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Shona Riddell’s great, great aunt Mary Jane Bennett was the very first lighthouse keeper in New Zealand.
Mary tended the light at Pencarrow Lighthouse at the entrance to Wellington Harbour while also caring for her 6 children as a single mum.
There were many other women in the 19
th century who were lighthouse keepers, especially in the Unites States.
Some of these keepers engaged in daring rescues, such as the English teenager Grace Darling.
Grace lived with her family at Longstone Lighthouse in the North Sea and helped rescue shipwrecked sailors in the middle of a storm.
Crowds flocked to the island to meet Grace, and Cadbury named a chocolate bar after her.
Just before dawn a moon like a burning orange balloon appears, its reflection gilding our pilgrim path across the sands to Holy Island, Northumbria.
I cry out in delight and start describing this luminous beauty into my microphone we have been tasked with finding hope and wonder in the depths of the darkest year, and in this wild and sacred place, in a mingling of moonlight, land and sea, here they are.
BBC Radio 3’s Sound Walks are now a Christmas tradition. While engineer Andy Fell records the soundscape, I report the sights, smells and stories we encounter, performing a kind of live travel writing, my other job.