You can also find out more about the following: It has always been my dream to be a keeper of a lighthouse and I finally am. Even if it’s just for the weekend. Check out my chunky knit jumper! I can feel the waterproof weave in my Donegal cap! In truth, this nautical ensemble is way too warm for me. I had hoped and prepared myself for fog, violent gales, and oceanic rainstorms. On a bright and calm spring afternoon, the sea is warm, calm, in Asturias’s famously beautiful fishing village of Cudillero. This is where the Costa Verde of north Spain plunges into the deep-blue Bay of Biscay.
Built in 1858, the local lighthouse – the Faro de Cudillero – stands on a shelf of rock just beyond the harbour, a short walk up stone steps and along a narrow cliff side service path. The hexagonal beacon has undergone several remodels over the years. The signal lamp was initially powered by olive oil and paraffin, and then petrol. It was later electrified, and finally automated. Its sturdy keeper’s house was abandoned many decades ago because it didn’t need a human to operate it. It is sad to think of this absence and the obsolescence that the position has become. If I can’t be the man in the lighthouse, then I can occupy it.
German company Floatel specializes on this type of repurposing. The keeper’s cottage was bought, converted, and partitioned to create two loft-style holiday flats. The Farero Suite is much more spacious and comfortable than I had imagined. I stayed there for two nights with my girlfriend, our daughter aged six and myself.
The room has heated floors, a wood burning stove, a fitted-out kitchenette, nice high ceilings, and a Nordic wooden whirlpool with bench seating, large enough for us all. We put our priorities in order and begin hot-tubbing immediately, pretending to be an 18th century lighthouse family, mystified by the modern luxuries.
We go outside as sunset approaches to watch the lamp light up. The sky turns indigo and a faint, floating moon appears over the tower. Visibility along the shoreline also begins to fade, which triggers the sensors, flipping the switch. The lantern room was supposed to be a source of search beams that would sweep across the bay in a whooshing gyre, but instead the light emits a series static flashes called “occultations”. Tolkienesque, this is a blinking eye. It opens up for a long stare and then three short blinks. In international morse, the dash-dotdot to represent “B” is dash-dotdot. It should really be “C” for Cudillero, but that letter was already taken by Candás, another coastal beacon about 30 miles due east.
Inside, near the fireplace, the honesty bar and bookshelves are well stocked with literature about lighthouses. There are also historical journals, photographic surveys and novels by Virginia Woolf or Jules Verne that mention this site. As I sipped my way from the cloudy, tangy Asturian Cider to the mid-range Spanish Red, I learned that ancient mariners may have set a signal fire near where I was sitting and lured some ships to wreck on these rocks.
The lighthouse has been in service since 1877, and there haven’t been any major accidents or deaths of local men on the Cantabrian Sea. In 1877, the Amelia C, a cargo vessel from Newcastle upon Tyne bound for Venice, capsized just offshore. However, the lighthouse keepers mobilised the local community to help save the crew.
This is a comforting bedtime story. It’s a comforting story for me, as I have always been an insomniac. But now, I can see the immense and sublime comfort that comes from drifting with your family between the winking lamp and the sighing water in such a refuge. Here we are, asleep and dreaming of “lighthouse land”, as Floatel’s co-founder Tim Wittenbecher explained to me on the telephone.
Wittenbecher said, “A lighthouse has only positive associations.” It has only positive associations. Twenty years ago, he found out how many people share this sentiment when he and wife converted a ruined Baltic Sea beacon into an inn. The first time they advertised online, hundreds responded. This pet project turned into a profitable business. It has entered into public-private agreements as Floatel to take over empty lighthouse lodgings from Ischia, in the Gulf of Naples, to La Palma on the Canary Islands.
Wittenbecher said, “They’re always in a super-attractive position, in dramatic, romantic, and most of the time quite abandoned areas.” Faro de Cudillero reflects this, but it isn’t as isolated from civilization as some of his other portfolios. It was once close enough to serve as the local schoolhouse.
It is also handy enough for the present housekeeper, Cristina, to bring us breakfast the next morning – a wicker basket full of pastries, yoghurt, juices, meats and cheeses. A gull is hovering at the window, watching us eat. “Clear it up, you varmint,” our daughter says, shaking her fist, and quoting The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch.
After breakfast we walk around Cudillero, which is a tight amphitheatre formed by steep, vertical stairs and narrow, lateral lanes that are tucked between layers of brightly-painted houses. Some houses have strips of curadillo hung outside – dried sharkskin that’s been a totem around here since the days when fishers used the rough flesh to polish their boats, and ate it when they couldn’t catch much else.
In these parts, the seafood is still excellent. We ascend the mountain to lunch after walking on near-deserted Playa del Silencio, and Playa de San Pedro La Ribera. Cabo Vidio, The house special here is a variation of the famous bean stew from the region. fabada asturianaSalt cod is a delicacy that comes from the cold depths below.
Cudillero fishmonger Manolo Fernández supplies every restaurant in the vicinity. “The quality of the produce is the same in each place,” Fernández assures me at his shop beside the port, while cleaning and gutting a hake. The only difference is that the chef. He can be quick to laugh and also to lament. “This used to be a real seafaring village,” says Fernández. “I remember seeing 230 ships out there, but now it’s down to around 30.” The shop has been in the family for almost three centuries and for three generations. “But me and my bro will be last, I believe.” As he cheerfully lists the reasons why – supermarkets, politics, overfishing, the climate crisis – it occurs to me that I’d forgotten all those worries while staying at the lighthouse. Above us, and in front of us, is salvation for sailors who are in trouble.
We return to the perch and watch as our daughter, cross-legged, sits in a window sill sunbeam and scans the horizon with her house binoculars for mermaids or orcas. Some day, I’m thinking, this will be a bright spot in my memory – a signal light out of the distant past, flashing dash-dot-dot-dot. B stands for “beautiful”. B for “bygone”.
Accommodations are provided by FloatelThe Cudillero Lighthouse has two apartments for two people. €190 The following are some examples of how to use €290 a night B&B; the entire lighthouse sleeps four and can be rented from €480 a night B&B (four nights for the price of three, seven nights for the price of five)
