The Butt of Lewis

The Butt of Lewis, is an awesome but lonely, frightening place.  At the very tip of Lewis, the waves crash over the rocks, a sight all the more terrible when the wind is strong and the seas are rough. The rugged cliffs rearing up from the boiling water below, are steep, cracked and ravaged by the water and weather for millenia.  The lighthouse, manned until 1998, was originally fuelled by fish oil before that was replaced with paraffin and then electricity.  Now monitored remotely from Edinburgh, a lighthouse keeper no longer routinely climbs the 168 steps to maintain the light.