Long way up

It's a fair old climb down to the bird sanctuary and the West Lighthouse on Rathlin from the top.  They've done a great job in making it as accessible as possible - the first part is a sloped path but then you've got a few steps to negotiate:

The view from the bottom.  It took 5 years to build the lighthouse, from 1912-1917 at a cost of £400,000 - apparently that equates to something like £17million in today's money.  Transporting the materials to the location was no mean feat in itself - it's over 4 miles from the harbour.  All done using horse, cart and manual labour.

Beside the lamp is a small platform which we were able to get out onto.  Unfortunately the weather was starting to close in so visibility wasn't great.  On a good day you should be able to see the island of Inishtrahull just off Malin Head to the west and Islay to the North.

Looking west, towards the Antrim Coast, Giant's Causeway and Portrush

Inside the lighthouse was interesting - small enough, naturally, but surprisingly cosy.  The keepers used to stay for 2-3 years at a time.  Lighthouse relief day was once every two weeks, when supplies and ordered goods were delivered.  I think the last keeper left in 1983, by which time everything had been automated.

The sleeping quarters.  You'd need to be happy with your own company in this job, methinks.  A love of literature would also come in handy...

There's been a bit of a run on lighthouses lately - Mr Karlsvig over there in Norway has a few great snaps of ones around his neck of the woods and some wise words as well.  They're all a wee bit different, these houses with light.

...or a love of writing. 

West Lighthouse

This summer we did a couple of lighthouses on Rathlin - two out of the three that are on the island.  We didn't go to the East Lighthouse - the haunted one, our host Hilary informed us.  She's experienced a few episodes there herself to go along with the many other stories she'd heard.  And that's in addition to the Púca spirit that is said to inhabit The Manor House.

We did go to the West Lighthouse, where the bird sanctuary is.  Last year the centre was closed for renovation but this year the new place was open.  And, like with so many things these days, there was a charge.  Not an exorbitant charge I have to admit, but still, there was something nice about being able to get to see round the place in the good old days - 2 years ago - without having to put your hand in your pocket, as Jim Grey knows only too well.  The Brother still can't believe how many things around The Liberties are free to enjoy - compared to the States, that is, where he resides - but the times they are a-changing and it's coming, like a hard rain.  OK, enough Bob Dylan I hear you say.  I like old Bob - even saw him once live in Belfast, a double act with some local dude called Van Morrison.  What a great concert that should have been, eh?  Unfortunately it was an open-air affair and not, in my opinion, best suited to either of these great artists.  No - it would have to be a smoke-filled speakeasy to get the best out of those critters.

Looking down on the top of the West Lighthouse, Rathlin Island. I know - another straight horizon!  Must have been the air...  Not often you get to look down on a lighthouse dome, is it?  The reason being, this one is upside-down: the lamp thingmy is at the bottom, rather than the top.  Reasons being the cliff face the lighthouse is positioned on and the fact that apparently they reckoned the siting of the bell in this position would grant best visibility to any ships nearby.  

The good thing about the new arrangements at the West Lighthouse is that as well as the bird sanctuary, you get to explore the lighthouse itself.  It's still functioning, but like all lighthouses nowadays it's electronically controlled, so no need for a keeper.  We learnt a lot about lighthouse keepers, we did.  In the good old days, if your grandfather was a lighthouse keeper the chances were your father was and you would be too.  It was a very important job - detailed notes on weather conditions and shipping traffic had to be kept and of course lives depended on it.

OK, so who knows what this thing does?

I've no idea about the hair arrangement outside the window - could well be a scanning artefact, or maybe signs of a Púca.  This device, which is still working and in use, is used to detect fog.  We learnt that in the olden times - as far back as the 1980s and even earlier, there were things called fog-horns, which sounded periodically when the presence of fog was detected.  I can remember the eerie sound they made.  The guide told us that before that they used to fire an 18lb gun every 20 minutes when fog was about - he mentioned something about a rocket as well.  Eventually Morse code took over.  Anyway, interesting that they now use a bit of fairly old imaging technology (by the look of it) to search for fog nowadays.  There was a very polite notice on it 'Not to touch - machine in current use'.

I took a snap of the workings of the thing, but it didn't come out very well - reflections and under-exposure and the usual sort of thing you get around here:

In the past the light from the paraffin lamp used to be focussed by lenses before being projected out sea-wards, so we were told anyway.  The lens used to float in some sort of mercury bath - could that be correct?  These days of course it's all electronically controlled apparently, via some transistors and PCBs and the like.  Still a pretty big affair, though, as you can see.  A bit of engineering in there, methinks.  Very impressive, it was.

So, a snap of the outside, Missy included, getting the head blown off her.  It was unbelievably windy - really, I mean, hard-to-stand-up windy.

Way out west

Well, way out west and a bit north, if truth be told.  One of our day trips in the summer was across on the ferry from Magilligan to Greencastle in Donegal.   From there we turned left towards Moville and then turned west and north towards Carndonough (Carn Domhnach, or Burial Mound of the Church).  A bit further on and you are soon in the wilds of Donegal, which is a pretty good place to find yourself at any time of the year:

A wee print, on Kentmere paper.  The black dots on the beach are people.  Now from the clouds you might have expected some precipitation - and you would be right.  Predictably, the heavy shower came as we exited the car and made our way to the cafe for some refreshments.  I think that was the only rain we saw that day.  Typical, eh?

Donegal is a pretty special place - it's a huge County, stretches all the way west to Gweedore, past the Derryveagh Mountains.

Just a scan - looking the other way from the first shot.  We're pretty close to the North End of Ireland here - Malin Head just a stone's throw away.

There was a reason for our little day trip - Doagh Famine Village, an eclectic assortments of cottages, artefacts and all-round interesting stuff pertaining to this part of the world.  More of that another day.

Fast hands

I know Rathlin is only a wee island 3 miles of the Antrim coast and it has electricity and 3G coverage and everything but there is something different about it.  When the weather is good the evening can be a really special time on the island.  After the last ferry leaves for the mainland there's a stillness about the island.  You can just mosey around, perhaps head down to Rua Point where the South Lighthouse and the seal colony are and generally feel at peace with the world.

Unfortunately on our visit a couple of weeks ago the weather wasn't great.  Although it wasn't particularly cold, there was a wind that would have nearly taken your head clean off and so we retreated to the shelter of McCuaig's bar/restaurant/tea-room/general-place-to-go-when-everywhere-else-is-closed.  After refreshments and something to eat (pretty good fare, truth be told) we headed back to our room for the night.  

Isn't it great when you're forced to make your own entertainment?  While The Brother and I reflected on the day just past and our hopes for the following day the girls kept themselves amused with camp-fire songs and general mayhem:

One of the many, many, hand-clap songs the girls amused themselves with.  It was great to be party to - all to easy to forget how the simplest things can lead to so much enjoyment.  They had a lot of fun.  I tried my best to capture them on HP5 - tricky enough, when your widest aperture is only f4 and it was as dark as it looks here.  I think I was somewhere around 1/4 or 1/2 a second on the rangefinder. I printed this one out on Ilford RC Warmtone.

Now the thing is, if we'd been at home as usual, these moments would never have happened.  Well, they might have, but doubtful if The Brother or I would have been witness to them.  There's something about 'going away', isn't there - puts us in the holiday spirit and all that.

The Puffin Bus

The Puffin Bus takes you from the harbour at Rathlin to the West Lighthouse, where the RSPB bird sanctuary is.  It's just over 4 miles, but seems like 10 since the bus tootles along a single-track road.  Like most vehicles on Rathlin the bus is well into its retirement.  It appears that there has been a bit of a war going on in Rathlin between rival bus companies - there were even stories of sabotage.  But I understand peace has broken out and the two companies now operate on alternate days.  The day we went we had Patricia as our driver - this is the sort of view you get from inside.

Patricia looks like she was giving her running commentary here - this was just before she stopped the bus.  Turns out the bus had a flat tyre, but it was OK apparently as there were two wheels at the end of each back axle.  Anyway, we slowed down even more, to walking pace and continued our journey back to the harbour.  After about 20 minutes we hadn't advanced very far, so when Patricia eventually got a signal on her mobile phone she called her dad, who came out in the other, equally decrepit bus, to rescue us.  Sure it was a grand wee adventure.

It's hard not to notice the number of abandoned cars, boats, caravans on Rathlin.  I guess the cost of taking these things off the island is just too high, so they are left to slowly rot at the mercy of the elements:

Old fishing boats, Church Bay

I'm sure the locals don't even notice these old bits and pieces any more and while there is some charm in it for us visitors you don't come to Rathlin to admire the scrap.  Perhaps the authorities (whoever they might be) should organise an amnesty on Rathlin - just do a big clear up, take all the scrap off the island for free.

"Vincents Boat", Rathlin

Dangerous

OK so if The Brother ever sees this on here I am in trouble.

On FP4+, via ID-11 on Ilford RC Warmtone paper

I couldn't resist snapping him up as he was fighting with his shoelaces.  Like me, he has ankylosing spondylitis and so getting down to the old feet is a bit of a struggle.  Unlike me, he can actually get down there, albeit with difficulty.  This was Portrush, by the way, in full summer.  You can tell it's summer as he has his waterproofs on and the sun was out.  At other times of the year you don't get the sun, in case you were wondering.

There was a swell

On the trip to Rathlin the sea was fairly choppy - so much so that our host Alan elected not to take us over on his 31-foot borrowed boat (his rib was in for service, apparently, awaiting a part from Japan).  Instead we got the fast ferry from Ballycastle.

I came out the back of the boat before we got underway, in the hope of getting a snap or two.  In hindsight that was a good move, although I was hanging onto the rail with all my might once out of the harbour as things got a little choppy.  The Brother elected to stay inside the cabin - wrong choice, as it happened, since the lady beside him was very sick.  Once the boat got moving there was no hope of moving - too dangerous, so he was stuck.  At least it's not a long crossing - 30 minutes or so.  Long enough in that situation though.

This was the view looking back towards Ballycastle, the hills of Antrim and Knocklayde visible in the background:

This was the only shot I took looking forwards, as the waves were by that time giving me a shower every so often and I didn't want the rangefinder soaked.  The sea doesn't look too bad, but it was bad enough for a land-lubber like me.  They cancelled the later sailings that day, as the wind got up and conditions deteriorated.  Marooned, we were - but not for long.  Apparently it's rare for there to be more than 2 days that the islanders (all 100 or so of them) aren't able to get back and forth to the mainland, even in the winter.  Even with the worst of the winter storms there's usually a lull every so often when normal proceedings can be resumed.

There weren't many birds around - a couple of gannets and I'm pretty sure I spotted a couple of Manx Shearwater riding the waves - all white underneath and dark on top - which was a treat.  Apparently they been spotted a few times over the last week, as well as an Osprey.  No Osprey today, though, unfortunately.