Latest news with #ManannánMacLir
BBC News
13-07-2025
- BBC News
A vintage ride on the British Isles' only electric mountain railway
The Snaefell Mountain Railway reveals the Isle of Man's forgotten tourism boom – and serves as a gateway to the seven mythological kingdoms. Our train was crawling slowly up a steeply pitched valley that felt hidden from the rest of the world. To the right of the tracks, the Laxey River dropped suddenly, turning south to vanish into the Irish Sea. Here and there, sheep grazed and the soft scent of gorse wafted into the carriage. I gazed out as the vegetation disappeared and we rattled higher – higher – as the train spiralled around the mountain's bald summit. A howling wind greeted our arrival at the top station, and I looked out to a sea that had turned to thrashing waves. The view stretched even further. According to folklorists, the summit is where one can glimpse seven kingdoms, including those that aren't acknowledged by any map. I could see England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the Isle of Man, but up there you can also see that of Manannán mac Lir, son of the sea and king of the otherworld in Gaelic mythology, and the kingdom of heaven. For believers, the journey is an imagined pilgrimage. Snaefell, or "Snow Mountain", is no ordinary peak and the Snaefell Mountain Railway is no ordinary train. I was on the Isle of Man, atop the island's highest peak, having ridden the only electric mountain railway in the British Isles. The tradition to ride to the top is a profound one, but, equally, to learn about the train is to build a vivid portrait of the Isle of Man. For the railway's story is one of unemployment and migration, engineering milestones and the rise of Victorian-era tourism, and it still looms large in the legend of the island, revealing the independent character at the very heart of Manx life. The day had begun at the Manx Museum, the Isle of Man's national museum in Douglas. The former hospital building is a nostalgic place by nature, with galleries dedicated to Viking silver hoards, Celtic crosses and Tynwald (the oldest continuous parliament in the world) helping distil the island's 10,000-year history into bite-sized nuggets. Chiefly, I was interested in the railway's timeline, which led me to the social history galleries and an encounter with Katie King, the museum's curator of art and social history. "In the mid-19th Century, the Isle of Man was in a mess," she said, as we symbolically slipped back in time. "There was low population growth, no employment, exponential immigration and the island's coal industry was collapsing. The [Isle of] Man government was alarmed by all of this." At the time, this was a familiar lament across many communities in the British Isles. But the Isle of Man, a UK Crown Dependency, had a secret weapon: its influential lieutenant governor, Sir Henry Brougham Loch, 1st Baron Loch. In office from 1863 to 1882, Loch realised the island's potential as a destination for spa tourism. Seaside holidays were booming in Queen Victoria's era and the Isle of Man, with sandy beaches and bracing waters, was primed to reap the rewards. In one sense, the island's capital, Douglas, was sacrificed to tourism. A glossy marketing campaign appeared on the London Underground in the 1870s, featuring idyllic sailing boats and beautiful women in swimming costumes, transforming the working-class port town into a glamorous holiday destination. The journey to get there, from ports including Blackpool, Whitehaven, Silloth, Ardrossan and Greenock by the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, the world's oldest continuously operating passenger shipping company, was also portrayed as an exotic sea crossing to a mystical island. The speed at which things changed was astonishing. At its peak, 11 steamer ships made the crossing from Liverpool daily; and, by 1880, nearly 350,000 visitors were arriving every summer. A staggering 1,500 hotels opened, and, within a decade, Douglas had been transformed with a seafront promenade, pier and the largest ballroom in Europe. Despite moral outcry from the influential Methodist community, the island attracted legions of unchaperoned single men and women. And with liberal drinking laws, it was once described, as King puts it, as "one of the most debauched places in Britain". "But the governor wasn't content with stopping there," added King. "All those visitors only spent time in Douglas because there weren't opportunities to explore the island. So, building a train was the next obvious step." Enter the Manx Electric Railway at the northern end of the Loch Promenade. First opened to the coastal town of Groudle in 1893, it is now the oldest electric tram line in the world with its original rolling stock still in service. Then, two years later, the Snaefell Mountain Railway arrived as part of a further tourism push. Remarkably, the two connecting lines still run with much of their original Victorian-era infrastructure. Both feel like museums on wheels. If it's fascinating to hear these stories, it's more thrilling to ride to Snaefell, all while peering out of the world's oldest operational electric tram cars. While the epic views mean that comfort is secondary, the enjoyment of the three-hour return journey to the summit comes from riding on period piece Victorian tram cars doing what they were built to do. First, the Manx Electric Railway rattles, stutters and sways along the seven-mile track from Derby Castle Station to Laxey; then it's a quick switch onto the Snaefell Mountain Railway as it pushes uphill for a further five miles to 621m. Inside, the shallow arched carriages are polished ash and pitch pine. There are glazed vestibules, mirrored panels and sliding windows. For me, it had the particular atmosphere of an Orient Express, as if run by model railway enthusiasts. For the Manx, the legends and reality of the train are ingrained in their psyche. More like this:• The British isle that's not in the UK• The 25 best places to travel in 2025• Calf of Man: A tiny, wild isle adrift in the Irish Sea "When the railway opened, it was like science fiction," Andrew Scarffe, Manx Heritage Railways' technical support officer, told me when I met him at the depot. "Droves of people came over on the ferry just to see its electric technology and innovation. What's rarely spoken of is we were 130 years ahead of the rest of the world with green travel. We began generating our own power back in the 1890s to run the railway, and the electric tram cars are still doing what they were built to be doing. Slow travel by electric train? It all started here." As Scarffe tells it, the railway had one million annual passenger journeys at its peak, with trains leaving Derby Castle Station for Laxey every three minutes. These days, the Isle of Man's holiday traditions have been eroded, but the train still completes around 200,000 passenger journeys a year, from April to October. Like me, many come for the ride through the glens and fields, the train clawing past beech trees bursting to green before the hillside peters into rocks. Some come for the rare experience of driving the tram itself, with one day train-driving tutorials available. And those of a more spiritual bent come to savour the seven kingdoms. Before dusk, I reflected on much of this as I scrambled to Snaefell's true summit above the rail tracks. Ireland lay in front of me, with Wales, Scotland and England at my back, facing east. Above, so Manx folklore says, was the domain of "otherworld", a legend more difficult to ignore because of the remains of a Victorian-era observatory at the summit. Around me was the watery kingdom of Manannán mac Lir (fun fact: he's reputedly buried under a grassy knoll behind the walls of Peel Castle on the island's west coast). All of this was a confusion of the real and make-believe. And yet, looking out at this island full of stories made me realise that my short journey onboard the Snaefell Mountain Railway had taken me to more places than I ever could've imagined. It seems an ordinary train, but the tracks of this tiny electric mountain railway continue to keep both fantasy and so much of Manx history and culture alive. -- For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Irish Times
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
How Silicon Valley became the new Tír na nÓg
What full blooded young lad wouldn't be taken with Niamh of the Golden Hair? Wasn't Oisín only human when he said yes to the beautiful daughter of Manannán Mac Lir, the God of the Sea, particularly as she came with the extra quality of being the queen of Tir na nÓg? Oisín abandoned his mates in Na Fianna and his father Finn Mac Cumhaill – the man who created the Giant's Causeway – for this red-haired stunner, heading for the Land of Eternal Youth. Three hundred years there passed like three and he returned to Ireland, feeling like a young fella, only to find that everyone was dead. When he dismounted his virile horse and touched Irish soil, he transformed into a wizened old man. These Irish legends about the futility of wanting to live forever are thought to be thousands of years old, having been passed down orally for generations before being documented in the 18th century. Obviously, the legends never made it to Silicon Valley, where a movement, based on the notion that death is optional, is sweeping through the glittering halls of the technocracy. An increasing amount of very rich men, having examined the progress of life expectancy of the past two centuries, are bewitched by the idea that we can live forever and that death is a choice more than a certainty. An entire sub-economy of vitamin pills, diets, self-help books, longevity weekends and genetic engineering initiatives have been spawned in this 21st-century version of Tir na nÓg. At the centre of this movement is the modern day Oisín - a man called Bryan Johnson . Like many evangelicals, Johnson's obsession is fascinating and risible in equal measure. His aim is to engineer immortality (or something close to it). In 2021 he publicly launched Blueprint, an obsessive anti-ageing regimen aimed at making his body function decades younger, subjecting himself to a rigorously measured lifestyle, a vegan diet, 100+ pills and supplements a day, strict sleep and exercise schedules, and constant medical tests overseen by a team of doctors. The goal is to reprogramme his body's ageing process and prove that we might be the first generation that 'don't die'. READ MORE [ A tech entrepreneur chases immortality: Bryan Johnson is 46. Soon, he plans to turn 18 Opens in new window ] Johnson is a tech entrepreneur turned longevity-evangelist whose career began in fintech. In 2007 he founded Braintree, a payment processing start-up that powered mobile transactions for online businesses. He then bought Venmo, a small peer-to-peer payments app, for about $26 million, which proved to be a steal. Venmo – not unlike Revolut - was an easy mobile money-transfer app that exploded in popularity, especially among young Americans. By 2013 its growing user base of tens of millions pushed revenue to more than $200 billion in 2021 alone, making it the talk of the digital finance world. Tech giant PayPal, Elon Musk's original company, acquired Braintree and Venmo in 2013 for $800 million. Now enormously wealthy, Johnson set about living forever. He spends a reported $2 million per year of his own money on this quest to stay youthful. The routine has earned him the nickname 'the world's most measured man'. He tracks everything in service of what he calls 'optimal longevity'. He's tried blood plasma transfusions (even using blood from his teenage son) and experimental gene therapies. According to Johnson, his biomarkers now indicate he's ageing more slowly than normal and he claims that each calendar year only ages his body about 7½ months. In recent years as the tech world became wealthier, more self-absorbed and, some might say, deluded, Johnson's pet project has morphed into a fully-fledged 'Don't Die' community. He created a Don't Die app in which users track a daily longevity score and has spawned online forums called Blueprint Discord, now numbering in the tens of thousands. He even hosts Don't Die Summits , day-long events mixing wellness with almost evangelical fervour, driven by the genetic possibility that we can slow down and reverse the DNA triggers for ageing. In early 2024 some 600 attendees paid $249–$599 each to attend a Los Angeles summit featuring biometric tests, complete with its own 'longevity amusement park' of anti-ageing tech demos (VIP tickets at $1,499 included a private dinner with Johnson). At these summits, participants rave together in the morning at 'biohacker dance parties' and test longevity gadgets, such as $500 red-light therapy masks and $125,000 hyperbaric oxygen chambers. It's all designed to build a movement around Johnson's core belief that ageing is a problem to be solved, not a fate to accept. Like any prophet, Johnson is a branding genius and his public profile has skyrocketed. Earlier this year a glossy Netflix documentary, Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, showcased his daily routine, amplifying his message. Johnson is not happening in a vacuum; he is part of a much larger economics of longevity business that is gaining momentum. Globally, anti-ageing and longevity is a multibillion-dollar industry. Anti-ageing products from supplements and skincare to wellness programmes already represent a $70+ billion market. (Colleen Rooney has just launched her own supplements range in Holland & Barrett, along with the ubiquitous Kourtney Kardashian.) The market is projected to double to $141 billion by 2034. We are getting old and will spend to stay healthy and young. There is serious money to be made. [ We hit a second adolescence in our 60s, when beauty isn't skin-deep but 'life-deep' Opens in new window ] Investors in Silicon Valley are bailing into the Don't Die movement. In the past few years longevity biotech startups have sprung up, backed by loads of loot. Tech billionaires believe we can cure ageing at the cellular level. Google's founders have backed Calico Labs (short for the California Life Company) to research life-extension. In 2022, Jeff Bezos (who else?) and other ultra-wealthy punters pitched $3 billion to launch Altos Labs, a company dedicated to cellular reprogramming therapies that hope to reverse ageing. Altos Labs has reported success extending the lifespans of mice via gene therapy. Dozens of other firms, from start-ups to Big Pharma collaborations, are working on anti-ageing drugs, gene edits, stem cell therapies and senolytics (drugs that kill off zombie ageing cells). In 2021 more than $5 billion in venture capital flowed into longevity-related companies. The sector is creating 'unicorn' valuations, For example, a company called Cambrian Bio, which develops drugs to slow age-related diseases, is valued at about $1.8 billion. It is easy to be cynical and cite the Tír na nÓg example underscoring our futile fascination with prolonging life and avoiding death; on the other hand, average life spans have extended quite dramatically over the past century. Admittedly, as we get older, living a bit longer becomes more attractive and the phrase '60 is the new 40″ doesn't seem that weird at my age. Maybe if we can't Live Forever, a tune that will be roared by 60-year-olds at the Oasis gigs in a few weeks' time, our most decorous best bet might be to grow old gracefully. Fat chance.
