Village's postal deliveries axed ..because it's on a hill

Delivering the mail to a hamlet has turned out be an uphill struggle...

Postal bosses have decided the road is "too steep" and are cancelling the service - to the fury of villagers.

Residents of 11 homes in Booze, in the Yorkshire Dales, face a 30- mile round trip to Richmond to collect post.

Royal Mail acted because a health and safety report said the route was too dangerous - and it was feared it could make one postie's "bad back" worse.

A letter giving residents three weeks' notice said: "The road is extremely narrow and is potentially an accident waiting to happen." Farmer's wife Hazel Harker said: "The whole hamlet is in uproar about it.

"We have always had deliveries by the mail van. There are lots of little roads like that.

Fed-up Raymond Southwell has not had any mail delivered for 19 years...because he has the only odd house number in his street.

Raymond, 76, has been calling the Post Office monthly since 1989 to complain his mail always goes astray.

Staff reassure him it won't happen again but it always does. Arthritis sufferer Raymond and wife Jill, 66, who has multiple sclerosis, have failed to receive prescriptions on time, credit card payments have been missed and a birthday card arrived a month late.

Raymond said: "It's absolutely ridiculous. But you can rant and rave as much as you want and absolutely nothing changes." Raymond, of Salterns Lane, Fareham, Hants, discovered his post was being delivered to an address in nearby Salterns Estate.

And the nice chap who lives there has been dropping it round.

Grateful Raymond said: "But sometimes he's away and so our mail sits on his door mat until he gets back. But he shouldn't have to do the postman's job."

He thinks the postie gets confused because his house has the only odd number in the lane.