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Magnificent Rock
  Photograph by Martin Hansen

  

Magnificent Rock

On slow ahead we went right around the Fastnet Rock, We watched as a helicopter landed on a pad adjacent to the lighthouse, then left again half an hour later. The rock was closer to the mainland than we had expected but even so, building the lighthouse must have been a formidable task. Later I found out that the original lighthouse, built in 1853, had proved too weak, shaking violently every time an Atlantic storm rolled in. A replacement lighthouse entered service in 1904. The £90,000 it cost then translates as £11 million today, once inflation has been allowed for.
 

  
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