Eastern Promise (unrequited) A day on Rathlin 01 September 2024

 

Part of painting, by James Coyle, of Rue beacon and light.  This is on display
in a gallery up near the Catholic Church on the island.

A very grey day on Rathlin today.  With a SE breeze, and quite cool.  So we had a gentle start to the day, after all we are not moving on today.  After breakfast, followed immediately by morning coffee, we went for a walk to the East Lighthouse. It’s not a long walk (about 3 miles the round trip) but it was a lovely walk.  It’s part of the island we are not very familiar with and so it was good to explore.  The narrow roads are easy walking and, surprisingly to us, the verges and open moorland are a riot of rich colour from the wild flowers - mainly very low-lying yellow gorse (just a few inches high) and purple heather.  But there are also a plethora of other flowers mixed in with blues, purples, yellows, orange and red.

From top left, clockwise: scabious, knapweed, harebells, montbretia, gorse and heather.

The East Lighthouse was good to see, though, of course, pretty similar to many other lighthouses.  Our slight disappointment was that the grounds of the lighthouse are walled and gated, locked shut, and one definitely was not welcome to intrude.  So we didn’t.

East Lighthouse (from a distance)

One of the highlights of the East Light is that it is the location of Robert the Bruce’s spidery cave. In 1306 Robert the Bruce, after his defeat by the English at Perth, hid here in a cave “just below the lighthouse” - visitors cannot actually see the cave.  It was in this cave that the despondent Robert encountered the spider that gave him new heart and sent him back to Scotland to defeat the English at the Battle of Bannockburn.

A portrait of Robert the Bruce (did he really have a squint?), and a
blue plaque located on the Information Centre in Church Bay.

The ubiquitous Guglielmo Marconi was in action at the East Light (as he seems to have been at every headland everywhere).  Apparently Lloyd’s of London asked him to set up a radio link from Rathlin, which he did in 1898.  Lloyd’s needed to know as quickly as possible that ships insured by them had crossed the Atlantic safely.  If they could be seen from Rathlin then they were in safe waters. This was the very first time anywhere in the world that regular radio communication for a commercial purpose was transmitted (according to the sign at the East Light).

Back in Church Bay in 2004 the Ballycastle Writers had been busy.  They inaugurated, actually by Colin Bateman, the Writers Chair.  On the front of it is a verse by Seamus Heaney, and on the back of the chair is a growing list of ‘artists’ who have sat on it.

The Writers Chair.
The Seamus Heaney verse is:

When you sat, far-eyed and cold, in that basalt throne,
The small of your back made very solid sense.
You gathered force out of the world-tree’s hardness
If you stretched your hand forth, things might turn to stone.

A leisurely afternoon - buying chocolate, reading, snoozing, Googling, adding to the bird list (each to their own) - is due to be followed by dinner in the Manor House.  Several people have told us that their seafood is extremely good. 

Watch this space……….and so it was very good indeed.  Food was lovely and the service perfect.  Happy Days.

From top left, clockwise: scallops as starter; seafood tagliatelle; porketta with apple jus;
 salmon and mushroom rigatoni.

Our Rathlin bird list is a modest 33 species.  Wimbrel is the one that feels the best to me.

No route today.

My mate just invented the invisible aeroplane.

                 I can’t see that taking off.