charm and tradition of a clue book; but love the practicality of AQ.

Visiting England again and getting down to Dartmoor to do some letterboxing is something that has percolated in my brain for quite a while.  Although it's on my list of things to do in the mid-future, it's not quite as easy to do as it is letterboxing anywhere else where I can pull clues off of AQ and go.  It's a different culture there and I wouldn't even know where to begin.  Good or bad? Not sure.

Just food for thought.  Tonight, planting and scouting; tomorrow, letterboxing!

Happy trails on this beautiful weekend!
Bumble

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