SENDING a letter through the post may have become known as snail mail after the onset of email but for one Ipswich man the term couldn't be more appropriate.

SENDING a letter through the post may have become known as snail mail after the onset of email but for one Ipswich man the term couldn't be more appropriate.

Ipswich blue badge holder Andrew Harvey, 46, was stunned to receive a letter from Suffolk County Council - almost two years after the authority posted it.

Despite only needing to travel 5.6 miles from the council's offices in Martlesham Heath to Mr Harvey's Ipswich home, the letter took 700 days to arrive.

The envelope, containing a receipt for payment of his disability badge, arrived on Mr Harvey's doorstep in York Road last week, complete with a date stamp of September 28, 2004.

Mr Harvey said: “At first I looked at it and I thought my blue badge had expired. Then my wife said 'have you seen the date on this envelope?'

“Now we've been wondering where it has been for the past two years. It's not shredded or anything, it's in pretty good nick.”

Mr Harvey, a leaflet distributor, said he did not miss the letter when it failed to arrive in 2004 because he already had his blue badge, which enables him to park his car in specially marked bays.

Along with the receipt, the letter contained a book explaining the rules of using a blue badge.

Father-of-one Mr Harvey and his wife Denise, 43, now believe the letter simply got caught up in the post after being sent and sat lost somewhere for nearly two years until it was discovered recently and sent back on its epic journey.

Earlier this week Colin Allison of Belvedere Road, Ipswich, told how he received a letter in the post from Luxembourg which should have been sent to a couple who live in Belvedere Road in Quebec, Canada.

Royal Mail today said that the most likely explanation for the delivery of Mr Harvey's letter after two years was that it had been caught up with another letter when it was originally posted.

A spokesman for the company said: “It's extremely unlikely this would have been in the system all this time.

“What's more likely is that it may have been caught inside another letter which went to a different destination and then the letter was put back in a post box recently.”

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