The Great Flyer of London

A team of two arrived at New Cross Community Library on a dreary Saturday morning, on a mission to deliver leaflets about their book sale to the good people of Telegraph Hill. At first glance, the seemingly-small pile of flyers didn’t look too daunting. How hard could this be? We’ll be done in half an hour! This turned out to be a completely false hope.

As we left the library, the rain mercifully stopped and we soon decided upon the most efficient method of delivery, each taking one side of each street and working our way up to the top of the hill - stopping to admire the amazing view over London on the way.

After around an hour, we regrouped and both commented on how our stacks of leaflets had not seemed to reduce in size, and discussed whether we should ignore the ‘no junk mail’ stickers that appeared on so many letter boxes (we didn’t ignore them, for fear of complaints to the Library!). We also commented on how the task would have been over had there been a team of 5 or 6 – imagine how much ground could have been covered!

We also discussed what a great workout it was to deliver leaflets in such a salubrious area of London – all those steps up to those grand Victorian doors (and down to the many converted basement flats). There were barely any letter boxes to be found at street level!

Strava confirmed a distance of 2.5 miles of deliveries, an elevation gain of 185 foot (all those steps), and a time of 1 hour 45 minutes as our leaflet stash finally, FINALLY, disappeared and we headed off in opposite directions for a well-earned sit-down