Whatever you do, don’t accept small change.
We had a total on August 11 in the UK, lasted for about 7 minutes and it was awesome.
I rode down on the bike to Cornwall knowing that cars were going to be held up badly.
It absolutely pissed down virtually all the way there, you’ve never been cold unless you’ve been cold on a bike, the Motorway services were awash with drying bikers and shivering pillions.
South of Bristol the rain turned warmer the traffic heavier, nearly had to drop below the speed limit once or twice.
The choice boiled down to going on toward the tourist traps of Plymouth, which was so busy they stripping them naked and greasing 'em to get more in, or struggle against failing light and go on to Liskeard.
No contest, I did neither, instead I looked at the maps for ancients monuments figuring I wanted to be on my own and headed off toward Bodmin Moor.
There was a tiny little spot on a dead-end road that looked a good spot, bound to be quiet there, called Minions and a standing stone circle marked up as the Hurlers.
The traffic and the rain eased off, I even started to warm up but navigation on these myriad little single track roads of Bodmin is quite difficult, some roads are merely metalled farm tracks setting me astray a few times and that old favourite on damp drying bikers,the steamed up visor, meant either ride at 30mph with it up and get assaulted by miniature flying dreadnoughts out for the night or put the visor down and ride faster to get the airflow through the helmet vents and crash.
I got to Minions about 11 o’clock absolutely stuffed and still needing to pitch my tent, still fairly moist.
There did seem to be a couple of folk about but I assumed these would probably be New Age nutters looking for a tree or rock to hug so I kept myself to myself in a quiet corner.
Morning and it’s not raining!The village was literally only fifty yards away but in the dark I’d not seen it, and it had a pub with accommadation, damn!!
Strolling down the lane to the stone circle itself there were hundreds if not a couple of thousnad folk, bugger!
There was some local legend that the stones themselves were villagers who’d been caught playing hurley on a sabbath and turned to stone.
It is quite a mysterious looking place, abandoned tin mines, prehistoric structures and a few oddly wind and rain eroded balancing rock columns known as the Cheesewrings.The ground itself is unusual, kind of roundy little bumps, almost like teletubbieland!!
Strolling around I kissed peace and quiet goodbye, there were Druids, Christopher Biggins the most uncool fat little tv presenter and a film crew, a few stoned yahoos beating on Tabors and zillions of kids climbing all over the standing stones.
When the eclipse was due to start it was cloudy, didn’t look like we’d see a thing but it was patchy, it was like a celestial dance of the seven veils, fortunately it did come good.
How does one describe the feeling as it gets darker so quickly ?
Someone was giving out the percentage of obscuration, bleedin’ nerds, and although daylight fading began to be noticeable at around 50% it really cannot compare to what happens when it goes from 95% to 100%, it’s awesome, emotional - really.
What light there is, is strange, like a slightly blueish pallor on everything, even the sheep were affected as they started making their evening calling noises.
I can easily see how such a spectacle could be read as a portent of something ominous, and I’m glad that I put up with all the rain and crap to be there at that time.
Whatever you do, travel and see the genuine 100% article.
It looks like I’ll get about 37% at my parents’ house in central Florida.