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As the red phone box turns 100 this year, one man is making sure the iconic booths are never forgotten by visiting every single one across the UK. Launching a decade-long mission in 2018, Paul Bottomley, 59, has already been to nearly 6,000 of the kiosks - travelling around 70,000 miles and meticulously photographing and cataloguing each one in a comprehensive database. With another 5,000 to go, the design analyst reckons it will take around five years to complete his task .

Paul, from Nuneaton, Warks, admits: “It has become a bit of an obsession. I like driving and I like this country. In 2016, I did a charity coastal drive and wanted an excuse to drive around a bit more.



“I thought, ‘what could be a more iconic thing to try to visit around Britain than a red phone box?’ BT started a removal programme about 15 years ago, and I think it’s important to have a social record of them.” Thinking there would be about 1,000 and that seeing them all would take six months, he soon realised he had hugely underestimated the size of his challenge . “It soon became clear I was wrong, and it was probably going to take more than a decade,” he says.

“I’ve been through four different vehicles and travelled about 70,000 miles. “I plan my routes quite carefully, I’ll try to cover 20 to 30 phone boxes on each trip. Sometimes, I’ll take a day to visit one area.

Others, I’ll plan an overnight stay in a hotel. “I only work part-time now and I took a month off recently .

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