Derrigimlagh Bog

Derrigimlagh is a low, wet, lake-pocked expanse of blanket bog south of Clifden, and it looks like nothing at all until you know what happened on it. Guglielmo Marconi built a transatlantic wireless station here in 1907 - a large industrial complex with its own power plant, railway and workforce of several hundred, sending commercial messages to Nova Scotia. It was burned during the Civil War in 1922 and never rebuilt, and the concrete foundations are still scattered across the bog. Twelve years after it opened, in June 1919, Alcock and Brown landed their Vickers Vimy in this bog at the end of the first non-stop transatlantic flight, nose-down in the soft ground - they had aimed for a field and found peat. A five-kilometre looped boardwalk and gravel path now links both sites with interpretation panels. The bog is wet and exposed, with no shelter anywhere on the loop.

What you actually see

• The Marconi foundations - concrete remains of the 1907 wireless station.
• The Alcock and Brown site - where the first transatlantic flight ended in the bog.
• The looped boardwalk - five kilometres across the wet ground.
• The bog itself - blanket peat and small lakes in every direction.

When to go

April to October. It is wet and exposed year-round with no shelter on the loop. Clear weather makes the difference between a bleak walk and a striking one.

Honest expectations

Physically there is very little to see - foundations, a marker and a lot of bog. The interpretation carries the visit. Fully exposed to wind and rain for five kilometres. Midges on still evenings.

Nearby

Clifden and the Sky Road are north; Roundstone is south-east.