To the lighthouse

The weekend, organised by the community-based North Ronaldsay Trust, includes a 10km Lighthouse Run around the island, taking in North Ronaldsay's famous landmark. Now celebrating its 150th birthday, Britain's highest land-based lighthouse is still an impressive sight. Sporting red and white stripes like a massive football jersey, it towers 140 feet over the island's notorious Reef Dyke, where the Swedish East Indiaman, Svecia was wrecked in 1740. Even on a calm day, battling tides boil like a jacuzzi on full power and present day ships with all their technical wizardry make sure they give it a wide berth.

Still a working lighthouse, remote-controlled electric motors now drive the mechanism for the revolving light, though former lightkeeper Jimmy Craigie can't resist the chance to be part of things when it comes to the lighthouse's new role as a tourist attraction.

"When it was automated we just couldn't bear to leave the island," he says. "I decided I'd do anything to let the children stay here for a few more years." On a small island where nipping off to Kwik-Fit isn't an option, his engineering and mechanical skills keep him in work, although he confesses to gazing wistfully up at his former home from time to time.

"I used to climb up there six times a day to wind up the mechanism for the revolving light. There were dozens of prisms and reflectors that we took great pride in keeping sparkling and dust-free."

Jimmy, his wife Edie and children Louis and Joni achieved national recognition in 1997 when, as the last lighthouse family in the UK, they climbed the 176 steps to the top to look out for Santa coming down from Lapland. The parents now smile whimsically while their present day teenagers cringe.

"Publicity over the Svecia, lost with all hands and a fortune in cargo, was one of the reasons North Ronaldsay got its first lighthouse," says North Ronaldsay Trust chairman, Billy Muir. The Lighthouse Board agreed to let the trust buy up the buildings round the tower and the old engine room now houses a woollen mill to process the sheep fleeces, with the keepers' cottages set to be the ultimate in "get away from it all" self-catering accommodation. The proposed caf and gift shop will tempt yachtsmen to a last pre-transatlantic sandwich before Newfoundland. The story of the Svecia and her cargo of silk, gold and dyewood, will be a prominent in-house feature, as will the connection with the Stevenson family of engineers.

"Robert Louis Stevenson's grandfather, also Robert, worked with his stepfather on the original lighthouse in the 18th century," says Muir. Sixty-five years later, when his uncle Alan designed the present lighthouse, the future author of Treasure Island listened with fascination to tales of danger and derring-do the men in his family came back with. Add to that the true story of Orkney's Pirate Gow, the last pirate hanged for treason in the British Isles, and the origins of Stevenson's famous story become even more intriguing.

And of course North Ronaldsay is a real life treasure island. The gold on board the Svecia is still scattered among the wreckage on the seabed round the Reef Dyke, and though veteran wreck hunter Rex Cowan and a team of RAF divers battled ferocious tides and weather to find out where it had ended up, they only succeeded in bringing ashore some of the dyewood.

"We spent seven years on it," he says. "We mapped an area the size of a small village but the wreck never gave up its most valuable secrets."

Which means any amateurs stupid enough to think of trying, can forget it. Just looking out at where the Atlantic meets the North Sea head on dispels any doubt on that score.

Billy Muir or Jimmy Craigie will be only too happy to take you up the lighthouse to let you see its awesome splendour, while visitors during the open weekend can test their mettle by trying to climb it, after completing the 10km run. Or maybe they'll claim their personal certificate saying they "ran North Ronaldsay," relax beside the community barbecue with some local hooch, and be entertained by visiting musicians.

More information about North Ronaldsay's Open Weekend including travel details and accommodation is available from Carole Bayley on 01857 633303 ([email protected]) or Helga Tulloch on 07762 297 691([email protected]).