POSTMAN’S DAILY CLIMB

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 148, 25 June 1931, Page 3

POSTMAN’S DAILY CLIMB

OLD JOKE COMES TRUE. Not long ago Punch published a drawing of a postman looking miserably toward a solitary cottage on the top of a steep hill and saying to himself: “All that climb for the sake of a picture postcard of two comic cats!” But real life can be much worse than Punch’s satire says the Children’s Newspaper. Think of the fate of James Leighton, of Ambleside, who has to climb six miles up tho Kirkstone Pass to deliver a tradesman’s circular at the Traveller’s Rest Inn. Ho is 79 and has climbed the pass three times a day for over 30 years. Tho pass is the steepest ascent from any town in England: in places the gradient is one in four. The mountainside is swept by a strong wind which has often hurled Mr Langton off his feet, and in the winter he has had to struggle through snowdrifts up to his thighs. His neighbours think rim something of a hero, and someone has sent an account of his doings to the Times. Often, it is said, the postman struggles up the pass for the sake of some notice at halfpenny printed paper rate.