The Postal Paths by Alan Cleaver

If you are a devotee of social history, as I am, this book will fascinate you. If you are a rambler or hiker looking for ideas of new and interesting routes to tackle, this book will inspire you. If you have an abiding interest in the Post Office, this book is right up your street. If you are none of these, but you appreciate a well written book with anecdotes, reflections and fascinating characters on every page, give it a go anyway!

I had never come across the term postman’s paths before picking up this book, and author Alan Cleaver himself only heard it for the first time in 2015. In the decade from a chance remark in a conversation he researched, walked and interviewed along the length and breadth of Great Britain. He was already a collector of arcane information about footpaths that were not officially acknowledged by the Ordnance Survey or were acknowledged under a different official name. The postal paths were often known by the name of the postman who first codified the route to enable the mail to be delivered as quickly as possible in rural areas where remote farms could be miles from where the post office was situated. In those days walking was the only way to get around so the quicker and easier the route, the better. Each route had its own instruction card, but the Royal Mail archives were not interested in these fascinating pieces of social history and threw away all but a few. Looking at it through the lens of this book, it seems like an act of cultural vandalism on a par with the mass wiping of TV programmes. However, it is difficult to know what may become culturally or historically significant in the future, so we should try not to look at the decisions with the benefit of a hindsight they did not have. So, Cleaver had to rely on Twitter, Web searches and chance comments to guide him as he made his way through the country looking for these paths.

The book starts in the centre of Great Britain, a town called Haltwhistle in Northumberland. Why the centre of Great Britain? Well, it is 290 miles from Portland in Dorset, 290 miles from North Orkney, 36.5 miles from Wallsend on the East coast and 36.5 miles from Bowness-on-Solway on the West coast, That sounds like a very good candidate for the centre of Britain to me. Cleaver had heard of a postal path starting from the town and taking in the sights of the South Tyne valley. From there the book meanders as a good path should, picking up snippets of local history here and there, interviewing the posties themselves or their descendants where that was possible and walking the route as far as possible in the footsteps of the posties of the 19th and 20th centuries.

We go to places like the Eskdale Valley where Hannah Knowles started delivering the mail at the age of 15 in 1912 and retired 61 years later having walked an estimated 87,000 miles delivering and collecting the mail! She was awarded the British Empire Medal but decided not to have it presented by the Queen as she had no wish to visit London! Matt Bendelow lost his left leg in WWI but came back from the front to become the postman for Bowes in Northumbria for 40 years. Jack Rukin had perhaps Britain’s most remote round ending at the Tan Hill Inn, Britain’s highest pub. Charles Macintosh was a naturalist and postie who was friendly with Beatrix Potter whose family holidayed in Dalguise in Scotland. She immortalised him for generations of children as Peter Rabbit’s nemesis Mr Macgregor.The one thing these posties had in common were that they were all of a very firm frame of mind to the point of stubbornness at times, but to walk all those miles over so many years you had to be out of the ordinary.

This book is no rose coloured look at a ‘better past’. Cleaver is admirably clear eyed when reflecting upon the difficulties that the posties faced and the occasionally appalling treatment they received from an apparently uncaring management. Their rounds were walked in all weather with little support in terms of clothing which was often unsuitable or basic amenities which were considered an unnecessary expense. He outlines the poor conditions they lived in, the pitiful wages and expenses they received and the often unsuitable clothing they were given. This was a hard life but one that they were proud of and revelled in in a way that modern workers simply wouldn’t.

I get the impression that originally this was going to be a minor offshoot of a bigger project, but it took on a life of its own and this marvellous book is the culmination of all that hard work. It is a glimpse into a Britain forgotten in all but fragments and the determination of Alan Cleaver to piece at least some of those fragments together.