In the footsteps of Walcher

The must-see event in the heavens in 2026! The only opportunity to see a 90% eclipse in the next x years! Get a clear view west! Go somewhere high - the sun will be low in the sky! Don’t miss it!

Encouraged by radio, TV and social media modern-day astrological pilgrims followed the command and ascended. The roads around the Hills were chocka with cars seeking places to park, as the time of the much-vaunted eclipse drew near.

Paths up the hills carried a steady stream bearing the high-tech tools of astrological observation in the Twenty-first Century (as widely advised) - the colander and the cereal box pin-hole camera. A few had eclipse glasses.

Picnic blankets were spread on summits. Everything was ready. Everything that is except…the sun. Beautiful rays spread across Herefordshire. From behind clouds.

So the astrologers waited. Picnics were consumed. Phones relayed messages and videos from others enjoying near totality…a long way from Malvern. And then, then the sun peeped from behind the cloud. An ‘ooh’ spread across the Hills, as cereal packets were wielded and colanders held up to the sun. Tiny, perfect images of the partial eclipse appeared; sun-crescent smiles projected onto paper, cardboard and clothing. Priory folk and all, wondering at the glory of God’s Creation spread before them, just as the Priory’s second Prior, Walcher, had in his astrological observations so many centuries before.

All too soon the clouds returned. Picnics were cleared away, colanders stowed, and the steep descent of the masses began as sunset, behind the clouds, lowered its crepuscular shade and the traffic jam returned, in reverse, before diffusing into the deep Malvern darkness.