Connecting two Medways

A new pen pal project linking Medway and Port Medway, one handwritten letter at a time

A slightly unusual Saturday edition of Local Authority today, inviting you to take part in a project bringing together two very different Medways…

Back in the earliest days of Local Authority, I used to occasionally write extra editions about other places around the world that shared the name Medway (or one of our towns). I’d never visited any of them, but it was a fun thing to do, and offered something slightly different to break up the usual news editions.

One of these editions looked at the tiny village of Port Medway in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Port Medway.

At the time, it seemed like a place that maybe had its better days in the past. Sitting on the Medway River, it was historically a shipbuilding centre but had seen its population decline since that industry left. The parallels to our own Medway were quite something. Most troubling at the time was the recent closure of the Port Grocer, which seemed to be the heart of the community. The location had acted as a grocery store, community hub, cafe, and events venue, but had failed to find a new owner to take it on.

And then, as sometimes happens, life moved on, and I didn’t think about Port Medway again.

Until an email arrived out of the blue from Audra, who had recently moved there and somehow stumbled across my old post. Most excitingly, she and her husband, Haritha, had taken on the former Port Grocer building and brought it back to life. It’s now Rosefinch Mercantile: part shop, part cafe, part place to stay, part community post office. They’ve also launched a Visit Port Medway site to showcase their corner of Nova Scotia. They seem like very cool people doing a very cool thing in a place well off the beaten track.

Rosefinch Mercantile in Port Medway.

Now, you might reasonably ask what any of this has to do with our Medway. Firstly, it’s a nice story about a nice place, so let’s all enjoy that. Secondly, though, there is a point.

Part of the ethos behind Rosefinch Mercantile is tackling loneliness in the local community, and Audra had an idea to try to connect our two Medways: a delightfully old-fashioned pen pal scheme.

Yes, we all message anyone in the world in half a second these days, but there’s something different about receiving an actual letter from an actual stranger living on the other side of the Atlantic. So we thought, why not give it a go? Both of our Medways are full of interesting people with stories worth sharing, so we’re hoping a few of you might fancy joining in.

In the first instance, we’re using this form to gather interest from people in both places who’d like to take part in the Two Medways pen pal project. The form asks for the basics: your name, address and a little bit about what you’d like from this. Just enough for us to make a sensible match. We’ll only share your details with the person you’re paired with, and we’ll match as appropriately as we can to your wishes.

Port Medway.

There’s no long-term commitment, and you can stop at any point. There’s no expectation of rapid replies, no schedule, and no pressure to produce beautifully handwritten masterpieces unless you really want to. Many people have never had a pen pal before, and that’s fine. You can write about your day, your street, your local quirks, what Medway means to you, books you’re reading, places you like, whatever you fancy. It’s simply an exchange between two people curious about each other’s communities.

A small practical note: it costs around £3.30 to send a letter to Canada, and we sadly can’t subsidise that, so please bear that in mind. Posting whenever you feel like it is absolutely fine.

If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to drop me a message by hitting reply to this email, or emailing hello(AT)localauthority(DOT)news

This is a slightly quaint, retro way of making a connection with someone new somewhere far away, except, perhaps, not so far away at all. If this idea intrigues you, we really hope you’ll join us.