lighthouses

when i was abt 11, the english teacher asked to write a story explaining that mystery where three lighthouse keepers mysteriously vanished

my solution featured a psychotic murder AND aliens

I've always found the lyrics to Pulp's "My lighthouse" very romantic.

(and re the sand forts: if you start out from Cleethorpes it's *possible* to walk out to the Haile fort at low tide. It's *extremely* dangerous, though, because the tide comes in very fast and there are lots of patches of mud and quicksand.)

The lighthouse where the three men disappeared is on the Flannan Isles, which are pretty impossible to get to; they're about 20 miles off the coast of Lewis. Getting to somewhere you can see them from is nice, though. And if you're in that area, you can visit Butt of Lewis lighthouse too.

http://www.city.choshi.chiba.jp/english/img/guide01.jpg

http://www.agentsofchaos.org/schubert/cilssmll.jpg

Frank Schubert, at 87, is the last remaining civilian lighthouse keeper.

http://members.aol.com/fairyfellr/mine/pigeon.jpg

http://www.ponceinlet.org/oldsite/images/modern/pdltf00.jpg

for those inclined there is a brief but fairly interesting history of it here (the current lighthouse is actually the 2nd, the first was lost in a hurricane):

http://www.ponceinlet.org/oldsite/hist01.htm

The Lighthouse in Mukilteo, WA
Built 1905-6 of wood
uses fresnel lenses

I visited here in February 1994. I still remember the anemo trace 270/45 gust 48 (westerly force 9 gale). The keeper who looked like the original model for Belhaven Bill told me 'och, it's jist a gentle breeze'.

http://lighthousegetaway.com/lights/OR/heceta4.jpg

http://www.ngbb.org/images/Chesapeake/Hooper_Strait.jpg

Spurn Head lighthouse, as mentioned above.

ihttp://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/nelthorp/room8/intra/geograph/humberside/spurn/images/Spurn%201_jpg.jpg

Spurn Head itself

http://www.go4awalk.com/userpics/pixerspix/chinchcliffe/chinch_3.jpg

I used to live near this lighthouse in the Mull of Kintyre. The school used to take us on trips to it. Unfortunately, all pictures of it seem to be rubbish.

http://www.westboundadventures.co.uk/articles/flannans3sm.jpg

http://www.nlb.org.uk/ourlights/history/images/flannans.jpg

http://www.nlb.org.uk/images/flannan2.jpg

Close by the lighthouse is a first-millennium boat-shaped chapel, one of the earliest churches in Scotland, and certainly one of the best preserved for its age. I wanted to visit it when researching my degree, but couldn't find anyone to take me there:

http://www.charles-tait.co.uk/images/outliers/flannans/flannanwithchapel.jpg

http://www.bellrock.org.uk/images/misc_visit_bell.jpg

http://www.bellrock.org.uk/images/home_bellaerial.jpg

http://www.bellrock.org.uk/images/lighthouse_stats_2.gif http://www.skillful-means.com/graphics/misc_graphics/Image4.gif

robert stevenson's bell rock lighthouse, near angus.

september.

as the stone says, mainland britain's most northerly point.

you shouldn't have jinxed it, though.

Fire Island Lighthouse

(J. Donald Doughty = my grandpa, Joseph Doughty = great-grandfather)

http://www.abseconlighthouse.org/pages_&_graphics_(my_shots)/2002/images/Anchor%20%26%20Tower%20Portion%20N.jpg

Oh the winds they do blow and the seas they do roar
When you're stuck on a lighthouse ten miles from the shore
But you've heard of the Jolly Rock, of that I am sure
Go there and your loved ones will see you no more

Oh don't go to the Jolly Rock whatever you do
I wouldn't go near it if I were you

So away from the Jolly Rock I'd advise you to race
It's utterly appalling and not at all nice
Oh funny things happen there, it's such a disgrace
'Coz people get killed there all over the place!

Oh don't go to the Jolly Rock whatever you do
I wouldn't go near it if I were you

Oh ... the next verse is censored 'coz it's too horrible even to talk about!

Oh your blood will run cold and your heart fill with dread
'Coz the Jolly Rock is filled with the souls of the dead
If you stay there one night, you'll go clean off your head
And in no time at all you'll probably catch mumps

ihttp://www.freedigitalphotos.net/albums/userpics/10001/dungeness_lighthouse6.jpg

Lobos Lighthouse on the tiny Canary Island. The middle of the island itself is silent, I have never in my life experienced such a sensation of nothing. It was like being in a vacuum. Freaky scary, I thoroughly recommend a trip out there.

My locals:

http://www.danger-man.co.uk/images/prisoner/beachyhead.jpg
http://img3.buzznet.com/assets/users8/darrenmarks/default/gallery-msg-1118161373-2.jpg

And here's the warning:
http://www.tryfoneblog.com/photos/ef/c9/84ec88c69904.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/26/38940653_c0d02f252a.jpg

http://www2.iomtoday.co.uk/hosted/iomimages/Sea%20views/sea%20view%20main/Round%20Island%2022.JPG

this is Boston Light on Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor

http://www.angio.net/~reagan/images/bos-light.jpg

Bleak, cold and rugged. Fantastic.

http://www.mull-of-galloway.co.uk/photos/mull_lighthouse.jpg

The one I visited yesterday has two lighthouse keepers cottages that you can rent in the summer. The lighthouse is also open to visitors at the weekend, though only between May and October which is a pity. I'll be back!

northernmost point of mainland scotland (& britain, obviously)

http://static.flickr.com/26/60076780_c82d76228b_m.jpg

Such fine looking weather, not a stiff nipple in sight!

There was a photo of a remote lighthouse, on an island shaped remarkably like a foot, on the inside cover of a maths textbook I used in high school. I nearly failed Trigonometry because I spent so much time ignoring the lectures to stare at it. I wish I could remember which one it was.

And smell, mmm, that salty tang....

Though a house standing alone on a windswept moor with nothing in any direction for miles might just do it for me too. I've never seen such a house in my travels though. I'm thinking Father Teds house....

I grew up in an isolated farmhouse on top of a hill, in splendid isolation (well, at least until the suburbs started encroaching across the bills) - but a lighthouse would be even better.

http://www.members.tripod.com/carlvillanueva/1f324b00.jpg

Anyway, here is his own blurb:

"Lighthouses of England and Wales

- being a guided tour around a chorus of the main English and Welsh lighthouse phases
(as extant in the Trinity House Schedule of Lighthouses and Fog Signal Characters and
Equipment), from the Solway Firth to the Farne Islands, some of which were notated ‘in
the field’, and in which each lighthouse is portrayed in solo, in turn, with accom-
panying pre-echoes and ‘after-images’ of the others. And also part of a topographical
series of pieces featuring compositional ‘surveying’, whereby physical characteristics
and statistics form the basis of a piece’s musical realisation.

During the summer of 1987 I visited all the main Trinity House Lighthouses. I worked in
situ and from different vantage-points, notating the interplay of their patterns with
less important or more distant flashing signals. I worked entirely objective intentions,
and was not at all concerned with Romantic notions of seascape and moodscape (that came
later at my desk, when I adopted such concerns in a more ironic context). I tried to
examine ‘orchestrational’ notions of depicting weather, sea and natural phenomena in
terms of our conditioned responses to such musical approximations. Precise depiction of
weather was important. I worked in all conditions and travelled to other locations
during daylight.

Scale was something else I tried to notate. A distant lighthouse signal is the gentlest
bleep on the horizon. Close to, is a huge lumbering beam that swings past, appearing to
speed up as it comes towards you and slow down after it has gone past. This is trans-
lated into sound as its most literal when the conductor makes a semicircular sweeping
gesture across the orchestra, which cues all the players in domino effect as the conduc-
tor’s arm passes the line of vision.

This silent light was continuously mysterious to me, even more so given the metronomic
and dynamic way in which the lighthouses behaved. To translate light into sound on many
simultaneous levels was also am ‘orchestrational’ endeavour. I had in my mind the pos-
sibility of the piece representing a model of this island’s coastline, the size of a
concert hall, in which all the lighthouses are flashing in a tempo and can be viewed/
heard together. It is as if one is moving on a fast journey through a series of dif-
ferent locations while always remaining on the same spot. To use a photographic analogy,
each location exists in a different depth of field, each coming into focus to be viewed
briefly before turning the lens to take control and develop, by virtue of the deliberate
device of each new episode interrupting and distracting the listener’s attention, and
curtailing his or her involvement with the previous view or episode."

Never visited a lighthouse myself so I can't decide whether its successful on its own terms.

http://www.aworldofpictures.com/Images/Thomas-Point-Light.jpg

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080604/ap_on_re_us/odd_lighthouse_located

The mystery of the foot shaped lighthouse island is solved at last, by Coast. It is on Ynys Llanddwyn in Wales. This has been bothering me for over 25 years and now I know.