Island 466 - Calf of Man, Isle of Man

The Calf of Man lies half a mile off the south west coast of the Isle of Man and separated from it by a narrow stretch of water called Calf Sound.  It is a mile from north to south and from east to west at its widest points.  The highest point on the island is 128 metres above sea level.  The Manx name for the island is Yn Cholloo.  

The Calf of Man is now owned by the Manx Museum and National Trust and run as a nature reserve.  There is a bird observatory on the island, which is situated roughly in the middle of the island and in the most sheltered location.  The building was previously used as a farmhouse and was built by George Carey in 1878.  The bird observatory opened in 1959 and became an accredited observatory in 1962. There is a hostel/bunkhouse located at the bird observatory, which can accommodate 8 visitors.  The island is on the seasonal migration routes of many birds and various nets and traps are used to catch them for ringing and recording purposes.

The Calf of Man had many private owners over the centuries.  The last one - Mr F.J. Dickens of Silverdale in Lancashire - gave it to the National Trust in 1937.  When the Manx Museum and National Trust was formed in 1951, they leased the island.  They gained full ownership in 1986.

Two companies run day trips to the island: Shona Boat Trips, which run from Raglan Pier at Port Erin and , Port St Mary Boat Excursions, which strangely enough  run from Port St Mary.  I travelled with Shona Boat Trips and the crew on the boat were helpful and informative.  The amount of time you get ashore varies, depending on the tides and the day I went we had 3 hours.  This was enough time to walk along the footpath up the east coast of the island to Grant's Harbour at the north end of the island overlooking Calf Sound and then back down the track via the Bird Observatory to the 3 lighthouses before returning to South Harbour.  

The Calf of Man has no fewer than 4 lighthouses associated with it.  The first two were built by Robert Stevenson in 1818 to warn mariners of the dangers of Chicken Rock, which lies just under a mile south west of Caigher Point on the south coast of the Calf of Man.  At this time the technology was not available for a lighthouse to be built on Chicken Rock itself.  The lighthouses worked as a pair: when ships' crews saw the two lights converge, they knew they were close to the Chicken Rock and should alter their course.  However they often obscured by fog.  

By 1875, using techniques developed while building other rock lighthouses e.g. Bell Rock, a lighthouse was built on Chicken Rock itself by David and Thomas Stevenson.  In December 1960 the Chicken Rock Lighthouse was badly damaged by a fire.  It was automated in 1961.  
In 1968 the Northern Lighthouse Board built another lighthouse on the Calf of Man between the 1818 lighthouses.  This was automated in 1995 and decommissioned in 2007 when the Chicken Rock Lighthouse was upgraded and restored.

When I visited the Calf of Man in early July 2019, there were lots of dark green fritillary butterflies around.  We saw several seals on the boat journey to the island.  I saw and heard several choughs.  There is an ongoing project to eradicate brown rats (known as long tails on the Isle of Man as there is a superstition that says you shouldn't say the word "rat".) with the aim of helping the Manx shearwater population to recover.  Very few puffins breed on the island at present. In order to encourage them to choose the Calf of Man as a breeding place, model puffins have been placed on the cliffs and we saw some from the boat.  However the puffins have not been taken in by these decoys!  The island is grazed by Manx loaghtan sheep.

The small island in between the Calf of Man and the Isle of Man is called Kitterland.  On 29th December 1852 the brig Lily ran aground on Kitterland and 5 of the people onboard were drowned. She was carrying a cargo of gunpowder and a few days later during the salvage operation it exploded and 29 people were killed.  

In Calf Sound between Kitterland and the north coast of the Calf of Man is a rock called Thousla. In April 1858 the French schooner Jeane/Jeune St Charles was en routePontrieux in Brittany to Londonderry when she was damaged in a storm and ran aground on Thousla.    The six crew abandoned ship but their lifeboat capsized and they were left clinging to the rock.  The two ships boys were drowned but the remaining four men were eventually rescued several hours later by 5 boatmen from Port St Mary. The 5 boatmen involved in the successful rescue were awarded the silver Medal of Honour by the French government.

In 1859 the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses built a beacon on Thousla to warn shipping.  A memorial to the two boys who were drowned, in the shape of the Iron Cross of Lorraine was erected on top of the beacon.  The beacon and cross were swept away in a storm in 1905.  In 1907 a concrete beacon was built on Thousla and a wooden cross was placed on top of it.  In 1980 the wooden cross was removed from Thousla and re-erected near the Sound Café on the Isle of Man.  It is still there.

Burroo or Burrow - a large rock off the south coast of the Calf of Man

 Can you see the dragon (he is crouching down)?

South Harbour

Looking south down The Eye towards Burrow

Looking north across Calf Sound towards Kitterland and the Isle of Man

Sculpture on the beach at Grant's Harbour

Grant's Harbour

Grant's Harbour looking north east over Calf Sound

Slipway at Grant's Harbour

Grant's Harbour

A few trees on a largely treeless island - close to the Bird Observatory

Heligoland Bird Trap near the Bird Observatory

Bird Observatory

Entrance to the Bird Observatory

Not sure why this bird trap is called Eureka

Bird Trap outside the Bird Observatory

Outbuildings at the Bird Observatory

Not sure what the original purpose of this building was?

Signpost

Upper Light

1968 Lighthouse

3 lighthouses in the same photo

Lower Lighthouse and Chicken Rock Lighthouse

Lower Lighthouse

Lower Lighthouse

Upper lighthouse from the lower one

All 4 lighthouses in the same photo

Old Smithy

Old Smithy

Ruined Mill

Old millstone at the Old Mill

The Leodan

South Harbour

Building at South Harbour

South Harbour

Old tree trunk at South Harbour

Map of the Calf of Man showing the tracks and paths

Calf of Man from Spanish Head

Calf of Man

Thousla Cross - looking south west towards Kitterland and the Calf of Man

Kitterland and the Calf of Man from the mainland

Island 465 - Conister Rock or St Mary's Isle, Isle of Man

Conister Rock or St Mary's Isle is located at the southern end of Douglas Bay about 300 metres from the promenade.  It doesn't really qualify as an island, as the rocks are completely covered at high spring tides, but I am including it because it has a building on it, which is known as the Tower of Refuge.  Conister Rock was a notorious hazard to shipping before and even after the Tower of Refuge was built on it.  The name Conister is a corruption of the Manx Kione y sker, meaning "end or head of the reef".

Sir William Hillary moved to the Isle of Man in 1808 and made his home at Fort Anne overlooking Douglas Bay.  In 1824 he founded the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (it was initially called the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck).  The first lifeboat to be built was stationed at Douglas. 

On 19th November 1830 the packet steamer St George arrived in Douglas, having sailed from Liverpool with passengers and mail.  Having unloaded her passengers and the mail she anchored close to Conister Rock for the night.   There was a storm during the night and the St George hit the rock and filled with water.  Her captain - Lieutenant John Tudor sent out distress signals.  The event was witnessed by Sir William Hillary from his home at Fort Anne.  He immediately went down to  the pier and with Lieutenant Robinson, William Corlett, Isaac Vondy and a crew of 14 volunteers he set out in a lifeboat to rescue the crew of the St George.  The lifeboat was damaged during the rescue attempt and at one point 4 of the men in it were swept overboard.  They managed to get back into the lifeboat and after another two hours the 22 crew members of the St George managed to get into the lifeboat.  Then the lifeboat was washed on to the rock and swamped.  All 40 men were eventually rescued by 2 more boats that has put out from the pier.

The Tower of Refuge was built by Sir William Hillary in 1832, as a warning to ships of the rock's presence at high tide and to act as a place of refuge in the event of there being another shipwreck here.  The Tower of Refuge was designed to look like a medieval castle, with castellations and corbels. by local architect John Welch.  The cost of the tower was £254, a proportion of which was given by Sir William Hillary, the rest coming from the harbour commission and private individuals.

Even after the construction of the Tower of Refuge, ships continued to run aground on Conister Rock: in 1867 the schooner Thomas Parker was driven onto the rock during a storm and in 1830 the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company's ship RMS Mona ran aground on it.

  

I arrived in Douglas at 6am on the overnight ferry from Heysham.  The sun was shining and there was a low spring tide at 07:19am.  Most of the websites that I had found in advance of my visit implied that it is only possible to walk out to Conister Rock a couple of times a year when the spring tides are exceptionally low.  Low tide on the day I visited was 0.5 metres, which wasn't the lowest it could be but my walk out was largely clear of water (there were a couple of ankle deep channels of water to walk through). The main problem was the very slippery seaweed, particularly the kelp.  At the times of the year with the lowest spring tides charity walks out to the Tower of Refuge are sometimes organised and hundreds of people take part but I had the rock and the tower to myself.

The tower has an open archway on its west side.  Inside the archway is a stone staircase which leads up to the upper level.  At the time of my visit the upper level was covered in scaffolding poles.   It is not possible to climb up the central tower.

Tower of Refuge

Silhouette of the Tower of Refuge

Approaching the Tower of Refuge across the seaweed

On top of the Tower of Refuge

Douglas Promenade from the Tower of Refuge

Cruise ship in Douglas Bay from the Tower of Refuge

No entry to the central tower

Plaque commemorating Sir William Hillary on the Tower of Refuge

Entrance

Tower of Refuge and cruise ship in Douglas Bay

Tower of Refuge in the early morning sunshine

Island 464 - Old Law, Northumberland

Old Law is an uninhabited tidal island located to the north of Ross Back Sands on the east coast of Northumberland.  It is separated from Ross Back dunes by a gap of about 300 metres on the sea side at Ross Point but only about 50 metres on the landward western side.  The landward side is a salt marsh, while the seaward side of the gap is sandy.  The gap is called Wide Open, which is an appropriate name for a gap! The island itself is really just a very large sand dune, which is now covered in marram and other grasses.  The island is just under a mile long by about 400 metres wide at its widest points.

It seems that Old Law only became an island at some point between 1769 (Armstrong's map) and 1820 (Fryer's map). 

Ross Back Sands are only accessible on foot.  There is an informal parking area for a dozen or so cars at the end of the public road at Ross (grid reference).  There are no road signs to the beach.  When I arrived at about 8.45 on a weekday morning there were only a couple of cars there but by the time I left 2 hours later the parking area was full.  It is a flat walk of just over a mile from the parking area north east along the only public footpath, which first passes some holiday cottages, then crosses a field (full of placid cows when I visited) before entering an area of rough grazing, which soon becomes sand dunes.  Once you get to the beach, you then have to turn north west and walk up the beach for 2km in order to reach the crossing point to Old Law.  The day I visited was a particularly low tide and I don't know how long the island is cut off for on an average tide.  It was a bit of a trudge along the beach, as the sand is a bit soft in places.

A 25" to a mile scale Ordnance Survey map from 1898 shows a lifeboat house and well located in the middle of the island but towards the southern end.  These were marked as disused on a 1922 map and they are not shown at all on modern OS maps.

There are two prominent tall navigation beacons at Guile Point on the northern end of Old Law, one on the foreshore and one in the dunes.   They look a bit like industrial chimneys.  I only explored the southern tip of the island, although I had seen the daymarks from Holy Island a couple of days previously.

Map showing the location of Old Law

 

Looking north towards Old Law

 

Looking south east over Ross Back Sands towards the Farne Islands

 

Ross Point from Old Law

 

Old lobster pot on the south coast of Old Law

 

Looking south from Old Law across Wide Open towards Ross Back Sands

 

Pirri-pirri bur

This is an invasive non-native species from New Zealand

 

Salt marsh separating Old Law from Ross Point

 

No public access beyond this point

 

 

Looking south east from Old Law towards the Farne Islands

 

Marram grass on Old Law

 

Looking north up the east coast

 

Looking south east over Ross Back Sands towards the Farne Islands

 

Improvised seat on the east coast of Old Law

 

Lindisfarne Castle from Old Law

 

Looking north up the east coast of Old Law towards Lindisfarne Castle

 

Navigation beacons at Guile Point from Holy Island