This very clear view of Westminster Abbey (with Big Ben in the background) comes from Aimee Dars, a prolific swapper extraordinaire. This card was sold in England but produced by a company in Barcelona. Next to the stamp box, it has the phrase “the friendship post card” in ten languages.

One can only imagine how, in the 19th Century, expeditions would leave Europe to search for undiscovered places in the New World. They would leave amid great fanfare — and then there would be a complete vacuum of information on their progress for months (or even years) at a time, until they were able to dispatch a letter or, more likely, until their actual return home. Their exploits were often serialized in the press, day-for-day, and the reader could feel as though they were along for the journey, despite knowing that the actual journey had been long ended.

Almost 24 hours ago, I read online that my epistolary friend Sean McLachlan had completed his planned walk along Hadrian’s Wall.  Eighteen hours later, I received my first two snail-mailed dispatches from the trip. Antiquarian though I am, I must admit that the 21st Century has advantages. Not only do I have news on the trip in near-real time, but I also receive personal dispatches from the field after the fact.

I won’t post Sean’s dispatches; he’ll be chronicling the trip in Gadling beginning on 1 September and I don’t want to use his own words to steal his thunder.  But I will share the postcard images he sent, beginning with Day 1 from Segedunum.

From the postcard’s description: “Segedunum, the Roman fort at Wallsend. The eastern end of Hadrian’s Wall built in the middle AD 120s, it was occupied for nearly 300 years. Now it is the site of a new Museum, a full-size reconstruction of a Roman bath-house and a section of Hadrian’s Wall.”

According to this card, the walking route is the Hadrian’s Wall Path National Trail, and the trail (and the wall) stretch along for 84 miles.  By my reckoning, Sean walked the route in about a week. Personally, I would have started at the west end, so that I could have ended the journey at the reconstructed Roman baths, along with a box of Epsom salts.

I find this photo postcard of the St. Martin-in-the-Fields church at Trafalgar Square to be very striking.  What makes it more interesting is that it was taken from atop an empty plinth in the Square by Carol, who sent this to me.  As a participant in an art project entitled One & Other, which started on 6 July and ends on 14 October, 2,400 participants will each spend an hour on the empty fourth plinth in the square, and may do whatever they wish.  Many just stand around; many perform mundane activities; a few are outrageous.

You can read and watch more about the project, you can watch it live, and you can even go back in time and watch Carol’s time on the plinth, Sunday, 19 July from 3 – 4 AM.

Kelly sent me this beautiful postcard of a photo by Norman Parkinson (1913-1990), a fashion and portrait photographer.  He opened his portrait studio in 1934 in London and was fortunate enough (and talented enough) to have clients such as Noel Coward and Vivien Leigh; his work was noticed.  He produced editorial photos for Harper’s Bazaar in the 1940′s, and did much fashion photography for the pages of Vogue throughout the 1950′s, then switched back to portraiture almost exclusively, capturing images of the rich and famous.

Even this fashion photo is more like a portrait. When I look at this photo, I see not the dress, but the model’s expression; I see the person.  This is not something you see in a catalog.  This is art.  Being an amateur portrait photographer myself, I’d give what’s left of my eyeteeth to be this good.

Be sure to check out the other blogs celebrating Postcard Friendship Friday.

Here’s an interesting card that Sean found whilst boondoggling in Oxford to research his latest tome. “Built in 1898 as a hospital ship, Chauncy Maples needs a complete refit to serve the people around Lake Malawi who have no access to health services.”

It’s an interesting ship, and an interesting endeavor: the vessel was built in Glasgow, shipped to Africa in over 3,000 pieces, hauled upriver by barge and overland by tribesmen, reassembled over the course of two years, then launched on Lake Malawi.  In the last hundred years Chauncy Maples has served as a missionary school, hospital ship, refuge from Arab slave traders, World War I gunboat, and troop carrier.

Now owned by the Government of Malawi and having sat idle and in disrepair for over a decade, she is being refitted for use as a hospital ship once again, mostly through donations.  Malawi needs all the health care improvement it can get; Malawians have a high rate of malaria, dysentery, and AIDS, and the life expectancy is only 36 years.  Eleven people out of every hundred die before the age of five. Chauncy Maples will serve thousands of villagers living on Lake Malawi.

You can read more about the project at the Chauncy Maples website. (Once you’ve done that, check out Sean’s new project Charge of the Write Brigade, a blog dedicated to fiction writing.)

These cottages are probably cold and drafty in the winter, and hot and stuffy in the summer, but I think they’re gorgeous.  I could definitely see me and the missus living in one.  Our own village is probably as close as you can get here in the States.

Val lives in County Essex and sent me this card, which took only five days to get here!  Pictured (clockwise, starting from the top left) are the villages of Wendons Ambo, Arkesden, Walton-on-the-Naze, and Pleshey.