Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

Although this is the podcast for Monday the 8th of April, I'm actually recording it on the

evening of Sunday the 7th of April at London's Heathrow Airport, Gate B-32 of Terminal 5 to be specific, which is where a whole lot of us, an entire plane load of people, are waiting for the Eclipse Express to depart.

Yes, that is the name that I have given to British Airways Flight 95 from Heathrow to Montreal.

The plane was due to take off about half an hour ago, but it hasn't, for technical reasons.

Everyone really getting quite agitated because of course the hope is that we will all get to

Montreal in time to view, the great American eclipse

2024. Let me tell you a little about this amazing astronomical event, the closest I think that

the universe gets to actual magic. We have known pretty much since the dawn of time that at sunrise sunrise in the morning of Monday the 8th of April, it will sweep across the North American continent from the Mexican Pacific coast all the way through Texas, the Midwest, up through the northeast, New York State, Buffalo, Niagara

Falls and into Canada, and then finally to Northern Maine, and across Atlantic Canada.

The eclipse ends at sunset, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, short of Europe.

So although people in North America,

particularly in the US, will be able to see a partial eclipse, there's a lot of us

queuing up to get on board this particular flight. I actually booked this flight just this

morning, so maybe 10 hours before the supposed departure time.

I did that because I wanted to be absolutely sure that I would be flying to a place where the eclipse would actually be visible.

Of course, it's really important to have clear skies if you ought to witness this astonishing astronomical event.

So I had a look at all the weather

forecast normally at this time of year. The historic climatic data tells us that Texas and maybe

Arkansas and possibly parts of the Midwest would be the ideal locations. But the weather chart is

quite astonishing. It shows clouds and heavy rain over Texas.

There's a little patch roundabout, northern Missouri, up to central Indiana in the Midwest where

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