After 125 years, mail delivery by boat is coming to an end in the Biesbosch national park, local broadcaster Omroep Brabant reports.

The Biesbosch is an area of tidal wetlands south of Dordrecht and lived in by just a handful of people.

‘The boat is still doing its round,’ PostNL spokesperson Tanja Hoogkamer told the broadcaster, ‘but we are talking about alternative ways of getting the post to the customers.’

Hoogkamer said delivering a couple of letters to the five people on the route takes three hours and that is too expensive.

Local resident Cees Schuller who published a book about the postal service on the waterways of the Biesbosch said the disappearance of the postal boat is ‘the end of an era’.

‘I talked to PostNL because I wanted to put a final chapter to my book but they were using words like “reconsidering”, “a tailored service” and “finding a solution”. So I left it. But indications are they are stopping on the first of March,’ Schuller told the broadcaster.

The original post boat was decommissioned as long ago as 1979, Schuller said. The post is now delivered in a little polyester punt.

Postie Cor de Wijs, who delivered the post for over forty years, retired in 2011. He said at the time the boat had been his home and his handful of customers his good friends.