Tag: isle of man

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About The Isle Of Man

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via DavidColby on Buzzfeed. And it’s all* true.

(or “Buzzfeed comes up trumps because I have no time to write a blog post today”)

While I was born in Sheffield and I live in Cape Town, I have strong family connections to the Isle of Man and I guess that I consider it my spiritual home. You may recognise the favicon on your current browser tab as being a triskelion – the Three Legs of Man.

Of all the facts presented, only one was new to me:

The Island was named the fifth most likely nation to reach the moon next.
Strange, but true. A number of the competitors in the Google Lunar X Prize (a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon) are based on the Island.

I’ve known forever that it is a great place – the best kept secret of the British Isles. Now David has spilled the beans, maybe more people will discover it. But please don’t ruin it. I like it just the way it is.

So go – click through – I’ll test you on what you’ve learnt tomorrow.

* actually, I dispute the bit about Snaefell being the only place you can see England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales from – there are plenty of other mountains on the island with the same view. </pendant>

Chicken Rock

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My Mum and Dad recently jumped on a special ferry from Douglas in the Isle of Man to… er… Douglas… in the Isle of Man.
This “round the Island” trip is a chance for locals to go… er… round the island and see it from a different perspective.

Here’s one of the photos they took:

This is the Chicken Rock lighthouse off the south west coast of the Isle of Man. Wikipedia tells us:

The 0.1 hectare rock is home to a 44 m (144 ft) lighthouse which was designed by engineers David and Thomas Stevenson after it was realised that the lights on the Calf of Man were not sufficient to warn ships away. Construction of this tapered granite structure was completed in December 1874 and the first official lighting day was on 1 January 1875.

So not quite as old as the Cape Agulhas light, but given that this one is built on a rock that is completely submerged at high tide and which lies 4.5km off the mainland (and about 7.5km from the nearest port), I think that’s a pretty amazing feat of engineering for that time.

IOM Timelapses

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Spotted earlier, this from here, via here:

Very nice, and really excellent for a first attempt. Says Jan:

I proudly present my first TIME LAPSE video compilation taken on the beautiful Isle of Man.
For best viewing please switch the HD feature on and watch it fullscreen!

For the past few weeks I’ve been learning the art of time lapse and this is the first result. There is more to follow soon and I hope you will like it.

The music, of course, is from Ludovico Einaudi, standard fare for timelapse videos and attempted pseudo-arty photo essays.