Forty years ago, a family on a camping holiday in Brabant sent a postcard to a relative in Nieuw-Vennep. Yesterday, PostNL returned it to the vacation park, saying it was ‘undeliverable.’

‘I think it is very special to receive this card,’ Ludwina Verhoeven, now 64, told Omroep Brabant. Her sister, Veronica, together with husband Jan and son Matthijs mailed her the card in 1980 from the Bosbad Hoeven campsite.

The card, which is correctly addressed according to Verhoeven, never arrived. Yesterday, it turned up in the post at the campsite. A sticker from PostNL says that it was ‘Undeliverable due to incomplete/invalid address.’

PostNL could not say where the card has been for the past four decades. ‘Because in the past more work was done manually in the preparation of mail, a card was sometimes lost,’ a spokesperson told NOS. It is also possible it was delivered to the wrong address and was only recently returned.

Verhoeven is very pleased to finally receive the card. Her husband Piet, to whom the card is also addressed, and her brother-in-law Jan have since passed away.

The campsite indicated it would send it on to her in an envelope so it would arrive without damage.