Welcome to KEEPING WATCH - a fortnightly podcast for anyone and everyone interested in lighthouses, lighthouse keepers, light vessels and other aids to maritime navigation. 

KEEPING WATCH is brought to you in association with the ALK - The Association of Lighthouse Keepers - a membership organisation and charitable trust in the UK dedicated to keeping lighthouse heritage alive. 

In this first season of twelve episodes, we’ll hear from the ALK’s founder, Neil Hargreaves, as well as from other former lighthouse keepers, authors of books about lighthouses, people born and brought up in lighthouses, archivists, historians and many others interested in lighthouses, their construction, history and service.  

This week I chat with Sarah Kerr, who began visiting lighthouses back in 2012, having set herself the mission to visit every lighthouse in the UK, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. 

In the intervening years she has visited more than 500 of them, organised countless ALK meet ups and events, got married, had two children … and even found time to write The British Lighthouse Trail, a brilliant book that provides details of every onshore and offshore British lighthouse. 

I began by asking Sarah whether it was growing up on the Isle of Wight where the idea first came to her ...