Travel Guide Valentia Island

When you arrive on Valentia Island from the bridge linking it to the mainland, a small spit of land measuring 11 km by 3 km, you really don't think you're on an island. And yet, Valentia looks like the end of the world, and time seems to have stood still... The island owes its fame to the fact that the first transatlantic telegraph system was established here in 1857, so that for years communication was better with New York than with Dublin! What's more, in 1992, the fossilized footprints of a marine animal dating back 400 million years were discovered near the lighthouse to the north-west of the island - a first of its kind in Europe.