Despite temperatures dropping to minus seven, Jill and Pete Garton, of Lincoln Road, Ingham, have made sure that all their customers get their post and packages on time

”We’ve had a sledge hanging up in the shed for years and I thought I’d give it a try. It works great on the snow and it slides along very well,” said Pete, 51.

”The icy roads meant it was too dangerous to go out on the bike like I usually would and I think seeing us pulling the sledge cheered up everyone in the village.”

”I’m from Ingham and I deliver to people who knew me when I was in a pram. At the end of one round, I even got Jill in a sledge and took her home.”

The couple met when they both worked at a small sorting office in Scampton. They later got married – in their uniforms – at Gainsborough’s Richmond House in 2003.

Between them they have spent over two decades as postal workers and Jill, 49, says it is the ‘best job in the world.’

”In this kind of weather, I get wrapped up in about five layers of clothing as I really feel the cold and rounds last a minimum of three-and-a-half hours,” she said.

”When the snow first got bad, we were sitting in the sorting office listening to the amount of schools closing and refuse workers not being able to get out – but we still had to do our jobs.”

”It’s still up at 5am on a weekday and 4am on a Saturday so it’s certainly not great for parties. We both often go to bed at about 8am. When we have holidays, it takes us about a week to get out of the early morning habit.”

”Though we’ve been getting a lot of attention, there are actually other posties using sledges and others in the area who have also managed to get through their rounds despite the difficult conditions.”

Jill, who is Gainsborough born and bred, loves getting to know everyone on her round and praised Scampton, Aisthorpe, Brattleby and Cammeringham as ‘fantastic’ communites to work in.

”They are not just our customers, they are a big community of friends really,” she said. “We’re always being given jam or wood for the fire from people we know on the rounds and then we’ll give them something back.”

In the past, Jill and Pete have delivered mail in wellington boots when streets flooded, but they said that scorching summer temperatures were sometimes the most difficult time of year weather-wise.

Pete added: ”It’s great having a job where you are outside every day and we get to see deer and other wildlife as we deliver the mail.”

”People at work say we’re a bit mad but we always have a competition about who heard the first cuckoo of the year. We wouldn’t change what we do for anything.”