Short visit to South Uist and Benbecula

Our second visit in June saw the mobile outreach team returning to the Outer Hebrides, with two school visits to the Isles of South Uist and Benbecula. Having collected Scott from Glasgow, the team made their way through beautiful scenery to the port village of Mallaig (a 4 hour drive), where we caught the 3.5 hour ferry to Lochboisdale on South Uist. The following morning, we headed up to Sgoil an Iochdair primary, where we spent the day running a series of workshops to the whole school (P1 to P7), with the older pupils creating planispheres, spectroscopes and Hunting for Asteroids among other activities. After an Overnight stay on North Uist, where difficulty in finding accommodation meant we had to drag a poor lady out of retirement (thank you Morag), we spent the following day at Sgoil Bhaile a Mhanaich primary on the Island of Benbecula. Thankfully the islands are connected by long causeways these days, which makes it fairly easy to move around. Our second school was somewhat larger and saw us working with over one hundred pupils and their teachers, although it did require a good number of parallel sessions to achieve a decent level of contact time. It was then time to pack the car, drop Scott at the airport and head back to a Lochboisdale B&B to await the early morning ferry back to the mainland and home.