A TINY coastal community is no longer receiving post after Royal Mail judged as too dangerous a footpath that postmen have walked along to reach it since Victorian times.

For more than 100 years a postman has walked the 1½mile track to a cluster of crofts on the beautiful Ardmore peninsula on the northwest tip of Scotland.

But Royal Mail said yesterday that it had cancelled the service after a postman slipped and fell on a grassy slope, leading it to view the route as an “unreasonable” risk to the health and safety of its workers.

Since late Victorian times, postmen have made their way, apparently without mishap, along the path above Loch a’Chadh-Fi, just south of Rhiconich, on the Ardmore peninsula in Sutherland, one of the most isolated corners of Britain.

The journey, which takes about 30 minutes each way, includes heather-clad hills, lush woodland and a section of waterfall, and is safely navigated most days by a local mother and her two young children, aged 5 and 3.

But a spokeswoman for Royal Mail said that the path was “fundamentally dangerous”, while because there was no mobile telephone reception for much of the route it meant that “if an accident happened, the postman or woman concerned may not be discovered for many hours”.

She added: “This route . . . would not only put the health, but the lives, of Royal Mail staff at risk. It is unreasonable to expect Royal Mail staff to take such risks.”

Local residents on the peninsula, led by John Ridgway, a former paratrooper who was part of the first two-man team to row the North Atlantic 40 years ago and founded an adventure school in Ardmore, have vowed to take their case all the way to Europe after losing an appeal to Postcomm, the independent regulator.

Mr Ridgway, who has lived in the area for 42 years, said: “What is being done now is for purely financial reasons. If the Royal Mail gets away with it at Ardmore, where will it be next?”

He added: “I am 68. If I get a hospital appointment and it doesn’t reach me through the post, I go to the back of a six-month queue. Well, blow that.” He dismissed Royal Mail’s concerns as “wishy-washy, ineffectual, ridiculous, paper-shuffling nonsense”, and claimed that there had been no serious injury to the relief postman who slipped and fell on March 15 last year.

He said: “We have asked Royal Mail for proof of these injuries. He turned up at our house under a minute after falling over, chatted to my daughter for a while and then walked back. Within two days he was out with the mountain rescue.”

A spokeswoman for Royal Mail said: “As far as I’m aware, the injured postman was concussed after falling on a 45-degree slope, but I can’t get that confirmed, I’m afraid.”

Postcomm said that, given the “unacceptable risks associated with delivering to the Ardmore residents’ homes, to a box at the bottom of the waterfall, or to any point on the path beyond the part which is prone to becoming icy”, it agreed with the decision to make the addresses “a long-term exception from the daily delivery obligation”.

Residents are now having their mail delivered to a car park on the road near the start of the track, and have to walk to collect it themselves.

John Thurso, the Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, said that he believed the postman who fell had been denied the “high-quality mountain boots” issued to those normally delivering to the area. A mountaineering adviser asked to assess the path concluded: “This is a well-maintained footpath. It would be classified as an ‘easy walk’ on a national footpath grading system.”

Mr Thurso said that the decision to cancel the service was proof that the postal service was under threat in rural communities. He said: “Health and safety obliges employers to take reasonable steps to ascertain risk and then minimise the risk. It does not require the removal of risk. Is it more dangerous for a postman to walk along a path than a scaffolder to erect scaffolding?”

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