A new use for fellwalkers

10:43am Friday 21st December 2007

Comments (0)   Have your say »

COSILY tucked up in their air-conditioned offices in London and with every facility they need just round the corner the top brass at the Post Office have no conception of how life is lived in a rural community.

Now it appears that when drawing up their hit list for rural Post Offices closures they made little effort to find out, as figures they issued to back up their case seem to assume that many people in South Lakeland habitually travel around by magic carpet or helicopter.

The chart they produced to show distances between Post Offices fail to appreciate that the Lake District is so called because it is peppered with large bodies of water.

Hence the distance quoted between Hawkshead and Windermere is 3.8 miles.

For Sue Bond, of Bowness, it conjured up a picture of: "A one-handed swimmer, holding the other hand on high bearing a letter, which he was trying to keep out of the water while at the same time trying to avoid being hit by the numerous boats as he swims from the Hawkshead side of the lake to Bowness to catch the post."

That is a fair point. Getting out the car and crossing the ferry, a round trip of around £4 if you include ferry return fare and petrol, seems excessive, for although the item to post may only be a letter, the recent introduction of new sizing, weights and prices means that it you can no longer just bung it in the nearest post box, or it likely to be declared 'excess' and merely dumped in some dark corner of the sorting office.

Struck by the disparity of figures, Sue did a quick comparison check with Multi-Map on her computer to see how the Post Office figures squared up to reality.

Here are some of her results (Post Office figures first). Langdale to Ambleside, 3.7 miles - 5.08 miles; Bowness to Elterwater 6.8 miles - 8.96 miles; Coniston to Bowness 6.2 miles - 9.33 miles; Troutbeck to Hawkshead 4.4 miles - 8.16 miles.

"At a time when we are being asked to be environmentally friendly it makes no sense to force people to travel miles to post a letter," says Sue, adding: "Local post offices are vital parts of the local communities. I appreciate that in many towns it may be reasonable for people to travel further as they have flat, well-lit roads and plenty of public transport.

"In rural areas one might be able to get a bus to a place but then find there is no bus back that day or you have to wait for hours.

"There are many elderly people who struggle to get to their local post office now and would be unable to travel any further afield."

I can envisage one solution, however. The thousands of fell walkers who at present wander around being neither use nor ornament could be forced, in return for their free use of the fells, to collect items from isolated villages, stuff it in their rucksacks and post it properly when they got back to their urban environments.