Sarah Marwick, a GP from Birmingham, has been chasing solar eclipses for the past 25 years, travelling to France, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Libya, China, the Arctic Circle, Wyoming and now Toronto.
At 4am on Tuesday, Sarah Marwick’s alarm went off: it was time to get her children and partner ready for their flight from Heathrow to Toronto, with a stopover in Chicago. The 3,500-mile journey towards seeing her seventh total solar eclipse had begun.
“It’s kind of an addiction I guess,” the slightly jet-lagged 51-year-old GP from Birmingham said, coffee in hand, during a first-morning call with Sky News from her hotel room in Toronto.
Sarah is preparing for the total solar eclipse on Monday which will stun viewers across the US, Canada and Mexico.
She has so far travelled to France, Africa, Libya, China, Svalbard and Wyoming, as her first experience of the moon’s perfect alignment with the sun and earth made her want to keep chasing total eclipses.
Back then, it was 1999. She was 26 and had just finished university when she travelled with her family to Reims, France, for the event.
There were thick clouds in the sky but it was nonetheless the “most unworldly experience”, Sarah said, as it was like “some kind of end-of-days movie where you see this blackness just approaching you”.
‘The eclipse was perfect’
“It was the most glorious day… the eclipse was perfect. I was absolutely hooked at that point.”
During a total solar eclipse, the sky falls dark as if it were dawn or dusk, and a halo forms around the sun as its light is blocked out by the moon.
