People told to buy earplugs after broken lighthouse fog alarm blares every 13 seconds

For those of you heading to Land’s End in Cornwall anytime soon, be prepared to hear a high-pitched bleep very often.

This is because the fog alarm at Longships Lighthouse has been blaring out every 13 seconds, day and night for the past week.

As you can imagine, locals are sick of the noise, and tourists are worried they won’t catch their beauty sleep.

The ringing noise usually only goes off during foggy conditions but the skies have been clear in Cornwall for the last week.

People in the area can hear the alarm from Land’s End and surrounding villages, including Sennen and Cape Cornwall, despite the lighthouse being 1.25 miles out to sea.

The news of the annoying screech was posted by The National Coastwatch Institution (NCI) Gwennap Head on its Facebook page.

It wrote: ‘Anyone living in the area may have noticed that, for the past six days, the Longships Lighthouse has been sounding its foghorn every 13 seconds … all day and all night.

‘Our watchkeeper has reported this “interesting” occurrence to HM Coastguard Falmouth and they, in turn, have reported it to Trinity House.

‘It has been fed back to us that Trinity House are aware of the problem; apparently, there is a fault in the fog sensing mechanism and they are awaiting delivery of a part to fix it.

‘Of course, once the part has arrived, the maintenance crew will still have to wait for calm enough weather conditions to allow them to get out to the lighthouse and install it.’

The lighthouse is managed by Trinity House, which manages more than 60 lighthouses across the UK.

It said in a statement: ‘It will likely be an issue with the visibility sensor not functioning as expected. The hazard warning signal indicates diminished visibility in the area, such as fog.’

It is the talk of the area among locals, who responded to the Facebook post.

Carrie Snaden joked: ‘Thanks for confirming that I wasn’t hearing things over the weekend.’

Meanwhile, Mark Stokes pointed out: ‘You would have thought that with all the amazing technology, someone would have thought of installing a remote off switch.

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