Stephen and I walked up to Pallett's Pond today to experience the 'darkness' that was promised. The cloud cover was entire and it never seemed to get noticeably darker or colder as it did in 1999, when conditions on the hill at Brill were clear. At 9.40, we did not expect to see anything of the eclipse. At that point, we turned towards the east and a slight break in the clouds revealed a moon traversing a spectral sun, which was veiled by a higher layer of cloud. In 5 seconds or so, it was gone, obscured by the grey clouds.
We walked on to the pond, and on the way back we looked at the work that has been done by James Joliffe on the dew-pond and thought - if only we had a camera and if only the clouds were not so heavy - we could use the open space of water as a mirror to watch the progress of the eclipse. As we got nearer home, the clouds began to evaporate and I ran as fast as possible to get the camera and car keys to get back to the dew-pond. By this time, I realised that we would be too late to get back to the pond, so we took these photographs in our own pond, just before the sun became too bright for the camera.
So, in lieu of the dew-pond, here is our record of part of the event. I will never again travel on the Commons without the camera.
