​Family’s ferry nightmare

Single mum Carol-Anne Galbraith from Cuithir had booked a break at Craig Tara Holiday Park in Ayr, from Monday, March 31, and had planned to travel earlier the previous week with one of her children, who had a Thursday hospital appointment in Glasgow.

Carol-Anne’s initial plan had been to travel with five-year-old Kieran on the Wednesday, with her mum following on the Friday with other children, Daniel, six, Christopher, eight, and Charlotte, 11.

They had planned to reunite in Glasgow, but changes to the CalMac service to Barra – with CalMac announcing the slower MV Isle of Mull was going to stay on the route for longer, due to extension in drydock for the MV Isle of Lewis – prompted her mum to decide against travelling.

Carol-Anne, Kieran and their car had been booked on the ferry on Wednesday, but when she tried to book the other children onto the same crossing, she was told there was no space for them as the MV Isle of Mull passenger numbers were restricted to just 45 at the time, due to a broken emergency escape system.

When Carol-Anne tried to make the additional bookings on the Saturday, March 22, she was told they were “four over capacity” already, “so there was basically no chance”.

Despairing, Carol-Anne approached Brian Currie of Barra Transport Committee, and soon MSPs Alasdair Allan and Rhoda Grant were involved, and CalMac Area Manager David Hamill was on the phone, trying to come up with alternatives.

CalMac had proposed two options – either travelling through Lochmaddy and Skye which would have meant five hours straight in the car, for a travel sick youngster – or flights to Glasgow.

Apart from the cost – £564 one way – their car was booked in for an MOT on the mainland as there were no MOT stations on Barra.

Carol-Anne was told “the port staff had phoned round everybody, to see if anyone was willing to give up their spaces for me” and a couple of additional tickets were found from crew who had decided not to travel back off shift on that sailing.

However one child had to stay behind with his grandparents for a couple of days to let them away as scheduled and he travelled by plane on the Friday.

Although the holiday went ahead, Carol-Anne said: “It’s been an absolute nightmare. What if I didn’t have childcare? Kieran would have missed his appointment.”

She described the situation as “horrendous” and “upsetting” and said that, while it was generally “a good service” from the Isle of Lewis, “the second a technical issue comes, it just seems to be that Barra’s wiped. Well, Barra and South Uist.”

A CalMac spokesperson said: “We were able to get another space for Carole-Anne to go to the hospital appointment and she travelled with three of her four children. There was no risk of the hospital appointment being missed as we always had mother and child booked on the sailing – all alternatives offered were to allow to add additional, children who had not originally been booked on.

“We were in contact with her to discuss options. This included the suggestion that she would have been able to contact the NHS Western Isles Patient Travel team and explain the scenario to them and request that they provide air transport rather than ferry and accommodate all children too. As this is their booking with NHS, we could not act on their behalf in this matter. However, it is CalMac's understanding that air travel was offered but was declined.

“With regards to crew travel, I can confirm that we instructed staff to be considerate of the restrictions that are faced on Barra and where possible to travel via alternate means.

"This is not always possible, and the crew of the Loch Alainn, which operates the Sound of Barra, were classed as this and a small number have travelled on the Oban-Castlebay service as their presence on MV Loch Alainn is essential to it being able to operate – as are regular crew changes so we comply with global maritime regulations.”