Postbus Country: Glimpses of Rural Scotland - Hardcover

The Royal Mail introduced its first Scottish postbus service in 1968. Since then, its ingle-route has grown to 140, which between them travel 2 million miles and carry 80,000 passengers annually. As well as bringing the mail, the idea of carrying people - and animals, morning milk and papers, flowers for a bride and doctors' presciptions - has made the buses and their resourceful drivers part of the fabric of rural Scotland. To view Scotland from the windows of its postbuses is to glimpse the ever-changing relationship between the old and new ways of living. Throughout her travels, Joan Burnie observed the adaptability within local communities, people accepting the challenge of new industries, such as fish-farming, computer software manufacturing and the seemingly inexhaustible tourist trade. But above all, it is the idea of "eavesdropping" on the lives of individuals who depend on the postbus which is the central theme of this book. Through their gossip and in listening to the drivers' stories and reflections on many years of running to and fro, this book reveals in words and pictures a portrait of contemporary life in the most romanticized areas of Scotland.