Derrigimlagh Bog

Derrigimlagh Bog is one of the Signature Discovery Points of the Wild Atlantic Way. It is uniquely beautiful area of blanket peat bog and lakes important not only for it’s rich and diverse wildlife and plantlife but also as the scene of two significant events in international travel and communications history.

Marconi’s first transatlantic radio signal in 1907

Over 100 years ago an Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi established the world’s first permanent transatlantic radio station at Derrigimlagh. It was from here in October 1907 the first commercial transatlantic message was transmitted to Glace Bay, Newfoundland, Canada. The station was an impressive collection of buildings employing several hundred people who helped transmit news across the ocean from 1907 to 1922. It was destroyed by fire during the Irish War of Independence but the foundations of the buildings and workers’ houses can still be seen.

Alcock & Brown’s Crash Landing

Amazingly this same remote and isolated location was also the site of the crash landing of John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown in 1919 on the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. They took off from Newfoundland 16 hours earlier on the morning of the 15th June 1919. The spot is marked by a white memorial shaped like an aeroplane wing.

There is a new walkway through the bog marked by interactive information points telling the fasincating history of this area. Viewing through the binocular style information points one can see the existing landscape overlaid with images of the view as it was in the early 20th century.