Dad furious as return sailing from Scots island 'cancelled while he was on ferry'

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A dad claims ferry passengers on a sailing to Arran were “abandoned” by CalMac and left scrambling to find hotels after return sailings from the island were cancelled halfway into their journeys.

John Dewar said he and his two teenage sons left Ardrossan for Arran to climb a couple of mountains but their day was “ruined” when he heard that all return ferries would be cancelled that day due to poor weather.

The 59-year-old said he ended up paying over £200 to stay at the four star Auchrannie spa hotel resort as he couldn’t find a room anywhere else on the island.John claims at the terminal he saw other passengers visibly upset at the prospect of having to fork out hundreds for a room, including a family with six children and two dogs.CalMac said “deteriorating weather conditions” led to return sailings being cancelled on Tuesday and insisted passengers were made aware of the potential for cancellations through regular text and Twitter updates, prior to the morning sailing to Arran that day.The spokesperson stressed cancelling a sailing is only ever done as a “last resort” and said passengers were able to get off the island by travelling from Lochranza to Claonaig on the Kintyre peninsula.However, John claims text messages did not start arriving until they were already on the ferry heading to Arran.He also said that finding transport to Lochranza was difficult and that if they had made a return journey via Claonaig, that would leave them 130 miles from their home in Kilmaurs, Ayrshire.John said: “When we set sail the weather was fine and it was a great day, and we were not told about the cancellation until we were about 20 minutes from Brodick.