Yet there are some younger faces within today's crowd. Londoner Anna Cox is here with her husband Adrian Martineux as a tenth anniversary present, along with their two children Rose, 5, and Iris, 1. Rose, dressed in a purple anorak, is needles to say very excited.
"I'm going to see my first eclipse," she tells me from underneath her hood.
Her mother is also hoping to see her first. "We are definitely at the amateur end of the spectrum but it is wonderful to be here. There is something really lovely about all these people who have come from all over the world just standing here this morning and staring up at the sky."
Speaking of the sky, after the sun briefly burst through it has now started to cloud over again. Less than an hour to go until totalilty but the weather changes fast in the Faroes.
Joe Shute in Torshavn
08.54
Although it's a bit cloudy elsewhere, the eclipse is progressing nicely down in Cornwall. This is a picture from Newquay.
The Moon passes in front of the Sun as viewed from Cornwall
08.50
Well It's started. Not the eclipse. The jokes.
08.45
Are you enjoying the eclipse? Do you feel a bit let down by the clouds. We live in a blame culture after all. So take our quiz and get it off your chest.
08.30
So we're now at a time when everyone across Britain should be able to see the start of the eclipse. If it wasn't cloudy. But it is. However even if you can't see anything you may notice it getting colder as the Sun's heat is blocked. So if you're going to watch it take a coat.
I'd like to put a positive spin on it but it is cloudly out here. In the next hour you will see more people with their headlights on. It would be hard to believe you wouldn't notice something was going on.
Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society
08.25
It's started! Look. This is Newquay in Cornwall.
Run, run it's the end of the world. Disclaimer. Not really
08.20
More updates from the Telegraph's relentless eclipse-chaser Joe Shute in the Faroes. He caught up with brother and sister Sally and Colin House who have travelled all the way from Dorst for the two hour phenomenon.
Most eclipse chasers in Torshavn have congregated at the Hotel Foroyar which is perched on a hill above the town.
Photographers have climbed on to its grass roof - a typical Faroese design - while hundreds more are swaddled in anoraks in its gardens looking out over the sea.
Brother and sister Sally and Colin House from Dorset are among them. The pair staked out their spot since 6.15am and are shivering in the Faroe wind despite wearing five layers each.
"We came here on Tuesday on the ferry from Newcastle and it has been a lovely week," says Sally, a 56-year-old personal assistant. "I've never seen an eclipse before but Colin needed a volunteer so I said I would go with him.
"Even if we don't see the total eclipse it will still have been well worth the trip."
Joe Shute in Torshavn
08.15
Astronauts on board the International Space Station will get the strangest view of the eclipse this morning as a huge round dark shadow will cover Britain. The picture below shows the Moon's shadow on Earth during an eclipse seen from the Russian Mir station in 1999.
08.10
The body of Richard III will be reinterred next week, and intriguingly a spectacular solar eclipse happened shortly before the fatal Battle of Bosworth field which was seen as a bad omen for Richard.
It was said that as Richard’s defeated body lay beneath the arches of the Church of the Annunciation, in Leicester, it is believed that a blood-red moon shone down on his battle-scarred corpse.
Richard’s body was taken to Leicester and displayed for three days, and at night the near full Moon would be shining down on his naked and broken body.
During the eclipse, depending on the amount of volcanic dust in the atmosphere, the appearance of the Moon could vary in colour between orange and a deep blood-red.
Geological evidence suggests that significant eruptions did occur in the mid-15th century.
Colin Brooks, Leicester Astronomical Society ,who studied historical astronomical data from 1485
Richard III's body was found under a car park in Leicester
08.05
Our roaming reporter - and avid twitcher - Joe Shute is currently enjoying the spectacle on the Faroe Islands where there will a total eclipse for around two minutes. The only problem? It's cloudy. Bah.
Cloud and drizzle is the outlook on the Faroes this morning leaving many thousand people who have travelled here from all over the world staring anxiously up into the sky.
Banks of photographers - both amateur and professional - have set up since day break on the hills above the capital Torshavn.
Despite the gloom, there is just enough occasional sunshine poking through the cloud to give people hope.
They call those rays of sunshine "god's fingers" here, and many currently are praying beneath their anorak hoods that they may still see the eclipse after travelling so far to this remote Atlantic outpost.
Joe Shute in Torshavn
'God's Fingers' poke through the clouds over Torshavn, Faroe Isles
08.00
Oh dear, Londoners and people in Scotland might not see the eclipse at all, says the Met Office. Lots of cloud. But good news for the south-west and Wales and North as there are lots of breaks in the clouds.
07.55
Right Britain, you've got half an hour to go before the most spectacular solar eclipse begins. WHAT? You've still not found any eclipse glasses? Don't panic. You still have time to build a viewing device. Check our guide to watching the eclipse safely here. And, if all else fails, use a colander. It will allow you to see hundreds of mini eclipses.
A colander will let you see hundreds of tiny eclipses
07.50
Eclipse excitement is building and some parts of Britain are waking up to a beautiful morning. We'll be updating our eclipse gallery throughout the morning, so see the best of the shots here.
The Eden Project in Cornwall
A little boy prepares to watch the eclipse
Sunrise over Nottingham
07.42
I've been asked a lot this week why we don't get solar eclipses more often, given that the Moon regularly passes between the Earth and the Sun. It's all about the orbits of the Earth and the Moon which are eliptical and also angled.
Dr Edward Bloomer, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, explains here:
The Earth is orbiting around the Sun and sometimes is slightly closer and sometimes further away, and the Earth is also wobbling around on its axis,” he said.
Likewise the orbit of the Moon around the Earth is elliptical and slightly tilted so it’s rare for the Sun, Earth and Moon to actually line up.
When they do come into perfect alignment it is called the syzygy effect and when the Moon is closest to Earth you have a total eclipse.
Still confused? Watch our video
STILL confused? Let Jaffa Cakes help:
07.30
Wondering what the eclipse will look like at various times? Don't fret. We've produced a handy video showing the procession of the Moon across the Sun.
07.24
We've got around an hour to go in London before the eclipse begins but it is looking worryingly cloudy out there. There is also a fair amount of air pollution which, even if the clouds clear in time, could make the spectacle a tad hazy. You can check out how cloudy your area will be on the Met Office's Cloud Cover forecast here.
Some experts are predicting that an eerie fog could make the eclipse more ‘atmospheric.’
With smog I'd have thought the darkening would be visible, and the disk of the Sun should still be seen, unless it's really thick, or has thick cloud above it. It could be quite atmospheric.
Dr Chris North, Research Associate at the School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University
07.20
Here's a map of Britain, showing the eclipse predictions for where you live.
07.15
Good morning and welcome to our live blog as Britain prepares for a partial solar eclipse that is set to be the most spectacular in 15 years.
It will begin at around 8.30am and be all over by 10.30am, with the peak for the UK at around 9.30am.
However, the exact timings vary depending where in the country you are based.
And it won't just be a visual spectacle. Wildlife experts are predicting that Britain's songbirds could fall silent as the Moon passes the Sun. We could also get a second dawn-chrous today, as the Sun re-emerges. Find out more about the impact on animals here.
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1H7BaC6
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