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Not many saw it from Britain. I did, although arguably you could say I wasn't actually in Britain. Closer to France actually, and here's how.
It had started months before with a tentative plan to travel to Devon, abandon the car if the media's Doomsday Scenario came to pass and start walking across Dartmoor. Then a friend - a friend with a yacht - had a better idea. Why not sail to the Channel Islands?
So we did - or rather - we didn't.
We arrived on board the yacht at about 1630 on Tuesday August 10th 1999, at her mooring in Poole harbour. There were four of us - one sailor, two pilots and one former glider pilot - so we knew a bit about the weather between us, and we knew the portents were not good. In fact they were awful. An occluded front was due to be touching the tip of Cornwall at noon GMT the following day, which probably meant the whole country would be clouded out. Obviously we needed to be as far from the front - as far east - as possible, which was why we changed our plan and sailed towards Cherbourg, not the Channel Islands.
We set out at about 2200. It was dark by then, and a very special night. Just about everything on the south coast that would float seemed to be at sea that night. Some boats had gone out earlier to clear the channel in daylight, but we joined a long procession of yachts out towards the sea, trying to follow the ill lit channel, illuminated by shore lights from Poole and Bournemouth. Clear of the land we saw there were similar processions from Swanage and the Isle of Wight, all coming together then going their seperate ways - some going south east like us, some going south, some going further west.
We sailed under patches of clear sky, seeing the Andromeda Galaxy, M13 and a Perseid fireball.
By dawn the cloud had closed in. We had to negotiate the Channel shipping lane - the maritime equivalent of the M25 except that everything was moving. The omens were not good. Although we could see ahead a definite edge to the thicker cloud, there was nothing remotely resembling blue sky.
However, at 0900 we caught a glimpse of the sun. Half an hour later we had another one. By now we were positioned on the centreline, about twenty miles off Cherbourg and within sight of the French coast, still with a number of other boats about, beating up and down to hold our position. 1000 and still nothing. 1005 and the sun appeared again - with a bite out. It had begun, and as it began the weather seemed to improve. I had decided to try to make a drawing every fifteen minutes and that is what I did, though a lot of them were through some cloud.
At 1025 there were two almighty bangs which had us all off our perches by several inches. Concorde, on her own eclipse trip, had just gone supersonic - right above us. Twenty five minutes later, with half the sun covered, a big patch of blue sky appeared. As the sky cleared we seemed to be rushing towards totality.
There were many people at work who had said, 'I'm not going to bother. After all, ninety eight per cent (or whatever it was in Somerset) is good enough, and anyway, I can watch it on television.' All I can say is that if you were there you will know. You will know that nothing less than one hundred per cent was good enough, and that it looked nothing like it did on the television.
The pre totality sky is very strange. You're looking for storm clouds where there are none. It has that sort of look, that sort of feel. It's easy to see where all the evil portents about eclipses come from. It all happens very fast. A tiny sliver of sun left. Darkness closing in, the boat lights springing out on the water. A sudden, brilliant flash of the diamond ring and we were looking at a total eclipse of the sun in a clear sky. I caught a brief glimpse of the narrowest of rings of light around most of the sun, then, like flicking a switch, it disappeared and the corona sprang out.
It wasn't dark - the sky was a deep late dusk blue. The corona was a delicate white, the prominences that appeared seconds later a deep orange red. By contrast the disc of the moon was a black so pure it appeared as a perfectly round hole punched in the sky. Venus sat below the sun. Mercury was behind a whisp of cloud. It was all so stunningly beautiful - far more so than I had been expecting. I did not attempt to photograph it - I knew now that film could never do it justice. I have the memory....
It was a very fast two minutes. As suddenly as it had begun it was over. The diamond ring flashed again, seeming even brighter this time, and darkness rushed away to the east and into France. We made our way, much more slowly, back to Poole, picking up our moorings after almost exactly twenty four hours away.
Strangely enough, the people from our neighbouring boats did not see the eclipse, nor did another group from work who made a similar trip out from Devon. They were all in the wrong place....