A Night to Remember.

So how do you switch on the light in a lighthouse?  You press a switch, just the same as in your own home.

And the bulb is lit.  

But then all the fins/lenses do amazing things (my name is not Stevenson, so I do not know how this works) and sends out that light 15 miles out to sea.

Kinnaird Head Lighthouse, Fraserburgh, the site of the first ever lighthouse established by the Northern Lighthouse Board in 1787.  Now the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses.

Shines it's light once more.

Along with a Beacon to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

What a fantastic evening.  We arrived at 9p.m. and were given a guided tour.

Above, the fog horn. (If its so foggy you cant see the light, then you have to listen, really hard.)

The Wynd Tower ( its at the end of the Wynd - path, road, whatever, you fall into the sea.)  The Lairds daughter some years back took a fancy for someone who the Laird did not think appropriate and she was locked up in here.  To escape she leapt out the window, to her death, so they paint the rocks below red in memory of her, every year.  Isnt that nice of them?

Ooop the bloody tower, which you will all be proud of me as I went up it twice and only had to sit down, three (33) times.  Into where the spare lighthouse keeper lived.  The ones who were not spare, and lived there all the time, had dinky little cottages for their wife and children on the ground.  Presumably by the time he had been up and down here a few times he would have no time or breath for any hanky panky with the permanent keepers wives.

But then he could smoke and didnt need a fire extinguisher.

This is me listening intently (which I will never do again, if thats the sort of face I pull) as to why they needed all these weird tools to light a lighthouse with.

At some point in the evening we were all checked out by the Lifeboat but we were fine.

Up on the roof ( have to point out that the lighthouse is built on top of a castle, so actually the castle roof,  just left of the lighthouse) the wine and canapes were coming out.  So I was fine, despite another odd grimace.  Presumably talking to someone who was taller than 5 foot.  Which I am.

The sun set.

And the moon rose.

I managed to get to the car , I forgot to mention how bloody cold it was outside, but it was.  We actually missed the on the ground celebrations which consisted of some fire throwers.  I was so cold that the DP was concerned I would throw myself onto the flames, (possibly hoping),   but this night was one I shall remember, and I never felt the need of a crown.