Planning for 12 August: a total eclipse within driving distance
I have been saying "we should go to the eclipse" for about a year in the tone people use for "we should learn Italian". This week it became a plan. On 12 August a total solar eclipse crosses northern Spain, and for the first time in my life totality falls within a long but sensible drive of my front door.
Why this one
The path of totality comes down from the Arctic, passes near Iceland, and then crosses Spain from the north-west coast to the Mediterranean before running out into the sea near the Balearic Islands. Spain sits right at the end of the path, which means the Sun will be low and setting. In the north-west it will be around twelve degrees up at mid-eclipse, which is about half past eight in the evening local time. Further east it gets lower still, until near Palma it is barely two degrees above the horizon. Totality lasts at most a little under two minutes in Spain, and most places get somewhat over a minute.
Low Sun is the main problem. Twelve degrees is roughly a fist and a bit held at arm's length. A row of trees, a hill or a block of flats to the west and you see nothing at all. So the first rule of this trip is a clear, low western horizon, and the second rule is the weather.
What totality looks like
I have never seen one. To remind myself why I am about to drive across most of a continent, I have been rewatching this NASA time-lapse of the April 2024 total eclipse from Mazatlán, in Mexico. It is a minute and a half long. It is not mine; NASA filmed it.
What to look for: in the first half the light changes slowly and you barely notice. Then, around the middle, it goes all at once. The sky turns dark blue, there is a sunset glow all the way round the horizon, and the corona appears around a black disc. The return to daylight is just as abrupt. Everyone who has seen totality says that the last minute before it is what they remember, and the video does give a faint idea of why.
The plan
- Drive, do not fly. Two days down, with a friend sharing the driving. A car means we can move on the day if the forecast turns. Flying in and hiring a car on the busiest week of the year, with every hotel in the path already booked, looks worse than two long days on the motorway.
- Base outside the path. Accommodation inside the path is either gone or priced like a wedding venue. We have found a room a little south of it, which means driving north on the afternoon of the 12th.
- A target, not a fixed spot. Somewhere in the north of the country inside the path, high enough to see over the land to the west. I have three candidate hillsides marked on a paper map.
- The fallback. If the forecast for the path is cloud, we go wherever it is clear, even if that means leaving the path. A deep partial in sunshine beats a total behind cloud. I am writing that down now, while I can still be calm about it, because I suspect I will argue with it on the day.
Kit list, first draft
- Proper solar filter sheet for the 70 mm, taped to a cardboard cell that fits over the dew shield. Tested at home first, on an ordinary sunny afternoon.
- Two pairs of certified eclipse glasses each, because somebody always sits on one.
- White card for projection through binoculars, with one side of the binoculars capped. Never looking through them.
- Pencil, notebook, watch. The camera can come, but I already know I will be too busy looking to use it properly.
- Bread for the hillside. Probably bought locally that morning. I will see what the bakeries do.
What could go wrong
Cloud, mostly. Mid-August in northern Spain is often clear, but the north coast can be grey and the Sun is so low that a single bank of cloud on the western horizon would be enough to ruin it. Traffic, too: a lot of people will be making the same drive on the same afternoon, and some of the roads up into the hills are narrow. And then there is the eclipse ending only a short while before sunset, which means the last partial phases will happen with the Sun down among the haze.
None of that is a reason not to go. It is a reason to be flexible, set off early, and accept in advance that we might end up a few kilometres from where we wanted to be. Five months to go. The car has been booked in for a service, which is the most committed I have felt about anything this year.