Climate protesters set up a barricade and began playing a game of mini-golf on the asphalt at Aberdeen airport in protest at the environmental damage caused by flying, a court heard today.

A group of nine people, five men and four women, appeared in Aberdeen sheriff court today accused of causing a breach of the peace, causing fear and alarm, and vandalism when they allegedly broke through the airport's perimeter fence last year.

Claire Sandison, a member of BAA security staff, told the court she discovered the security breach on patrol at 3.35am on 3 March last year. "I found a group of people piecing together fencing with bolts," she said. "I was very concerned for the safety of the airfield."

She said she then found a group of five or six people on the airport's taxiway, which takes aircraft from the terminal area onto the runway, as she drove around the perimeter fence. She admitted, however, that there were no aircraft using the runway at that time in the morning.

Prosecuting, Alan Townsend, the depute fiscal, asked her: "What else were they doing?" She replied: "Playing mini golf with miniature, children's golf clubs."

Some of the group were wearing high-visibility jackets and were taking photographs of each other, she added. Shelagh McCall, a defence lawyer, asked her: "When you say they were playing golf they, were they using plastic golf balls?" She replied: "Yes."

The nine defendants, Dan Glass, 25, Emilia Kawowska, 19, Tilly Gifford, 24, Josie Hanson, 25, and Jonathan Agnew, 22, all from Glasgow, Mark Andrews, 25, from Edinburgh, James Kerr, 34, from Paisley, William Boggia, 43, from Ballater, Aberdeenshire, and Kate Mackay, 20, from Shipley, West Yorkshire, all deny the charges.

Several protesters are accused of climbing onto the airport terminal, causing vandalism to the roof. The jury was shown pictures taken by a police photographer of a banner hung from the terminal building which read: "Nae Trump Games With Climate Change."

The jury was shown photographs of three bolt cutters and a fence area covered in tarpaulin along with a bundle of bicycles left on a grassy area outside the grounds. The frame on one bike read: "Pedalling for the Planet".

The trial continues.