Sendy nowt a nesso ess


It is now ten years since the good people of Fanad opened the doors of the lighthouse to the public. Whether you go for the tour only, or stay in the lightkeepers' dwellings, you get a taste of how the keepers lived, you see what they saw when they were up in the lantern room, you climb the same stairs that they climbed. It can never be the authentic experience but it has given thousands of visitors a taste of what the job entailed. 
Aside from preserving the maritime heritage of the lighthouse and the local area, the project has given valuable employment to local people in an area that can hardly be said to be heaving with investment. And, as anybody who has visited can vouch, they are lovely people too.
As part of the ten year celebrations, Teach Solais Fhánada is giving ten people the opportunity to stay at the lighthouse. I did this a few years ago with members of the family and it was a magical experience. I particularly enjoyed the walk to and from the local pub (erm, the Lighthouse Inn) up the road but, the lighthouse dwellings and tower aside, it is a fantastically beautiful area with a scattering of friendly people, and we had a ball.
Anyway, all you have to do is find a bottle in the Atalantical Ocean. Sounds pretty tricky but there are in fact ten bottles and you only have to find one of them. Shouldn't be too difficult, though I doubt many of them will be washing up on the non-existent shoreline of west Dublin. Each bottle contains a letter inviting the finder to stay at the lighthouse. They were flung into deep sea waters with the help of Sea Fishing Donegal on Monday 24th August.
The only downside to the whole escapade is that bloody Sting song has now locked onto your brain.








 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ballast Bank, Wexford

Image
I am indebted to Redmond O'Brien - how much more Wexfordian can you get? - for alerting me to the unusual green buoy marking the danger of the Ballast Bank situated in Wexford harbour. For some reason, this light does not appear on Trabas, one of the very few omissions I have come across in that wonderful resource. In fact, I have found nothing online about the light. Regarding the Ballast Bank, itself, it is an artificial island, constructed so that ships might pick up or discharge ballast on entering or leaving Wexford Harbour. Most sources give the date of construction as 1937, though the architecture of Ireland site - which really should have the inside track on these sort of things - dates the island back to 1831. I'm no expert, but the light itself seems older than 1937. Someone should bring it in to the Antiques Roadshow. Below, a drone's eye view of the island, which I filched from Wexford Hub, an excellent site about all things Wexford.
Read more

Tidal beacons

Image
My granddaughter, Summer, and niece, Rachel, obviously enjoying one of the fourteen tidal beacons between Coney Island and the county Sligo mainland Before you ask, no, I made up the term tidal beacon . I'm not even sure that its accurate and if anyone has any better suggestions, please let me know. According to Mrs Wikipedia, there are three tidal islands in Ireland, which she lists as Omey Island in Galway, Coney Island in Sligo and Inishkeel in Donegal. I have visited all three and can confirm they can all only be walked to when the tide is low. Coney is my favourite because it has a pub. Off the top of my head, I can think of three more - Shenick Island off the coast of Skerries in county Dublin; Feenish or Finnis Island near Carna; and, a bit doubtfully, Mutton Island in county Clare, to where, I am told, it is possible to walk roughly once every twenty years at super-low tide, with the water up to your shoulders. I am sure there must be more but the top of my head is very cro...
Read more

Rotten Island, county Donegal

Image
When this blog started, many moons ago, it was a simple 'visit a lighthouse, take a photo or two and add a bit of info' sort of a blog. For better and worse, it has become much more historically minded and the need to have visited has gone. So it is something of a breath of fresh air to get out and actually visit an Irish lighthouse I had never seen. So, an unexpected free day at the start of September, saw me up early and driving across the country to south-west Donegal to bag the last of the easily baggable lighthouses. I could have taken a boat tour and got pretty close to Rotten Island but the distance from the mainland seemed minimal. Basically, I got to Bruckless and, with the help of Google Maps, headed for the Atlantic View B & B, which ended at a stony beach. Parking up (making sure I left a gap for any boat-laden cars to get through) the lighthouse was visible from the beach (see next photo) The tide was low so I walked up the beach towards the lighthouse, eventua...
Read more