Rathlin: Puffins, Bruce's Cave and the Upside-Down Lighthouse

Rathlin is the only inhabited offshore island of Northern Ireland, home to about 150 people, and the ferry crosses from Ballycastle to Church Bay, six nautical miles away. At the far west end, four and a half miles from the harbour, the West Light was built into the cliff face from 1912, finished towards the end of 1916 and first lit in 1919 — Ireland's only upside-down lighthouse — and the RSPB seabird centre there looks out onto stacks where puffins, guillemots, kittiwakes, razorbills and fulmars breed. Robert the Bruce took refuge on Rathlin in 1306, and Bruce's Cave is where he is said to have watched the spider that persuaded him to keep fighting. In July 1575, on the orders of the Earl of Essex, Francis Drake and John Norreys took Rathlin and killed hundreds of the MacDonnells' people, among them women and children.