Remote Mayo facility, with its adjacent working pier and two helipads, is an important refuelling depot under the remit of the Department of the Marine and Irish Lights
Blacksod lighthouse in Co Mayo: facility is one of four along this 33km stretch of coastline in Erris, Co Mayo, called the Mullet peninsula. Photograph: Niall Carson/PAFramed by the squat, square and corbelled Blacksod lighthouse, it is a grey and windswept summer’s day at the southern tip of one of the country’s most remote peninsulas in Co Mayo.
Of course it was his late granny Maureen who ensured this lighthouse’s international renown, after her weather report warning of strong winds on June 5th, 1944, changed the course of the second World War and ensured the success of the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy a day later than planned by the Allied Forces, on June 6th.
Eventually, Gerry was stationed back home on Eagle Island and the family set up home in Blacksod, while Vincent and his family continued to live in the lighthouse until 1991. “There is huge interest in Maureen’s weather report and how it changed D-Day,” she says. “On one tour I noticed a woman listening intently, and at the end she said her grandfather had been in Normandy and she believed he had been saved because of the forecast from here.”
It was to this helipad that the tragic Rescue 116 helicopter was flying to refuel when it crashed in March 2017 at Blackrock island, with the loss of four lives.
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