Latest news with #Arran
BBC News
22-07-2025
- Climate
- BBC News
Caledonian Isles: Arran ferry return delayed by up to four months
An ageing ferry which has not sailed since January last year could be out of service for another four months, operator CalMac has 32-year-old MV Caledonian Isles was forced out of action 18 months ago, leaving a hole in the timetable for the west coast has now said the vessel will return to dry dock for further repairs - which will likely take between eight weeks and four months - prompting a re-think of the winter repair bill for the ferry, which has been side-lined from the Arran route since January 2024, has already risen to nearly £11m. Calmac said MV Caledonian Isles will enter drydock in Leith in the coming days for works to repair an issue with "instability in pitch response".The ferry will have its shaft lines removed for further investigation. This will take a minimum of eight weeks including sea this doesn't solve the problem - the retrofitting of a new system to improve the accuracy of the pitch input will be attempted. This would take four Mackison, CalMac CEO, said: "Based on the current prognosis, we could be in a situation where MV Caledonian Isles returns in September in a best-case scenario or November in a worst-case scenario."However, we intend to publish winter timetables soon and aim to give communities and customers certainty about service levels and vessel deployment during that period."This is a complex process as we need to develop this plan whilst factoring in an annual overhaul schedule that will see a fleet, which is another year older, spend a record of number of days in planned maintenance."The ferry operator's winter timetable runs from 20 October to 26 March 2026, and its entire fleet undergoes annual maintenance between September and May each year.
Times
09-07-2025
- Times
Five of the best walks with a swim in Scotland
Y ou know that feeling. The slog, the sweat, the relentless uphill grind, all to get to that hidden spot. But then you see it: a river pool shimmering like a jewel or a slice of the sea sparkling at the foot of a cliff. The clothes come off, the inhibitions vanish and you plunge in. A shock, a gasp and then pure, unadulterated joy. Here, Daniel Start, the author of Wild Swimming, reveals his five favourite swim-walks. These gorgeous, clear pools are one of the highlights of beautiful Glen Rosa, leading up to Goatfell. They're reached via a pleasant 2.5-hour circular walk from behind the Arran Brewery (there's a car park opposite). Follow the path from here along the edge of the forest. Coming out onto moorland (this can be boggy), you'll find the pools are just above the footbridge. After a swim, turn left back at the footbridge to follow the path (later a more defined track) out of the glen. Details
BBC News
07-07-2025
- Business
- BBC News
CalMac bid to reclaim costs for fault-prone Arran ferry MV Caledonian Isles
Ferry operator CalMac is trying to recover millions of pounds of repair costs for a ship that has been out of action for 18 months - and is still not repair bill for MV Caledonian Isles, which has been sidelined from the Arran route since January 2024, has already risen to nearly £ is now seeking compensation from Cammell Laird over problems discovered when the ship returned to Scotland last September, after the Merseyside firm carried out the first phase of claim relates to deformation of the ship's hull, which has required months of remedial work. Cammell Laird has declined to comment. The £10.8m repair bill for the vessel is equivalent to a quarter of last year's maintenance budget for the entire CalMac publicly-owned ferry operator confirmed to BBC Scotland News that action was under way to recover some of those repair costs following an investigation into the cause of the hull deformity."As this is commercially sensitive and subject to legal proceedings, we cannot comment further," it said in a statement. Problems with "Caley Isles", as the ship is known, began in January 2024 when annual maintenance inspections in Scotland revealed extensive steel corrosion. The 32-year-old ship was moved to the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead for a "highly complex" repair operation which required removal of the ship's engines. That meant the ferry had to spend months in a dry dock, a narrow basin which is drained, leaving the ship out of the water and supported by blocks. The work, said at the time to cost around £5m, was completed last September but when the ship sailed back to Scotland the crew noticed a gearbox problem and metal shards were discovered in a filter. Further investigation revealed that eight frames, the ribs of the ship's structural skeleton, were deformed and that more steel replacement was required. CalMac engaged a naval architect to report on the root cause of the deformation, while more repairs were carried out in Greenock, by a different ship repair firm. The ferry was due to resume sailing from Ardrossan last month, but a new fault affecting its variable pitch propellers, essential for manoeuvring in harbour, was identified during sea trials, and the ship is still out of service. The prolonged absence of MV Caledonian Isles has added to pressures on the west coast ferry network, and had a major impact on Ardrossan where the new Arran ferry MV Glen Sannox is too big to berth Sannox operates instead from Troon, 15 miles down the Ayrshire coast, which involves a longer crossing to Arran and fewer daily sailings. Meanwhile, Ardrossan, normally the main gateway to Arran, has been left without ferry sailings for six months, with campaigners claiming the economy has from the port will finally resume later on Monday with the 41-year-old ferry MV Isle of Arran drafted to provide temporary cover during July while Caledonian Isles remains out of action. Why are CalMac's ships breaking down so often? The particular issues facing MV Caledonian Isles are part of a wider problem as CalMac tries to maintain services with an increasingly ageing and unreliable fleet. CalMac does not own its ships - instead it leases them from another government-owned company CMAL which is responsible for harbours and ferry procurement. But CalMac does have to pay for maintenance, which has proven costly due to delays in the provision of new annual repair bill has nearly trebled over the past 10 years. When MV Glen Sannox entered service in January, it was the first new large ship provided to the ferry operator by CMAL in nearly a decade. Half of CalMac's 10 major vessels have now reached or are beyond their 30-year expected service life. Aside from rust issues, there are difficulties replacing equipment which is often so old that spares have to be specially manufactured. To make up for a shortage of vessels CalMac has chartered a catamaran, MV Alfred, from Pentland Ferries at a cost of £1m per month since May 2023. By the time the charter ends in October, it will have paid out around double the £14.5m it cost Pentland Ferries to build the vessel. The pressures should begin to ease from next winter onwards as the first of five new major vessels currently under construction for CMAL start to arrive. The first of four ships being built in Turkey, MV Isle of Islay, is on track for delivery by the end of September, about a year later than originally second Turkish ship, MV Loch Indaal, should arrive in the spring of 2026, with the other two following on at six monthly long- delayed MV Glen Rosa is expected to be ready by the end of June next year, and is earmarked to join its sister ship MV Glen Sannox on the Arran route.
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Yahoo
A journey into the deep past on beautiful Arran
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Isolated in the vast Firth of Clyde, Arran is situated just south of the Hebrides and is Scotland's seventh biggest island. Two hours by car and ferry from Glasgow, it has long been popular with holidaymakers from the city. But it also has another group of fans – geologists, said Stuart Kenny in The Guardian. In few other places than this is the planet's history so clearly recorded on its surface, with rock types "from basically every geological period of the last half-billion years". Observations on Arran played a key role in the birth of modern geological science, and in April this year it was designated a Unesco Global Geopark in recognition of its importance. Owing to its newfound status, "informative Geopark signage" has appeared at many of its geological sites. I began my recent trip by climbing Goat Fell, Arran's highest peak at 874 metres. From its summit, I could see the clean division between the island's northern uplands and its southern lowlands. This is the Highland Boundary Fault, a geological line where tectonic plates collided, which runs across Scotland from here. The next day, hiking along the 65-mile Arran Coastal Way, I came across Hutton's Unconformity, a junction between two types of rock formation. It was observed in 1787 by James Hutton, "the father of modern geology", and helped him to challenge the then-dominant view, based on the Old Testament, that the planet was only a few thousand years old. Walking the whole Coastal Way is a pleasure in myriad ways. I spotted dolphins and otters, swam in "secluded" bays, and came across plenty more geological marvels, each offering a glimpse into prehistory. Among them were black "walls" of magma that were forced up from the Earth's interior 60 million years ago, as Europe and North America were pulled apart; the footprints of a giant "proto-crocodile" from 240 million years ago, when Scotland sat near the equator; and – perhaps most bedazzling – a mound of "fossilised fulgurite" formed when a desert sand dune was struck by lightning 270 million years ago.
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Green Focus: Arran is a great example of how we can save our seabeds
My family holidays in the 1950s were spent in the far northwest of Scotland, writes Henry Haslam. There was a pier beside the hotel, and trawlers used to come in to unload their catch of fish. We didn't give any thought, in those days, to the damage that trawling might do to the seabed. Perhaps the damage was slight, the ships were small, and the sea floor had plenty of opportunity to recover. In more recent years, however, the damage done by bottom trawlers and dredgers has been much more serious, as demonstrated in the recent David Attenborough film, Ocean. Bottom trawling breaks up the seabed, destroying corals and shellfish. However, marine life can recover remarkably quickly if it is left to thrive. Some time ago, a group of fishermen on the island of Arran resolved to set up a protection zone. After many years of planning, a one-square-mile no-take zone was established in 2008. A larger zone, covering 100 square miles, was set up in 2014, banning bottom trawling and dredging. The recovery has been remarkable. Lobsters, crabs, sponges, and scallops have all re-established themselves, and fish stocks are recovering. The sea floor recovers much more quickly than the land does. All this was achieved because a few local fishermen got together. Arran became a model for marine preservation. That is not all. After the release of the film, the UK government announced plans to ban bottom trawling in 41 marine protected areas, and a recent international conference in Nice ratified a treaty that aims to protect 30 per cent of the world's oceans by 2030. We can see here a good example of the part that can be played by a local community, and by national governments, and by international agreements.
