Day 526, Where are you going next

Let's look at White Bay in Scotland, close to where the River Dee flows into the Irish Sea.

This picture doesn't look much like Scotland though, what gives?

Yes that's right, it isn't Scotland, but that is the Irish Sea.

This is the northernmost tip of the Isle of Man, where a tiny lighthouse sits next to a massive foghorn.*

Stare straight ahead.

Ok you can't see anything but sea, and maybe a thumb print in the shape of a cloud.

42km straight ahead is White Bay.

But even if you jump in the air you won't be able to see it.

At sea level the observable horizon is only 4.7km away, roughly 9% of the distance to White Bay.

We need to be standing at a height of 138.4m above sea level for us to see White Bay from here.**

So take a long ladder.

Some circus skills.

And an enormous trampoline.

* Like the Tory front bench, oh, lighthouse, not shi...
** Observable distance to horizon in km is roughly equivalent to 3.57 multiplied by the square root of the height in metres - not accounting for the effect of atmospheric refraction.


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