school geology trip to Arran, day one-travelling!

Okay! Today we enmabarked on our school geology feild trip to Arran! It was a very long journey involving three trains, a boat and a coach journey to arrive at the lochranza feild center. I got the camera out at preston station but diddnt really use it until we arrived at glasgow station.

Its a pretty imprsive sturcture although the collection of shops in the building was a bit obvious with the same as everywhere else! it had a very big hall which is where the shops and passangers where distributed.

Next stop was the train to Ardrossan. I managed to get a photo of the ferry building for my BOG talk,

And then we boarded the ferry, and after a performance sorting out all our bags me and a couple of others went to the top deck to look out over the sea. It was a bit nippy but it was the wind that gave you the biggest impression, being batter all the way over to Arran. I had attached the longer lense for the task of going over, due to the lack of tourist shots I was likely to be taking.

First bird was a skua, A great skua I make it, although its hard to tell because i am such a bad phototographer but I think they are. I say they because the two photos here are actually two different birds that approached the boat from different sides, so thats two great skuas and two record shots to accompany them.

In terms of other pelagic wanderers there was a significant lack of manxies but there was a fulmar that rode the bow wave of the boat for some time before overtaking us! Then The boat started swerving becuase it neede to intercept a line of military ships that were obviously up to something, but we managed to cut across their ranks and reach Arran in good time!

A beutiful picture of Arran under beautiful blue skys! It reminds me of the last time I came here and had a smashing time, so heres to a hopefully good trip!

In the evening, considering it was so nice and pleasantly warm we decided to get a football and had a bit of a kick around. While others were messing about doing something else, I spotted that some deer had decended from the hill, I ran for the camera and managed to get some decent photos despite the worsening light. There were some pretty impressive stags there , which were the boldest of the two genders and rather a lot of females.

So overall a good start to the trip and hopefully it will only get better!