Dinner at the top of a lighthouse.
Decommissioned in 1988. Fourteen covers, one sitting, and the optic still turns — we bring it round by hand at dusk, the way the keepers did.
Take a sitting
Turn it.
Six panels, four tonnes, floating on mercury. Give it a shove and it keeps going, the same as it does every night.
Drag the optic — or tap a panel
The climb
One hundred and sixty-eight steps, cast iron, worn concave in the middle by a century of boots. There is no lift and there never was.
168 steps
Fourteen covers, Thursday to Sunday, from dusk.
You arrive an hour before sunset, climb while it is still light, and come down in the dark with a torch we lend you.
Take a sittingGetting here
Park at the coastguard cottages and walk the last 900 metres. Boots, not shoes. The gate is locked at dusk and we unlock it for you.
The sitting
Thursday to Sunday. One sitting, arriving 90 minutes before sunset. Six courses, all of it landed or grown within eleven miles.
The weather
We cancel for wind over force 7, and we will tell you by two o'clock. Roughly nine sittings a year go that way.
Staying
Two rooms in the keepers' quarters below, both with the original bunks. Breakfast is at the top, in the daylight, which is a different room entirely.