Rathlin - Nature and Folklore
PART ONE - NATURE 1. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE Crossing the Sound I first saw Rathlin Island fifty years ago in May 1960 from the 200 metre (a little over 600 ft) high cliff top of Fair Head, at Ireland’s north-east corner. A twitchy teenage birdwatcher, I was on the headland to spot Ireland’s only pair of breeding golden eagles. The island shone in the sun then quite quickly fragmented and vanished under a sea mist. I sensed its allure and wished to go there. Three months later, a friend invited me to join an expedition to Rathlin to set up a bird observatory and my wish came true. Following that first view of Rathlin, it is August and I am looking at her again, this time from the small pier at Ballycastle, waiting while the ferryman chides us about the amount of luggage our party has dumped beside the mail boat he runs between this north Antrim resort and the island. Half an hour out from Ballycastle harbour the little boat pitches and tosses in the slough-na-mara (‘hollow of the sea’), a notorious tide rip in Rathlin Sound. The boat is low in the water, weighed down by our party of eight, our rucsacs, supplies for two months and sections of wooden bunk-beds for the sparsely furnished lighthouse cottage that is our destination. White cliffs of chalk gleam and towers of black basalt glower, then all vanish as we plough into a trough of green water.
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