Looking for a new job? If you love the great outdoors, have a head for heights and don't mind getting wet, this could be the perfect post for you: window cleaner at an island lighthouse.

Applicants for the job must have their own boat and be prepared to go out in all weathers to look after the light on Flatholm Island in the Bristol Channel.

Like all lighthouses around the British coast, the Flatholm beacon is automatic, but needs someone to keep the lantern and glass clean.

The job, which has been put out to tender, is being advertised by the Swansea office of the Trinity House Lighthouse Service.

Lighthouses play a vital role to shipping, especially in an area like the Bristol Channel

Howard Cooper, spokesman for Trinity House Lighthouse Service

Company spokesman Howard Cooper said: "We no longer have lighthousekeepers, but this is a dream job for someone who likes the sea and the great outdoors.

"The succesful applicant will have to keep the lighthouse - including the optic glazing - clean, and change any bulbs which blow."

Whoever gets the job will make monthly trips across to the island - three miles off Cardiff - to carry out general maintenance work.

But in an emergency - when the light fails, for example - they will be expected to get there in a flash.

Flatholm is an island in the Bristol Channel

Mr Cooper said: "Lighthouses play a vital role to shipping, especially in an area like the Bristol Channel.

"Many of our lighthouses are on the mainland and the assistants live nearby.

"But whoever gets the job on Flatholm could live on the island or on the coast on either the English or Welsh side of the channel."

The Flatholm lighthouse was built in 1737, a year after 60 soldiers drowned when their ship smashed onto rocks nearby.

The automatic lighthouse, which was converted to solar power five years ago, was manned until 1988.

Flatholm, a retreat for monks since the Middle Ages, was made famous by wireless pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, who sent his first radio transmission to the island in 1897.