Last updated 19:40, Thursday, 08 May 2008

ATTEMPTS by Maryport students to reduce their carbon footprint have been scuppered by a travel agency which said it could not book trains from Maryport at weekends.

A group of 11 to 15-year-olds from Netherhall School are planning a trip to the European Parliament in Strasbourg this summer.

Neil Watt, the school’s French teacher, who has been organising the trip, said it was agreed to travel by train and on the Eurostar for the experience and to make the trip as green as possible.

But Schools Travel Services, a travel agency specialising in organising school trips, said the students will have to travel to London by coach because it is not possible to book a train journey from Maryport to link up with the Eurostar.

Mr Watt said within minutes of getting the news, students had been onto train websites and found several trains on several routes.

“In the end, they found one that took us from Maryport, via Newcastle straight to King’s Cross, which is right across the road from St Pancras, where the Eurostar begins its journey,” he added.

Mr Watt said he has travelled from north of Inverness to Strasbourg by train without any problems and could not believe that a similar trip could not be organised from Maryport.

He said: “Apparently all the different UK train companies and routes involved from West Cumbria make it extremely difficult for STS to organise.

“We are now left with the option of a cramped and uncomfortable polluting coach trip to London in order to connect with the Eurostar trains, which is not what the children want.”

Mr Watt said the school was erecting a wind turbine to reduce its carbon footprint and students, too, were keen to travel in as environmentally friendly a fashion as possible -which meant going by train.

He said he spent all Saturday morning phoning and emailing train companies with little helpful response.

A spokeswoman for STS said, on Tuesday afternoon, that the company was now aware of how important it was for the group to travel by train.

She said complications had arisen from the fact that the students were travelling on a Saturday.

Under the terms of its licence, she said, the agency had to be able to book the same route both ways and this had not been possible because of Saturday timetables.

But she said now STS had recognised the importance to the students and “every effort” would be made to try and enable them to travel by train.

The Netherhall students are to travel to Europe from July 5 to July 11.

They will visit the European Parliament. Euro MEP Chris Davis has sponsored some of the places on the trip, he said.