Solar Eclipse

The alarm woke us up at 0545 this morning as today was eclipse day. Tish had been on a late last night and had not got in until gone 1130pm which meant for a short night, combined with the fact that it was clearly very cloudy meant that for a second we pondered rolling over and going back to sleep. Sanity got the better of us and we got up and dressed before going to get the children up, of course today was the first day they weren't already awake by now!
Once shoes were on we grabbed the eclipse glasses and headed off on the long commute to the beach - well the ten minute walk anyway.
On arrival we were greeted by a distinctly cloudy view..

but we settled in along with a few others to see what we could see

As it got progressively darker we got the occasional glimpse of what was going on

At 0639 ish it got dark - Hamish was I think up until that point rather underwhelmed by the whole experience but the darker it got the quieter he got!
It then started to spit with rain very gently and we wondered if this was going to be as good as it got

Then as totality was reached a gap appeared in the clouds..

....and two minutes later it was over!
For Tish and myself this was our second having seen the eclipse in Newquay in 1999 and just as magical. What a fluke that we had moved to the zone of totality for this one, the next one in Australia is Sydney in 2028 - we are packing our bags already!