Coastal Day - 6/13/23

 Tuesday June 13

• 9:30am
• Breakfast in town (Cahersiveen) at the Bari Cafe
• Avocado on sourdough toast and americano - Excellent
• 11:00am
  Drive to Valencia Island for some sight seeing
  • Ferry to the island
  • Tour the Victorian Lighthouse
  • Built on the site of a 17th century fort by Oliver Cromwell to protect the navigation channel into Valencia harbour
  • Fortress build in the 5 point star (Bastion) style to defend from all directions
  • Defense against English, Dutch, and Spanish invasions during this time
  • Lighthouse build in 1841 was manned and maintained by lighthouse keepers and their families until 1947 when it was automated

Signpost along the TransAtlantic Trail that identifies key points where the cable operation was started (and sometimes failed)

Valencia Bay Lighthouse 

View from the top of the Lighthouse

The current Lighthouse keeper - quite the local character!

Standing stones - dated to 2000 to 4000 years ago - placed here as a visual reference to boats passing this point during the Bronze and Iron Ages
One cluster of over 120 such sites across the region  - built to mark important places in the landscape like routeways, boundaries, ritual sites and burial sites of important people

2:00pm

Back into PortMagee for some excellent coffee at the Wildway coffee kiosk dockside

Visit the Skellig information center and learn more about the Transatlantic cable project from the late Victorian era

• Find a commemorative stone that displays the timeline of the various attempts to lay the cable on the ocean bed between Ireland and Newfoundland to provide telegraph communication.
• The first message was sent by Queen Victoria to President Buchannan in the U.S. in 1894. 
• She said "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace and good will to all men."

3:00pm

K & A take a walk up BrayHead Hill while F&B head back into PortMagee for a light lunch

8:00pm

K&A's famous NutRoast for dinner!