There was ‘no tourism in Fanad’ before the lighthouse tourist centre, which employs 29 local people
people a half-century ago, British writer Tony Parker told of a retired keeper living on a remote island clifftop for an uninterrupted view of his old lighthouse on the horizon far away.
“You have to respect the sea,” says McAteer, recalling weather talk by CB radio with lightkeepers in Skerryvore and Barra Head in Scotland. Fanad remains a working lighthouse, one of 11 in Co Donegal, the navigation apparatus under the control of the Commissioners of Irish Lights. Eight years ago the tower opened as a tourist attraction. Forbairt Fhánada, a community company, provides daily tours and accommodation in three houses formerly occupied by lightkeepers and their families. Some 60,000 people came in 2023.
He tells of tragedy and danger. Four local fishermen were lost in 1956, bringing the first rescue helicopter to Fanad: “Someone discovered the boat and the nets ashore in the morning.”
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