At Cumbria’s most westerly point, I watch two fulmars glide stiff-winged on the wind over the unmanned lighthouse. Guillemots follow suit, as does a razorbill (inappropriately named, for, though similar, their beaks are blunter and thicker). The adjacent red sandstone cliffs, 300ft high, are home to an RSPB bird reserve that claims to be the largest seabird colony in north-west England.



B-o-o-om! “What was that?” asks a startled woman, one of a group tackling Wainwright’s Coast-to-Coast walk. “It’s not the foghorn,” says another walker, consulting a guidebook. “Says here it has long been decommissioned. Maybe it’s wind hitting the cliffs.” She reads from the book: “Wreckers once lured ships below the headland with lanterns, then plundered the wreckage.” They stride on towards Robin Hood’s Bay 14 days and 190-odd miles to the east.

With two friends I descend the sloping pasture to a fence above an Irish Sea as dimpled as bubble-wrap. At a sign reading “Dangerous cliff” I leave them to it: “The Fishermen’s Steps drop down from here. Good luck taking the photos.”

Sandwith lighthouse, St Bees Head. Photograph: Tony Greenbank

Three sea anglers with rods and bags arrive on top. “Watch it down there,” they shout as my pals climb over the fence and start down the faint trod (path) beyond. “Grab the chains and ropes hanging down the steps. Don’t look down.”

I go back up to the lighthouse with the fishermen. The day’s catches include dabs, several cod and a conger eel (“poor man’s scampi”). Catches vary from year to year, they tell me. “We fish from sandstone ledges and big rocks. Folk can get stranded by the tide.”

At the top I meet Frank Telfer, who farms the headland. It was his great-uncle Harold who hung the chains and cut the Fisherman’s Steps in the soft rock with a hammer and chisel when he was in his late 70s. “It was among his last wishes before he died.”

As sunset approaches, the lighthouse lantern sensor lances a lemon-yellow beam towards the Isle of Man, where the faintest sparkle denotes street lights in Ramsey. As my friends approach, caught in the limelight, they too are beaming.

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