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A Vanishing Act In English Skies

Cornwall Braces for Eclipse

 

By T. R. Reid

Washington Post Foreign Service

 

Sunday, August 1, 1999; Page A01

 

LIZARD, England, July 31 The sun will turn black. The air will turn frigid.

Owls and bats will swarm in the midday sky. It will all happen at 11 minutes

past the 11th hour on the 11th day of August. And if you think that's a

coincidence, you haven't been studying your necromancy tables.

 

On Aug. 11, the last total solar eclipse of the millennium will sweep across a

long arc of Earth, from the North Atlantic to the Bay of Bengal. The first

point of land it crosses -- achieving totality from 11:11 to 11:13 a.m., local

time -- will be the southwest corner of England, a storied peninsula of rocky

headlands and rolling green hills that was the likely location of King

Arthur's Camelot, but is now known as the county of Cornwall.

 

"For pagans, totality will be the most important two minutes of the decade,"

said Andy Norfolk, an amiable landscape architect and druid bard who is one

of tens of thousands in this corner of Britain still practicing ancient

celestial religions. They will gather -- at henges, quoits and stone altars

erected here long before Christ was born -- to worship the meeting of the sun

and the moon.

 

"Oh, yes, we'll have druids, necromancers [sorcerers], New Agers -- the whole

sun-worshiping lot," said a smiling Gage Williams, a retired British Army

general who has been appointed Cornwall's eclipse czar. "But they don't

influence my planning, because most of them live here anyway.

 

"Our problem is all the outsiders who are going to come. Cornwall is a narrow

cul-de-sac with only three real roads, and we're going to have more than a

million tourists piling in here that Wednesday. About 100,000 of them will be

eclipse-chasers from the [united] States, and what will they think if our

county runs out of food or petrol or medicine or nappies [diapers]?"

 

In theory, the eclipse should be manna for Cornwall. It's the poorest county

in Britain and is increasingly dependent on tourism. But when Gen. Williams

first laid out his battle plan to the county council 18 months ago, the

reception was less than sunny.

 

"They seemed to think it was a lot of bother," Williams recalled. He said one

council member moaned: "The timing is bloody awful -- middle of vacation!

Can't we get the date changed?"

 

But the orbital cycles that create a solar eclipse are immutable. Because the

moon is so much nearer the earth, it can completely block the view of the sun

if it is in precisely the right spot -- just as a penny held near the eye can

block out a whole building down the street. Cornwall, accordingly, has pulled

out all the stops to make sure the solar phenomenon is a solid plus.

 

Of the million-plus Britons expected to travel to the eclipse, many will bring

their boats, jamming small harbors, such as the beautiful turquoise cove here

at Lizard Point. The British coast guard predicts 100,000 small craft, the

largest armada in British history.

 

A few hundred well-heeled fans will ride on two chartered Concordes that hope

to follow the arc of eclipse as it moves across the globe. British railroads

have added enough cars to bring 28,000 additional passengers -- and all seats

are sold.

 

But most visitors probably will come by car, and that worries the eclipse

czar. "We're urging people to put bicycles on top of their cars, so if the

[traffic] block is impossible, they can still get through," Williams said.

Thousands of road signs have been readied -- some meant for expressways

hundreds of miles away -- reading "Expect Heavy Delays."

 

To save water, Cornwall is reminding its citizens: "You don't have to flush

the loo [toilet] every time." To keep medical facilities available, all

elective surgery planned for early August has been rescheduled. Williams

surmises that there might be a rush at maternity wards. "The last druid baby

born during a total eclipse grew up to be Merlin, and some parents might want

to repeat that," he said.

 

Numerologists are analyzing why there are so many 11s in the time of totality.

Astrologers are fascinated by the proximity to the end of the millennium. But

since the millennium, a Christian concept, has no particular meaning to nature

worshipers, they have other things on their minds.

 

Norfolk, a local druid who heads the Cornish Earth Mysteries Group, says

worship services and ritual bathing are the traditional pagan activities

during an eclipse. But there is also a suggestion in the druid community that

people shouldn't observe the eclipse at all.

 

Cassandra Lathan, a local nurse and moon worshiper, argues that an eclipse is

the coming together of the sun and the moon. "A god and goddess are making

love," she said. "We have no right to look upon it."

 

ECLIPSE-RELATED WEB SITES:

 

http://www.cornwalleclipse99.com

 

http://www.cornwall-online.co.uk/

 

http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse

 

http://planetary.org