TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

I've been heading over to South Stack for quite a number of years now, mostly for the bird-watching, and taking pretty much the same views of the lighthouse every year, give or take a fog bank or two, but this year's visit was different because I decided that the time was right to buy my ticket and risk the long, long flight of steps down to the rock itself.

This is not quite as straightforward as you might think because, whilst the RSPB centre will sell you the tickets (after the 'witching hour' when it opens has been reached) they don't actually "own" the island or the lighthouse itself but will issue friendly warnings about the great number of steps down and, more importantly, back up again, which need to be taken in order to reach it.

Of course, I've known about this possible ordeal for many years now, and never previously taken the opportunity but this time I decided that I would jolly well risk it and, even if I failed in my quest, it was better to have at least tried.

So, we got our tickets and headed on up the hill towards where the path down begins, meaning, of course, that we already were feeling fairly knackered before we started the climb down. Obviously, however, the 400 or so steps down was the easy part, as was crossing the bridge across to the island itself. This brought back a memory of a day many, many years ago when I was making a similar walk in (I think) Northern Ireland where the last part of the journey involved crossing a rickety looking rope bridge to get to their lighthouse and I flatly refused to have anything to do with such a mad venture, especially as I seem to recall that I didn't even have a camera with me at the time to record this follysome adventure.

This time it was easier, although crossing took a while as I had to photograph the living daylights out of the bridge, of course. Then we arrived at the lighthouse itself to be greeted by a jolly fellow who told us that we could climb to the top if we wished, once "these other people" (who we could see were descending the path after us) had arrived.

So, on top of the 800 plus steps we'd already committed ourselves to, we added a couple of hundred more, although it was a pretty spectacular climb, once we'd walked through the small museum that they'd set up telling something of the history of the place.

I was most distracted by the incredible engineering of the lenses and structure of the light itself and asked stupid questions about who had designed this miracle of illumination, instead of just drinking in the moment and the view.

All to soon, we were making the hair-raising decent back down the open-sided spiral stair, wondering how the men who worked there ever managed if they had to bound up and down it a dozen times a day in the days before automatic bulb switching and self-cleaning glass, and then, after taking yet more photographs, on the not unreasonable assumption that we may never get another opportunity to do so, we gritted our teeth and made the climb back up those stone steps again, with me failing spectacularly to help pass the time by mentioning the vague acquaintance I have with someone in TwitWorld who used to live there as a child.

There had been mention of the children of the lighthouse-keepers and how they'd spend weekdays in the village before returning at weekends during the little talk that was given whilst we stood at the top, but there were no photographs of them in the exhibition and the thought had slipped away, but, whilst all sounding jolly exciting, it must have been a most unusual life.

Anyway, we've been to the lighthouse now and, not only that, but we can say that we've already been there the next time I'm standing a safe distance away from the edge of the cliffs and looking down at it, no doubt taking exactly the same photograph of it as I have already done countless times, and being distracted by the brilliance of what it does and the fact that it's only due to some incredible engineering that it's even there at all instead of just watching the birds.