What to do about mail?

Many fellow boaters we have met along the way have complained about their difficulties with standard mail.  (Let's not talk about mobile email today!)  For those boaters that truly continuously cruise the network collection of mail can be a problem but there is a way.  That way is to use Post Restante, a facility provided by the Post Office for no charge. The service allows you to:

Collect your mail from Post Office branches in the UK and abroad;
Have your mail from the UK stored for two weeks and mail from abroad stored for 1 month;
Have mail you don't pick up returned to the sender (as long as they append a return address);
For letters, you can use the service for up to three months in any one UK town. (In our experience post offices have been quite flexible about this);
All you have to do is 'apply' at the post office you wish to use (in our experience that simply means notifying the local post office of your intention) and tell those who need to know the address of the post office.

Full details of the service can be found here.

Here is how Poste Restante addresses need to be written:

Your name
POST RESTANTE
Post Office name
Full address of the Post Office
Postcode of the Post Office
Country (if applicable)

The sender should append their return address to the outside of the packaging.

We have used this facility at two locations without any problems finding the Post Office to be very helpful and accommodating.  However, it is important to realise this is a FREE service.  When we arrived here at Willington stories were rife of charges being made for the post restante service, which was simply incorrect.  So, our advice to boaters is to use the post restante facility where appropriate and, if someone should intimate there is a fee for doing so, simply refer them to the web address above.