Postcard hand-delivered from Ecuador for fundraiser

Jonny Beardmore is delivering 50 postcards

A family in Surrey is getting a special delivery from a man who travelled thousands of miles to hand deliver postcards from the Galapagos Islands.

Jonny Beardmore decided to deliver 50 postcards that had been left by travellers in the remote Ecuadorian islands to their recipients around the world, raising money along the way for motor neurone disease (MND) charities.

So far his travels have taken him as far afield as Iceland and America as he has clocked up more than 32,000 miles en route to the 24th delivery in Godalming.

Mr Beardmore said: "Through this project, I aim to reconnect people through the written word, emphasising the personal touch that letters provide."

He added: "I [also] want to highlight the loss of mobility and freedom of movement that my father and other MND sufferers experience - a reminder that we should never take these abilities for granted.”

Mr Beardmore is carrying on a tradition started in 1793, where sailors on multi-year ventures left letters in a post box in the Galapagos Islands for their loved ones, hoping they would be collected by passing ships on the way back to their home port.

Island visitors still leave letters and postcards more than 200 years later in the hope a traveller collects them.

Unfortunately, the family in Godalming were not home on Mr Beardmore's first attempt, but he bumped into friends of theirs in the town centre.

He said: “I was walking down the main street in Godalming and I was recognised by a mother and daughter, who knew me from an adventure festival called Yestival where I spoke online about the Galapagos postman challenge in June when I was in Winnipeg, Canada.

“Turns out that they are neighbours with the letter recipients and know them. They have messaged them and arranged for me to meet them to deliver the letter. The odds of this happening are ridiculous.”