King Charles has sent a personalised Christmas present to the ”bottom of the world”.
There’s now a brand new bright red post box, bearing his cypher, in the middle of Antarctica.
It’s been sent there by The King to help people working there stay in touch with friends and family back home.
There are relatively few post boxes with The King’s cypher on them with the first appearing in Cambridgeshire in 2024.
This post box was requested by Kirsten Shaw, who runs the Post Office in the British Antarctic Territory. She wrote to King Charles in 2022 to request a box with his cypher on it and now her wish has come true, just in time for Christmas.
The Royal Household has worked with the British Antarctic Survey and Royal Mail to get a post box out to the Territory. It said it was eager to support the UK’s Rothera Research Station.
Its first visitor was a penguin. However, it is set to be put to far more use in the coming months.
It will be installed in the Discovery Building at the Rothera Station which is set to be finished by April 2026.
Letters posted in the box will be sent firstly to the Falkland Islands and then on to the UK where they are then put into the usual postal system.
It can take weeks to come and go from Antarctica but for many working there, often on stints lasting months, they are the only contact they have with home.
Rothera Station is at Rothera, the capital of the British Overseas Territory of the British Antarctic Territory. In its busiest months, which run from October to March, it has a population of about 160 people. For the rest of the year, it has a population of around 30.
A British Overseas Territory has an historic or constitutional tie to the UK and is considered part of its sovereign territory. There are fourteen in total including Bermuda and the Cayman Islands which are the largest by population.
