Mail between UK and Swtizerland, 1948
1. How long would a letter take to travel from the UK (specifically, an island off the Welsh coast) to Switzerland (specifically, "somewhere near Wengen in the Bernese Oberland"), and vice versa, in 1948? Any estimates are useful, as I have absolutely no idea what a reasonable guess might be.
2. The two people in question are school headmistresses who will be writing to each other regularly - would they be more likely to use airmail or surface mail? My first thought was that airmail wouldn't be generally available, but Wikipedia informs me I was wrong about that - would it be too expensive, though?
(Yes, this is Chalet School fanfiction!)
I've tried Googling things along the lines of "mail between UK/England and Europe 1940s/1950s", "mail delay 1940s/1950s", and so on, with no useful results. I looked at the Royal Mail site, which quotes expected delivery times for Western Europe as 2 weeks for surface mail and 3 working days for airmail, but I've no idea how to extrapolate that back - or even how accurate it is for today!
Thanks in advance :)
2. The two people in question are school headmistresses who will be writing to each other regularly - would they be more likely to use airmail or surface mail? My first thought was that airmail wouldn't be generally available, but Wikipedia informs me I was wrong about that - would it be too expensive, though?
(Yes, this is Chalet School fanfiction!)
I've tried Googling things along the lines of "mail between UK/England and Europe 1940s/1950s", "mail delay 1940s/1950s", and so on, with no useful results. I looked at the Royal Mail site, which quotes expected delivery times for Western Europe as 2 weeks for surface mail and 3 working days for airmail, but I've no idea how to extrapolate that back - or even how accurate it is for today!
Thanks in advance :)