Did anyone have pen pals, of the letter writing type, when you were young? I was pony mad, and in the Pony mag there was a penpal section. I had loads of penpals, was great fun exchanging pictures and stories of our lives, and on the odd occasion actually meeting up at shows!

Anyone else?

I was always dog mad and the dog mag I read had a penpal section I had loads of penpals and my dogs had loads of doggy penpals !!!

Oh gosh yes, I normally had around 50 at a time!! from the age of around 12 onwards. One of the last ones, that I got via a dog magazine in the 80's, is now a friend in real life and has two dogs I've bred. :)

Before the net, I would spend hours every day writing letters, and the most important part of the day was when the postman came. From 1998 onwards, it's been e-mail instead -so much quicker and easier, cheaper too. :)

I had a penpal in Guyana set up through my middle school! also used to write to squaddies when I was abit older, none now though :(

There was a scheme at my school (actually I think it was a countrywide thing) and I started writing to a girl in Ankara ...she wrote French so it was supposed to improve my French ..we corresponded for about a year :) (this would be in 1969 or thereabouts)

I had a pen-pal once , i think it was through the Methodist Church Sunday school that i went to at the time. She wrote back once and never replied again !

I always read the pen-pals in Your Dog , and last year there was one asking for pen-pals in the breed that i am interested in .I thought about replying but writing a letter seems so old fashioned and slow in these days of e-mail !  Maybe they should start e-pals !

Yep had a american girl in Colten California, a german in Franfurt and one in the Black Forest. I sorta got one now a friend I meet in Antartica that we exchenge emails and have visited each other. Its a habit i am happy to continue with. Got Cindy (USA) from school plus Renata & Gudrun from school, ditto squaddie when I got to about 15 again at Boarding School.
Pat lives in Cape Cod USA, so a nice place to visit this year i hope.

Yes, I had a lovely penpal in Thailand called Pom, we met through being Bay City Roller fans (showing my age) we were P.Pals for approx 3 years and would often send each other little gifts, and family photo's, I used to look forward to my letters from her, we would write every 3 weeks or so.

The last letter I got from her was to say she was moving, and then that was it :-( I expect during the move my address was lost.

If the Internet were around then, she would have been very easy to trace and vice versa, but alas in those days we had nothing, often wondered what happened to her and whether she was married etc. I know my childhood was more exciting writing to her, especially from a completley different country to mine, haven't thought about her for years I would expect if we had stayed in touch we would have gone to each others countries for visits, we got on so well at the time, shame really.

When I was a teenager I had lots of pen pals right up until I was about 21, as I would never have dreamt of using my parents phone just to chat to friends.

Always a pen pal or two as a child.
Living in a holiday place and being a friendly child, I was always making new friends with holidaymakers.
We would swop addresses and write for a while, mostly it dwindled off, but one girl in particular I wrote to for many years.
Probably into mid teens....then other things took over my life....

Karen  :)

i had gorgeous swiss penfriend....i was 14 and he was 19 he was gorgeous!!! we wrote for 5 years until he got married!!! :(  :(
I also had the wonderful czech (czechoslovakian as he was then) penfriend that  led to so much and is pretty much how I got where I am now!!! :) :)

I read an article a few years back about writing to men fighting in Iraq. I got writing to one guy and used to send him parcels of food and magazines. We stopped talking after a while though, not sure if he was injured or returned home before he received my latest letter so had no address for me or anything to write to.

as I would never have dreamt of using my parents phone just to chat to friends.

This made me smile, we didnt have a phone in our house when I was growing up, the phone box was across the road outside the PO. We would listen at a deligated time to see if it rang, if it did we ran across the road to beat the post office man :) and answer the phone (we were not the only ones!) he got annoyed because 'someone may want to use it' which never happened :)....although my mum had long paid for calls to her friend, and sometimes there would be someone else waiting, but that was rare in a tiny village. It was the old penny type, and...norty bit...you could tap the number you wanted and get a free call! Sometimes the operator would come on the line and stop you, or the postmaster would come out of the shop and you would put the phone down fast and run.....:o)

I also had the wonderful czech (czechoslovakian as he was then) penfriend that  led to so much and is pretty much how I got where I am now

oh yeh, mmmmmmmm,, do tell :)

yes i had two a girl called Kelly in the U. S .A and a boy called Dom in Greace who i wrote to for about three years it was great to get a letter from them and i learned lots about there lives and cultures.

I loved writing letters and at one time, I had about 30+ penpals! I'm still in touch with some of them today and have met a couple of them. They were all from "Your Dog" magazine so of course they had to have dogs otherwise they were considered "boring"! I still speak to some of them via email. I was saying to one of them the other day how modern technology has come on - we'd arranged to meet at Crufts one year but didn't as we got the places mixed up, that was before the days of mobile phones!! Penpals in my opinion are great, I used to be so excited for the postman to see if I had any letters :-)

I used to write letters to people Id met on holiday. Ive been friends with one for 11 years. I recently searched one of my very first penpals (when I was about 7/8) on facebook! She remembered me which was weird! lol.

wasn't there an organisation that you could send your details to to get a pen-pal??

through school exchanges I had a pen-pal in Canada (called Cindy Boht...lost touch, hope she is ok)

and a German pen-pal called Uwe Schlumpberger (I kid you not) who was very sweet and told me he loved me when I was about 11 (and so very embarrassed when the German teacher translated it for me!!) again I lost touch, and hope he is ok too :)

I never met any of them, but I think it would have been fun to

A friend of mine put be onto a penpal club and I wrote to a few people through it.  The ones I stayed in contact for a few years were Thomas from East Germany (I was interested in their politics and ideals at the time), Andrea from Austria and Jane from Iowa USA.  I also received a letter from a guy in Wales and after a few letters, I stopped writing to him, because he became dodgy and I was only 14!  Didn't tell parents just binned letters!

Hi Liz,

I think you have find your German Pan-Pal again, and I hope you are o.k.
It´s a long long time ago, since we corresponde together.
If you would like to get in touch with me again, please write to me on email: uschlumpberger@web.de

Best wishes,

Uwe

Wow!!! What a small world!!!

I used to have several but the main ones were Waltraud from Germany and Yves from Belgium. Used to really look forward to the letters and we used to swap stuff from magazines.

I had a Canadian penfriend when I was a kid & they came over to visit us. Still have a photo of us licking our ice creams in the garden & me wearing my best pink crimplene dress!