Skywatchers across UK wowed as rare solar eclipse blots out most of the sun

London is expected to see around 90 per cent of the Sun obscured, while shoppers in Paris queued for more than two hours outside a specialist store on Rue de Rivoli.

Hundreds queued down George’s Street on Wednesday morning to be in with a chance of grabbing one of the last pairs of solar eclipse glasses available in Dublin.

But for several days now, finding a pair of glasses with the required European conformity marking (CE; ISO 12312-2 standard) has turned into a treasure hunt.

At 6pm the beach and village began to empty, and those in the know headed up the hill towards the old granite coastguard station on the headland.