Climate change: Pupils in Argyll catch the boat to school after landslide
- Published
The school run from Ardfern is now taken by boat
Pupils in a school in Lochgilphead, in Argyll, have been experiencing a "fun" new way of getting to school for the past few weeks.
Every morning they head to the shore of Loch Craignish and get on a boat, which takes them across the water, closer to where their school is.
A few weeks ago, storms in the area caused a big landslide, which closed the road they would normally use to get to school.
Without the boat service, pupils would have to make a two and a half hour round trip by road to get to school.
During the storm, around a month's worth of rain fell in just 36 hours.
What's it like catching a boat to school?
"It's peculiar, it's fun"
This is how one of the pupils described their morning trip to school. One of the other pupils said he already felt like he'd been "doing this forever", after taking the boat for a few weeks.
Morven, another pupil, pointed out that the landslide and its impact had made her think more about climate change.
"I think that we should definitely try be active in climate change," she said, "so it can stop stuff like that happening".
The children go to school in Lochgilphead, but have to travel from Adfern. This would usually be an easy route, but the landslide, shown in read, has blocked the road. The orange route would be the long drive they could take to get to school - but that would take a very long time. Instead, they get the boat - which follows the blue line - and then travel from there to school.
How does this relate to climate change?
A member of the Argyll and Bute Council said until the recent storm, he had never seen any movement on the hill with the landslide. This means it must have taken an unusual amount of rain to cause the land to slip.
Scientists say the more the earth warms, the more moisture there is in the air, which leads to more powerful rain storms.
The Met Office says it's become more common for there to be heavy rain in October and December in the past few years.
Diggers are working to fix the road after the big landslide
The impact of the heavy rains has also caused problems for other people in the community. It took a lot of work to reopen one of the roads out of Adfern, but the other one remains completely closed.
Th heavy rainfall happened two weeks before extremely heavy rainstorms in Aberdeen and Angus last month, caused by Storm Babet.
