Just to the west we found our next step. And in true local fashion, it’s beautiful, and entirely devoid of human life at the moment. Also there are a few houses dotting the area, reasonable little places, with people all at work, or tending to chores, or who knows what. It’s a sunny Friday in the spring, it’s a reasonable temperature, and no one is around.

Ballyhiernan Bay consists of a sandy beach, about a mile long, backed by low dunes and protected on its flanks by rocky points to the east and west. Directly through there, though, is the Atlantic Ocean.

The tides were well out, and the beach was pristine. There are cattle and sheep grazing behind us here, but it hasn’t always been as peaceful as all of this. The 3rd Earl of Leitrim, William Clements, a balding many of bushy hair, had all of this in his estate at one time. His family had earned it the old-fashioned way: they’d stolen it decades earlier. Also, he had a thing about assaulting girls and women, supposedly. A real tyrant. His historical pullquote has become Lord Leitrim was not a bad man – if he got his own way. He had a history of evicted people for the slightest reasons. So maybe not a pleasant man. Here, after several previous attempts on his life, the locals got their revenge. In 1878, on a windy, sleet-filled April morning, they ambushed the man’s carriage and killed him and two of his employees. A few people were arrested, one died in jail, no one was ever convicted.

And that wasn’t enough for the locals. A few days later, people tried to capture his hearse. Apparently they wanted to throw his remains into the street. In 1960, a Celtic Cross monument was dedicated to the men who killed the earl, “in the cause against landlordism.”

This took place about 10 miles away. From reading the above account it was not an easy death. But standing there, at the beach, having read the tourist marker, you only know a little a bit about this. The historical signs are selective, and bound by space limitations and public relations considerations because, hey, beach!

Off to the left side of the beach we spent some time among the rocks and the tidal pools that make up a part of the point.

It’s been almost 150 years. You wonder if any of the people living here now are descended from those farmers, or those “patriots.” You wonder if there’s any knowing slaps on the back at the pub. “My great-great-great-great-great grandpa showed him!” With history so deep, some stories would probably sound as if they knew those people, as if they were still looking for clues out on that muddy hill.

I found a piece of rusted angle iron on the beach. I wonder if it means something.

The pebbles were more interesting. I picked up a few and played with them on the way back to the car.

I should have been looking for patriots.

We moved up the bay and are, here, pretty close, to the northernmost part of the emerald isle.

Fanad Point, the tip of a long peninsula, has long been strategically important, and hazardous for sailors. Today, about 2,700 people live in the area. The fishing industry has long been in decline, but livestock and salmon farming are some of the many economic drivers. Because of the dramatic coastline, and the varying salinity of the water, every lagoon is just a bit different, and so there are all sorts of different biomes.

For about a century the British had coast guard stations here and in other places around Ireland, but that all changed with the treaty in 1921. The Irish themselves took over, and this was one of about 200 lookout posts along the coast. In 1939 World War II began about 250 miles away at sea in 1939. Seventeen men kept watch here for much of the war, though the Irish managed to stay out of things. They and their counterparts listed dozens of torpedoed and ships bombed in the North Atlantic in December of 1940.

But the history goes back a bit further. The first lighthouse, a need inspired by the nearby wreck of the HMS Saldahna that we just learned about, came in to service here in 1817. This beautiful lighthouse was erected in 1886.

If you take the tour, you go into two main rooms on the ground level and learn a bit about what it meant to be a light keeper here, and about some of the experiences of the people who worked out here, which was a manual operation until 1983.

You have the great big light, of course, but for direct communication, at a closer ranger, you would use the flag system. Each of these flags serves as a letter, phrases, or codes. You’ve perhaps seen them on a ship. But you don’t often see them together historically, apparently. This complete and original set seems to be a rare thing in Ireland.

The people working here were simply the signal operators, a different setup than we had in the U.S. where the man that had to climb the steps also had to sometimes hustle out to sea to help people in distress. But, here, the key that climbed these steps just called the rescuing professionals. And those guys got help in 1969, when helicopters came to the peninsula.

The 1906 lighting apparatus was replaced in 1975 when the light was converted to an unwatched electric setup. In 1978 the assistant keeper was transferred. When the principal keeper retired in 1983 the station was re-classified as an attendant station.

Because I read, Brilliant Beacons, a book about lighthouses, I asked the host about Fresnel lenses. He immediately had me pegged as That Guy. Anyway, the light here sits behind a 300mm refractor. The light’s distinctive signal can be seen 21 miles away at sea.

And here’s a view from outside. We were just up there! That point in the distance is the other side of the bay. That’s some four miles away. So there, and well beyond, the light keeps the night.

There’s something romantic about lighthouses, we all seem to agree. And even as you learn more about them, that doesn’t necessarily go away. Maybe it becomes more mysterious. While many lighthouses the world over are now automated, and the ones still in operation can be vitally important, if a backup of sorts, we’re never going to look at a GPS system — miraculous as they are — in air, on land and at sea — with the same sort of wonder.

I think it is the style of technology. The lighthouse represents a lonely, perpetual vigil with no peers beyond the next lighthouse elsewhere down the shore. They stand there, quietly, and say a lot. And, without them, the very real possibility of doom awaits us. GPS, meanwhile, is omnipresent, and always chattering. You have how many apps on your phone that are tapping into it at any give time? And, sure, you can’t beat that functionality and the precision is quite something, but even in just a generation of everyday use we’ve come to think of it not as a lifesaver — which it clearly is in some circumstances — but merely a directional tool.

If you just sailed over here, rolled down the window and yelled to some landlubber “Which way to Scapa Flow?” you’d be no more impressed when the fellow gave you an answer.

There’s a little VR video you can watch at the lighthouse. You put on a headset and it tells the story of that 1811 vessel that sank nearby, the HMS Saldahna. The video is narrated by the captain’s parrot, which survived the wreck. Or a cartoon of the parrot. We’ll never know what the real parrot thought. The bird met it’s own grisly fate nearby soon after.

We walked along the shore and enjoyed some of the views behind the gift shop. They have three options to stay here, renting out the recently restored lightkeeper’s cabins. No phone, no wifi, it sounds delightful. Read at night, walk here in the daytime. It is probably a bit out of my price range, but if I ever disappear, add this to places you might look for me. But only after a month or so has passed by.

These are both panoramas. Click to see them in another browser, and then click them once more to see the whole image.

We got a few things from the gift shop, including dry socks. If you rent one of those cabins, make sure you take good care of your feet. The ground can be sodden here, but by no means should that dissuade you. You’ll love it here.