Secret box

I walked up from the town at lunchtime and met one of our local posties, filling his bag from the metal box just down from our house.

Not sure if the same system works everywhere, but early on a post van delivers all the mail to the relevant secure boxes and the postie comes along and takes out the bags, delivers them on foot, and comes back for more. 

He told me that this was his last bag and he'd already walked 8.5 miles this morning!