To risk the journey or not? The winter dilemma for posties

The Postie Notes by Pete Malone

I am afraid that I have to start this month by apologising.

The ink was barely dry on my last column, which regular readers will recall was about how nice it was to drive my route to Kinbrace in cold but not overly wintry weather, when the snow blew in and turned the journey into a nightmare for me and my colleague.

For a week we were unable to make it up the brae at Syre to begin the long, cold, bleak trek to Kinbrace.

Royal Mail are not in the habit of fitting post vans with winter tyres and make it very clear that the decision about whether to attempt a route is left to individual posties to assess on the day.

Usually Strathnaver is not too bad, but the section from Syre to Garvault starts with a long slow uphill climb and can be treacherous.

Slick surfaces and hard-packed snow on ice make for very dangerous driving conditions, and if you manage by good fortune to get up the hill, you still have to negotiate a long section of single-track road that sees little traffic.

If you come a cropper up here, you might wait an exceptionally long time for a Good Samaritan to pass and rescue you.

There are plenty of deer about, but they are not going to pull you out of a ditch even if your red-coated uniform looks a little like Santa.

The postie faces a difficult decision – risk the journey and get the post out or play safe knowing that, in the run-up to Christmas, there will be a lot of parcels, gifts and cards that people are waiting for with great expectation.

You don’t want to spoil Christmas for them, but neither do you want to run the van off the road into an ice and snow filled ditch.

The problem is particularly acute this year. Strike days add to the already seasonal increase in mail, so that when you eventually get to the sorting office there is a huge backlog of mail that needs to be delivered.

The other week the trip to Kinbrace and back to Bettyhill took me over four hours.

Mail volumes were high and the previous day’s mail had not been delivered as it was impossible to get to Kinbrace to collect post brought from Helmsdale.

The road surface was not too bad but the ploughs had banked the snow up at the side of the road and in the passing places.

A slight thaw and freeze and you have the equivalent of a concrete wall protecting the passing places and I was glad that I only passed one other vehicle on the trip there and back, but even then we both struggled to give each enough space to pass.

The postie’s problems aren’t over once the thaw sets in. Melting snow running down off the hills causes the road to flood in a number of places, and there is one particular spot where a dip in the road masks a hole which is deep enough to risk the possibility of flooding the engine and the cab.

What we really need Royal Mail to provide is a van that is part 4×4, part boat and part snow plough/gritter. Perhaps then winter runs would be less stressful not just for the postie but for the customer wondering if their mail is ever going to arrive.

If your post has been delayed by strike or by weather or by a cautious postman then I can only end as I began – with an apology and my hope that you had a Merry Christmas.

At least I can deliver my best wishes for 2023.

Pete Malone is a postman based at Bettyhill.

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