Post mortem?

IT’S 6.30am in Leyburn, the dales town already up and about. A liquor load decants into the corner shop, quarry lorries aggregate around the market place, a Richmondshire District Council litter picker tidies up nicely.

His tongs tap-tap down the pavement.

It’s faintly reminiscent of Blind Pew.

The seated bus shelter may best be remembered as a sort of podium – if not necessarily a soapbox – for Mel Bird, described as a “well-to-do tramp” who several years ago would regularly hold court there.

To Leyburn’s relief, Mr Bird has flown. None save the crack-of-dawn columnist awaits the 6.52 postbus to Hawes.

It arrives exactly, to the letter, on time. The front seats are occupied by the day’s mail for the upper dale, already sorted; the remainder are empty.

Had it been Postman Pat, had it been Greendale and not Wensleydale, there’d have been a couple of hens, a new fire grate for Mrs Goggins and (of course) a black-and-white cat.

Had it been Ivor the Engine, which manifestly it is not, there’d also have been several dozen sheep and old Mr Williams from Grumbly.

Instead, there’s a thoroughly amiable, but rather shy driver called Mike, who says he’d rather not formally be identified. A return to Hawes is £3.80. “You’re coming back?” he asks.

The No 364 postbus services from Northallerton to Hawes cover 1,185 miles a week, Britain’s longest. The whole journey takes an hour and three-quarters, through happily halfhidden little places such as Worton, Thornton Rust and Spennithorne.

Some consider it a lifeline.

Now, however, it’s in danger of becoming the last postbus. Royal Mail has announced that it is to be withdrawn from April 17, despite a 261- name petition, an offer from North Yorkshire County Council to increase the subsidy and the intervention of local MP William Hague.

What might be termed the Foreign Secretary’s shuttle-bus diplomacy was in the Darlington and Stockton Times last week, so it must beyond question be true. Up there the D&S is the Bible. They’d believe it if the D&S said the moon was made of Wensleydale cheese.

The county council, meanwhile, says that they’ve written five times to Royal Mail without reply.

It’s possible, of course, that they simply didn’t get the letter.

IT’S a glorious morning, the sun behind us as we head westward up the dale. “Not many offices have a view like this,” says Mike, gratefully and advises to look out for Hercules transport aircraft.

“They’re flying all over here at the moment, so low you can shake hands with the pilot.”

At Aysgarth, he forecasts, we’ll probably be joined by Stuart, who’s a painter and decorator. At Bainbridge, on the return, there could be Brenda on the way to work, though she hadn’t been there the day before.

Then there’s the chap who goes down from Hawes to the gym at Askrigg, but he’s off on a walking holiday somewhere.

Mike says he’s never known a journey when he didn’t pick up a single passenger – “not even the first of the day” – and that sometimes the locals can’t even get aboard because it’s been hijacked by hikers.

“It’s a lovely, friendly, service. We get to know one another. The only people who sit in silence are the walkers.”

Stuart Cockburn duly joins at Aysgarth. “You have to be polite to me today, press man’s on board,” says Mike.

“I beg your pardon, Michael,” says Stuart.

We talk about the Victoria at Worton, run by Ralph Daykin for more than half a century, about the dales fish and chip van – “I’ll tell you something, they’re good fish and chips,”

says Mike – and about the Mars Bar commercial, starring England striker Peter Crouch, made over at Carperby.

The driver’s not much of a football man. “You know Peter Crouch, about 9ft tall,” says Stuart.

The postbus service, he adds, is brilliant. “They’ll miss it 100 per cent if it goes. Mind, there are quite a lot of people with bus passes, some of them just seem to travel round all day.”

“Cheaper than heating your house, isn’t it,” says Mike, and probably a great deal more convivial, too.

AT 7.35 we’re in Hawes, met – “they’ll be chuntering” forecasts Mike – by postmen waiting to take the day’s mail to DL8’s furthest extremities.

The post office sells Hawes teddy bears, too, £9.99. The historic weekly market is setting up just along the road. Though there’s only a small sack of post to take back, a tenminute wait is dictated by the tachograph.

“The trouble with tachographs is that they take no account of cows at Thornton Rust,” says Mike. “You can be kept waiting seven or eight minutes for them.”

Mind, he adds perceptively, he’d rather be stuck behind a herd of cows at Thornton Rust than in a traffic jam at Marble Arch.

Brenda Carling duly boards at Bainbridge, and may know all about traffic jams at Marble Arch. She and her husband lived in London, took a holiday in Wensleydale, fell in love with the place and moved seven years ago.

“We’ve never regretted it for a moment,” says Brenda. “In the dales everyone says hello. In London they’d think you were mad.”

Brenda admits that another bus could get her to work at the community clinic in Leyburn, insists that other villages would be stranded without the postbus.

“Just because there aren’t thousands who are affected doesn’t mean that its not vital to those who are.

Apart from anything else, this is the only bus that goes all the way to Northallerton.”

Mike stops again at Aysgarth – Stuart Cockburn thinks he may have left his morning paper on the wall – will take on tachographical say-so a 15-minute break in Leyburn, head down to the county town and then repeat the journey.

A few hours later, someone rings from the dale. The bus going back up to Hawes was chocker, he says.

The Royal Mail says that the postbus now spends 80 hours each week on the road, only 20 of them delivering letters. “We are a postal delivery service, not a transport company,” adds the spokeswoman.

A decision is expected soon. The dale fears greatly that the Royal Mail is no longer going to deliver.