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Do you know what a foghorn looks like?

Now I do, and you do too.

By Luke Beard

June 15^th, 2024

I go to Scotland at least once a year.

My dad and his partner have had a guest house in the small town of Oban for over a decade. But his main residence is on the western peninsula of the Butte of Argyll. One trip specifically that I would like to share was sparked by a question from my father.

“Do you know what a foghorn looks like, and do you want to see Ireland?”

There were, of course, a lot of questions that followed, but ultimately, he knew that all I wanted to do was take photos when I was in Scotland. He had something special to show me. He mentioned that about two hours south, there was a lighthouse with an old foghorn attached to it. If we got up early enough, we could drive there.

An early one

Much to my jet lag’s opposition, we chose to get up the following morning around 5 A.M. We piled into his relatively rust-filled Ford Transit work van and drove the two hours south to see this foghorn.

While I’ve spent a lot of time with my dad in the past couple of years, we did spend a bunch of time fairly estranged. So, it’s always nice to actually spend one-on-one time with him. This was a multifaceted benefit of getting up at 5 a.m., again, much against my jet lag’s argument.

The thickest of fogs

Much of the drive there was on the same Scottish roads I’ve seen for the past decade. Beautiful, of course, but at the same time, I've seen this before.

Sheep were dotted around the landscape as if put there at random, and the tips of the Scottish trees started to illuminate as the sun started to creep up. The road was filled with fog thicker than I had ever seen it in Scotland before, creating a spooky, somewhat "murder in the countryside" type atmosphere.

On the way down to the lighthouse, the rain was light and unoffensive, but it filled my glasses with droplets that made me feel like this was going to be a rough trip. Just as we arrived, the sun was beginning to make an appearance.

Unmanned but in operation

And, lo and behold, there was a foghorn.

Just as my father had said, we could see Ireland. I had never seen Ireland from Scotland before, but from where we were standing, we could see the cliffs of Northern Ireland. The foghorn had been in operation since the early 1900s and was part of a network of foghorns to keep shipping vessels away from the Scottish coastline.

We had the feeling that we were maybe trespassing, but I was constantly assured by my previously rebellious father that we were okay. The trip down to the lighthouse was incredibly steep, and someone had actually built a guest house just above where we were heading. I couldn’t imagine the rawness of waking up to look at this particular part of the British coastline.

Since 1788

The Mull of Kintyre Lighthouse, established in 1788, was one of the first lighthouses built in Scotland by the Commissioners of the Northern Lights. Designed and built by Thomas Smith with the assistance of Robert Stevenson, it was constructed on a cliff 240 feet above the sea.

The lighthouse was initially fixed, but it was converted to a flashing light in 1906 and its power significantly increased from 8,000 to 281,000 candlepower. It was electrified in 1976, with its power boosted to 1,575,000 candlepower, and automated in 1996["].

I took a lot of photos, of course. This whole trip was really for the isolated feel of this particular end of the coastline, but also taking photos of infrastructure is oddly my cup of tea. It was fortunate that the weather seemed to lift as we got closer to the lighthouse. It was nerve-wracking, as someone who wanted to take photos, that the entire ride there had been foggy.

Yet, as soon as we arrived, it looked as picturesque as you could imagine for an early morning foghorn visit. In the end, a foggy drive to a foghorn was just what I needed for this trip.