Something amazing happened on Wednesday 11th August 1999
Something we had all waited so, so long for.
Something special - a turning point for mankind.
A new dawn, a new beginning.

It was announced that Noel Edmonds had resigned from the BBC.

Oh, and there was something or other about the sun.

I remember now - an eclipse, and I went to see it.

Not wanting to be caught in any of the promised traffic, or indeed have to drive that far, I called up in late June to book a couple of seats on the train.
55 minutes later, the woman on the phone had found us some seats.
From Bristol.
Facing backwards.
In a smoking carriage.

We arrived at Bristol a little early, and boarded a full train.
After a little while, we began to notice that there was a middle-aged middle-manager type sitting a few seats away.
It became clear that he may well have done a degree in sociology - after all, he was talking loudly and nonsensically about nothing that interested his travelling companion or us, throwing in words like “polymorphism” every now and again for good measure.
I didn’t think much of it, but the man sitting opposite us turned round, and said “Excuse me, could you keep it down please, unless you think the whole carriage may be interested.”!
Poor chap must have nearly died of embarrassment, or perhaps not.

We arrived at 17:44, the last bus from Truro to our floor in St Mawes near Cornwall having left 4 minutes earlier.
The other option was the ferry from Falmouth to St Mawes. That stopped at 5pm.
So we walked 3 miles to a car ferry, which cuts across a rather spooky inlet complete with the ghosts of once proud warships waiting to rust away.
We managed to hitch a lift the last 8 miles, and arrived in St. Mawes, which sits on the opposite peninsular from Falmouth.
That night, the sky was so so clear. The Milky Way was clearly visible, as was Mars, but they’d run out of Twix, so we watched some shooting stars - four in a couple of minutes. How could it possibly be cloudy the next morning?

The next morning, we awoke to thick cloud
At about 10:30, we grabbed our eclipse viewers, cameras and video, and headed up the hill to join the crowd.
At about 10:55, it started to become perceptibly darker, though not much.
Then, at about 11:09, it was as if the lights were being dimmed in a theatre, until it was nearly as dark as night, which a huge swath of bright orange in the sky on the horizon. A huge cheer went up, and all around both coastlines we could see thousands and thousands of camera
flashes.
Ships blew their horns, fireworks were let off, and then all went still for the remaining minute and a half. And then, as quickly as it went dark, it started getting light again, but this time there was an ever bigger cheer and everyone turned skywards - the sun was visible through the clouds! There it was, a couple of minutes of the crescent visible before the clouds covered the sun again.

And it was all over. The crowds dispersed again, the once-in-a-lifetime event was over.

My girlfriend and I had met with my family who’s friend had provided the floorspace, and my little sister had quite a stargazing day that day - she saw Patrick Moore and we both saw Rowan Atkinson, and she *thinks* she saw Jodie Kidd…who knows!

Not a total washout as some would make out, and I certainly don’t regret going despite the cloud.

However, I WAS angry with the Crusty Colonel who had been appointed to run the show from a tourist point of view.
All I can say is that that man is an idiot. All this crap about water and food running out…10 hour traffic queues, riots etc simply put people off. It was such a shame to see campsite after campsite with one, maybe two people in. Vacancy signs hanging from every B&B the night before.
So many business had put so much into this, and many have gone bankrupt through this one man, and the press hype.

And as for the claims of eye damage afterwards….I wonder how many people are out to claim compensation?
Of 1,000 calls to a London eye hospital, two have been kept under observation.
I think people forget you can’t sue the sun - unless you’re Bruce Grobbelaar!

Categories: britain