But there’s just one thing. You don’t mind stopping every few hundred yards, do you? Because Bob is a postman.
And Fetlar in the Shetland Islands, where Bob lives, is just about as remote as it gets in the UK.
There are only about 70 people on Fetlar. It’s known as the Garden of Shetland, being more fertile than much of the rest of the archipelago, but it still has a raw air, accentuated the day I visited by low, swirling mists sweeping in off the sea. It was a shame the weather made it difficult to make out the prettily named wild flowers — such as the frog orchid, creeping willow, water aven, knotted pearlwort and lesser twayblade — that carpet the land in summer.
Bob had a few chores to do before we delivered the mail (he also oversees the local water supply and is a member of the coast guard) so I wandered down to the beach at Tresta, alone except for a few gulls and a couple of cows that meandered on to the football pitch behind. A bleak church up a pathway looked unwelcoming, the gravestones battered by years of gales.
Then I made my way to the post office and store at Houbie to meet Bob. It opened at 11am and on this particular Friday most of the village seemed to be there, because fresh goods arrive each Thursday.
Once Bob had sorted his sack of mail we were off. I was the only one hitching a ride that day. “Some weeks we get no one at all, then we will have a run of full loads, normally visitors with big backpacks,” he said. “I meet lots of interesting people, quite a few Norwegians, Dutch and Germans, not so many English.”
How much D2D do you think Bob gets and do you think WSM or later and longer saturdays bother him?
Agreed performance standards and geo-route.
A real life Postman Pat and my idea of the best walk in the U.K.
