Postman's paths across rural Norfolk could be preserved

Now, a national project is under way to identify these long-forgotten beats and record them for posterity.

Retired journalist Alan Cleaver is trying to track down retired roundsmen and women from the region to locate the walking routes they used on their daily rounds, before vans took over from Shanks's pony or the trusty bike.

Mr Cleaver, 63, from Whitehaven in Cumbria, believes details of so-called 'postmen's paths' should be documented before they disappear from living memory.

Alan Cleaver is appealing for information about forgotten paths used by rural posties (Image: Lesley Cleaver)

"Postmen's paths were used by rural postmen up until about 1976, when the Post Office knocked them on the head and said: 'We're going to deliver everything by van'," he said.

"My interest is in recording not only the paths but the postmen and women who walked them. They did a magnificent job in all weathers, walking 18 or 20 miles a day."

Paths were created by the postmen themselves, to create shortcuts between farms and far-flung hamlets, sometimes saving themselves hours off their deliveries.

In some areas, steps were created in dry-stone walls specifically to help them.

As well as delivering letters, rural posties would also bring medicine and check on the welfare of residents, and Mr Cleaver is keen to discover more about these stories, as much as the paths themselves.

Before the advent of vans, rural posties delivered the mail through all weathers, like the aftermath of this 1970s gale (Image: Archant Archive)

He said he would love to hear from anyone with information about postman's paths in Norfolk.

"What I'm looking for are the routes the rural postmen took," he said. "A lot of them were beautiful walks."

Rural posties walked down long-forgotten paths before the advent of vans (Image: Colin Finch)

Mr Cleaver, who plans to visit and walk each route himself, believes many could become tourist attractions in their own right.

A postman's path which threads through the hills across the Isle of Harris, in the Hebrides, was the only route connecting remote islanders until a road was built in 1990.

It now draws thousands of walkers and mountain bikers a year.

Mr Cleaver can be contacted via alanjcleaver@gmail.com.

A rural postman in 1950s Norfolk (Image: Archant Archive)

ROUND THE HOUSES

Mr Cleaver has so far uncovered a number of routes around the country, including an 11-mile one walked by the late Elsie Rowson through the Shropshire hills.

As well as delivering the mail, she would read out letters to those who had trouble reading, and bake cakes for her customers.

Mrs Rowson did not usually drink but her family says she would get “tiddly” on Christmas Day, when she still had to deliver the post and was invited in for a drink at many of the isolated farms and cottages she served.

Another route being researched is the nine-mile path through County Durham taken by Matt Bendelow, a postal worker who only had one leg.

Mr Cleaver is also trying to plot the round of Hannah Knowles, who began delivering the post in Eskdale Green, Cumbria, in 1912, and carried on doing it for the next 62 years. She took only three days off due to illness, Mr Cleaver has discovered.