A brick tower at the end of a sand spit
Thirty-five kilometres of pine forest and dunes, a wind that never once let go of my hood, and a light that was rebuilt in the middle of a war. October on the Hel Peninsula is grey, empty and quite wonderful.
53°22′N 005°13′E · Logbook open since 2017
Notes from the edge of the land
For seventeen years I steered the Harlingen ferry across the Wadden Sea by the lights of the Frisian coast. Now I go and visit them. This is my field journal: 118 lighthouses so far, the people who kept them, the language their lamps speak, and the long roads and short boats that lead out to them.
- 118lighthouses visited
- 21countries
- 19,870steps climbed
- 3nights in a keeper's room
From the logbook
Latest notes
Midsummer at Långe Jan
Scandinavia's tallest lighthouse on the shortest night of the year. The ringers at the Ottenby bird station were catching warblers at three in the morning, and the lamp barely had time to matter.
The lighthouse that walked inland
In 1999 Cape Hatteras was rolled 2,900 feet away from a hungry ocean. I stood where it used to be, ankle-deep in surf, and looked back at the black-and-white spiral up among the pines.
Lighthouse of the month · November 2026
Hook Head
County Wexford, Ireland · 52°07′N 006°56′W
Every November, when the first proper Atlantic gales come through, I think of Hook Head. Monks are said to have tended a fire on this low limestone tongue since the fifth century, and the tower you can climb today was raised in the early 1200s, with walls up to four metres thick and rooms vaulted in stone. It is one of the oldest working lighthouses anywhere, and it does not look like it is in any hurry to stop.
- Tower
- c. 1210
- Height
- 35 m
- Light
Fl W 3s- Steps
- 115
Further reading
Set a course
The Atlas
From the Roman Tower of Hercules to a white concrete post at the top of New Zealand: the lighthouses I keep coming back to, with their heights, years and light characteristics.
The Keepers
Forty-one nights on a rock off West Cork, a widow who wound the clockwork on Hiiumaa, and a girl who counted birds against the lantern glass on Öland.
Reading the Lights
What does Fl(3) W 15s actually mean? Pick a characteristic, watch the lamp keep its rhythm, and learn to recognise a light by its signature.
“Brandaris, one flash every five seconds. I counted it on four thousand crossings, and I still count it in my sleep.”Maren Holt, on why this site exists