Letters / Ferry booking frustration
Today (15th April) I had arranged to take a friend to Lerwick for two early morning hospital appointments. I booked the ferries yesterday with no problem.
We got to Lerwick on time and when we finished, I rang to book ferries to come home again. I was told by the Ferry Booking Office that they could book me on the Toft ferry 11:45 and I said I would actually like to book all the way through to Belmont and she said that actually she couldn’t book me on at Gutcher until the 4 o’clock sailing because that was the first available space.
We caught the Toft ferry and fortunately we were in poll position so it meant that we could drive straight across Yell with no problems. We arrived at Gutcher, the next ferry being 12.35, and there was one car in the booked queue.
As the cars that had come off the Yell ferry behind us arrived, three of them joined the booked queue and one the unbooked queue behind me. There was a tanker on board that was being lashed down and eventually when it was time to load we all got on the ferry!
That meant that there were six vehicles behind the tanker and two empty spaces behind me and the car next to me.
When I actually arrived at Gutcher, I spoke to the person whose job it is to check all of the vehicles in the booked lane to make sure they are all booked. I asked how is it that I couldn’t actually book the ferry when this is all the traffic here and she said this is happening all the time and this morning only two crossing had full loads.
This situation has to be rectified either by charging the people who’ve booked and don’t turn up, or by penalising them and not letting them book at all. If they just had the decency to cancel their booking, this would allow other people who need to use the service to book and be able to travel at the times they need to.
Another way to deal with it is for the two people who check the booked queue to mark off the ones that don’t turn up so that Sellaness knows who they are and they can be contacted to find out why.
Unst is dying due to lack of accessibility i.e. people moving away, businesses shrinking or failing, loss of jobs, access to healthcare, more medivacs being done by helicopter than ambulance et al. Plus the ferry service is losing money which makes it appear even less viable.
Sellaness needs to listen to the people who depend on the service and sort this out. The tourist season is here and it’s going to get far worse.
Sarah McBurnie
Unst
