From Dangos, Observations sur les refractions terrestres.

"At one o'clock that day (20th March 1784), great excitement prevailed in the streets, for a new island had apparently sprung up and sailors and fishermen hurried out to take possession of it. It turned out to the the top of Mount Etna, and later the hills and buildings of Sicily became visible."

From D. Agius of the RAF meteorological station on Malta, 15th March 1922.

"Towards the northern horizon, the hills of Sicily could be clearly seen by the unaided eye, although the distance is about 60 miles. When I used my 2.5 inch telescope, I could clearly distinguish the trees and most of the buildings. Evidently the sky was clear over Sicily, as I could notice the eastern sides of buldings illuminated and relatively sharp against the darker background. The phenomenon decreased in proportion as the sun came out locally and the glare stopped the whole thing at 9 o'clock.
On November 18th 1904, I had occasion to notice the same phenomenon and I can give a sketch of a distant church and steeple which I noticed on that occasion and which I believe that I have been able to identify today."

YouTube footage of Sicily from Gozo

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Oddly enough I had a similar thing happen on holiday in Devon a couple of weeks ago. We were at Westward Ho! looking north and I managed to pick out some land beyond the end of Baggy point (about 10-12 miles north) that I assume must have been Wales - its not normally visible from there. I caught it on camera - if I get a chance I'll post the image up. My suspicion is that it was the end of the Gower peninsula.

You saw Sicily from Devon! Now that is good visibility.
I've seen the tops of the hills of Pembroke from Woolacombe beach before on a very clear late summer morning but it's rare.

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Reminds me of a Novaya Zemlya Mirage, where object that are far away and not normally visible beyond the horizon, suddenly become visible under the correct atmospheric conditions.

From Wiki:

"Were the Earth flat, light rays that bend down would soon hit the ground and only nearby objects would be affected. Since Earth is round, if their downward bending curve is about the same as the curvature of the Earth, light rays can travel large distances, perhaps from beyond the horizon..."

"If the vertical temperature gradient is +12.9°C per 100 meters (where the positive sign means temperature gets hotter as one goes higher), then horizontal light rays will just follow the curvature of the Earth, and the horizon will appear flat. If the gradient is less (as it almost always is) the rays are not bent enough and get lost in space, which is the normal situation of a spherical, convex "horizon"."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage 

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Wow - it was even more unusual than I thought...

My parents live in Ilfracombe and you can clearly see the hills of South Wales most days from their front room, although they are about 80m above sea level. On clear winter days you can see the snow-capped Brecon Beacons. At night you can see the flares of the oil refinery at Milford Haven too.

I was driving to their house from Cornwall a couple of weeks ago and noticed you could see the Welsh coast beyond Lundy from the A39 near Clovelly as well - OK again you have a bit of altitude there but I'm not surprised you can see it from sea level at Westward Ho.

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Yes I did wonder Rob after posting that perhaps the distance is not so great to prohibit a view of Wales from Wollacombe (albeit a bit futher away at at sea level compared to Ilfracombe).
Mind you, the chap I met on the beach that morning who said the view was rare did did look like he'd just emerged from a tent after a particularly long night on the local scrumpy LOL.

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I took this pic when I was in Seattle (many years ago) where you can see Mount Rainier over 50 miles away

It looks vaguely as though it is suspended in mid air

I thought this was quite unusual at the time but since read that you can see this on most days

 

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I've seen Wales from Ilfracombe lots of times, but to see it from Westwood Ho! (love the punctuation as part of the name...) at sea level I thought was unusual. I wonder it the day Rob was driving near Clovelly was the same day I was at the Ho? It was on the sunday of the bank holiday weekend.

No it was the following weekend.

 

Using Google Maps distance tool  from Westward Ho! it is about 36 miles to the Gower coast, but the view would be blocked by Baggy Point (although Worms Head might just be visible). Further to the west it is about 47 miles to the coast near Tenby.

 

BTW on a global scale, I have seen Kilimanjaro above the clouds from the top of Mt Kenya - a distance of almost exactly 200 miles! But then they are both very high mountains with a flat plain between them

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A letter by Victor Gatty of Preston, Lancs written on the 2nd October 1921 about what he saw from the top of Blackpool tower.

"September 3rd 1921 was a day of exceptional clearness. The view from the summit of the tower at Blackpool (about 500 feet high) was remarkable, not only from the extent of country covered but also from the immense amount of visible detail at great distances. It was exceptional, too, in that the view was equally in every direction.
The Isle of Man, visible from the promenade only as a series of deatched islets, stood high out of the water 70 miles away and dark blue. The hills of Wales, 60 to 70 miles away, were equally clear.
To the east the view is more restricted, but to to the north, the hills of the Lake District were visible in great detail; every mark and gully on Black Combe, 33 miles away, could be seen with the naked eye and Saddleback, 57 miles away, was clearly distinguishable through the gap of Dunmail Raise. Further east of Howgill Fells, which rise to the north of Sedbergh in Yorkshire could be made out.
To mention smaller details, Great Orme's Head, above Llandudno, 48 miles away, could be recognised and the white wall of the lighthouse enclosure on its northwest point could be made out with glasses; with the same aid the colours of fields and woods nearer Welsh coast, 40 miles away could be distinguished; the buildings in Liverpool and the top of the transporter bridge over the Mersey at Runcorn, 35 miles away, were also visible.
Northwards, even from ground level, the colours of cornfields, pastrues and woods on the nearer hills, some 27 miles away beyond Morecambe Bay and the purple of the heather above could be made out with the naked eye.
From the tower with glasses, I could recognise the tower on Eller Horn, a hill to the northeast of Grange-over-sands, 29 miles away and could see the houses in Grange itself.
A little to the west of Black Combe, an isolated islet rose dark blue from the sea. This I took at the time to be a hilltop in Scotland but the map showed it to be the top of St Bee's Head, the most westerly point of Cumberland, 52 miles away.
I have only mentioned some of the more distant features; a view which included a great deall of detail in 9 different counties and the whole of the coast line from Llandudno round to Barrow is so exceptional that it seems worth recording. Probably visibility was at its maximum and everything which the sphericity of the earth allowed to be seen was distinguishable."

I have to admit, I can't ever recall seeing the Isle of Man from the promenade at Blackpool.

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Here's a pic I found. It says it's quite a rare event to be able to see it.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/missmerredew/4851346350/

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Thanks for that picture. Why 4 times a year as the poster of that picture suggests? Surely it depends on atmospheric conditions?

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I would guess its meant to be 'about 4 times a year', not for instance on the equinoxes etc

Will drag out the photo I took if I get a chance later as it is similar to the isle of Mann ones in appearance.

Quite possible to see Wales, NI and Scotland from West Cumbria, not to mention IoM. Certianly it is possible to see all of these from top of some of the western fells (Black Coombe being a prime candidate).

I think in rare conditions I've seen Mourne Mountians with a little altitude to the north of here.  Come winter quite pleasant picking out all the snowy peaks in the southern uplands from the coast here, some must be well over 50 miles away.

http://www.nwemail.co.uk/home/isle-of-anglesey-seen-from-walney-1.1015911?referrerPath=news/walney 

I know a couple of colleagues who were convinced they saw Snowdon one morning from Cold Fell in West Cumbria from an altitude of around 900ft.

From the Isle of Man (never been there myself), an old saying suggests that from the summt of the highest mountain (Snaefell), you can see six kingdoms; The Kingdom of Man(n), the Kingdom of Scotland, the Kingdom of Wales, the Kingdom of Ireland, the Kingdom of England, and the kingdom of Heaven.

I've seen the "Kingdom of Mann" from the slightly less glamorous setting of Walney Island, near Barrow in Furness.

But it stands to reason that you can easily see 50-60 miles away if you are looking towards a mountain, or from a mountain, or between two relatively high places. When in an aeroplane I've often been able to see 100-150 miles; I particularly remember one occasion travelling back from Fuerteventura when the plane tracked up the Spain/Portugal border, and yet I could see Portugal's Atlantic coastline all the way up, and could make out Lisbon and its river.

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As promised last night - this is what I was - I think it is Pembroke, as it wasn't close enough to Baggy Point to be the Gower...

 

It's difficult to tell how zoomed in that pic is. The biggest lump of land looks like Lundy to me, or are you looking further right than that? I'm used to seeing Lundy "side on" from Woolacombe but I imagine it could look like that from further south at Westward Ho! If that is Lundy then I assume you mean the smaller, lower bit of land just to the right (and there is another even fainter, smaller one quite a long way further right. Looking at the map I imagine it must be the coast south of Milford Haven, although I would have thought it would appear more widely separated from Lundy than that.

 

 

BTW this is a good site showing panoramas of what you can see from various hills in the UK and abroad. 

 

http://www.viewfinderpanoramas.org/panoramas.html

 

WMB: nice pic of Snowdonia from Cumbria here: http://www.viewfinderpanoramas.org/gallery/gb/scafell.html

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Should be clear - its' defo not Lundy ( I know lundy!) It was between Lundy and Baggy Point.

The photo below is the non-zoomed (zoomed on the lens, but not blown up after)

I reckon that must be the high ground around Stackpole Head, then with maybe the area around Tenby just visible further to the right. Almost exactly 50 miles away, and the ground there is only 80 metres ASL or thereabouts.

 

How high above sea level were you when you took the pic? From sea level, no way would it be visible from that distance without some serious refraction. Rough calculations suggest if you were standing on the beach you could only see an 85m hill from about 25 miles away at most.

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I was on the sea wall near the posh flats, so about 5m above sea level. I thought it odd at the time as I have never seen anything there before. It was about 10 am, and reasonably warm at the time.

Hmm, calling it 7m to allow for your height, the distance to the sea level horizon is about sqrt(7) x 3.85 = 10km. The coast of Wales at around 85m would add sqrt(85) x 3.85 = 35km. Total 45km or about 28 miles. Nowhere near enough.

 

 

Looking at the map again there are actually 200m+ hills behind Pendine which would take the distance up to about 65km or 40 miles. Not quite enough under normal conditions but there must have been some strong refraction: warm air over cold sea?

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Thats what I'm thinking. The sea was cold enough on the friday when I tried surfing without (a) a wetsuit and (b) a surfboard... Still caught more waves than some!

Actual fomula for the distance seen from a point h feet high (or conversely, the height of an object which can be seen from sea level d miles away) is to a good approximation d = sq root (1.5*h); d in miles and h in feet. Beyond that it's refraction.

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