Both pterodactyls and hannahcooper have just popped up with posts about this morning’s eclipse over Asia, and it’s reminded me of the total eclipse we had in the UK a decade ago.
I was holidaying in the south of Wales at the time (here, specifically) with my mum, sister and dog, in a little cottage. It wasn’t in the track of the total eclipse, but being in the south of the country we had a pretty thorough partial eclipse, something like 97.5% according to the tracking website.
In the weeks leading up to the eclipse, you couldn’t move for “Don’t Look At It” warnings, and my mum was very hot on making sure we obeyed those instructions. We made one of those boxes with a pinhole in it, to shine onto the floor, then stood with our backs to the sun and let the box cast the shadows ahead of us.
With it being around 11am, and a halfway decent day, it was relatively bright outside, if a little cloudy in places. What amazed me was just how dark it got, despite it only being a partial eclipse. It genuinely got quite murky out there, for a solid length of time, sort of like when the sun has gone down but it’s still daylight-ish outside.
I sneaked a few furtive glances upwards (hey, I was 15, so ignoring my mum’s orders was second-nature), and it was really weird to see the sun covered up. I can’t really give a better description than “weird”, I’m afraid. It wasn’t scary, or emotional, just a little strange, given that you don’t ever see the sun covered by anything more than some clouds. To be (partially) blacked out by an object is something that you don’t really expect to comprehend.
Judging by the website that pterodactyls linked to, the next total eclipse on the British mainland will be in 2090. Who knows, maybe I’ll be around to see that one…
