Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Caller. It's Tuesday the 12th of August,

which means that one year from now, a total eclipse of the sun will sweep across northwestern Europe.

It will make landfall in northern Spain and end with the sunset over the Balearic Island of My Yorker.

I've been lucky enough to witness several total eclipses and they are so exciting if you place yourself in the line of totality and the skies are clear.

It's a sight to behold.

You can see the moon blotting out the sun.

You appreciate the mathematical perfection of nature.

The stars and planets appear in the middle of the day.

And even though you're only talking about a couple of minutes,

it's a memory that will live with you forever.

Therefore, I have been talking to Captain Eclipse, as I call him, Dr. John Mason,

the man who knows more about solar eclipses than pretty much anyone else.

Well, we have a total eclipse that starts in the high arctic, goes over the north pole,

down the east coast of Greenland, far north-west corner of Iceland, over the ocean, and then down to Spain and the Balearic Islands.

It's the first total eclipse in Spain since 1905.

And there won't be another one in Iceland this century.

So it's an interesting event, but a very tricky one for lots of reasons.

Well, go on then.

Surely you just go and find somewhere in those many, many countries and locations you've

described and you just go and stand under it, don, many countries and locations you've described and

just go and stand under it, don't you?

No, not really.

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