As the time for first contact came the atmosphere became a little tenser as we could see clouds starting to bubble up around us.  People consulted watches and then there it was a tiny nick out of the side of the sun.  Frantic shutter clicking all around.  The next person to me Tony Williams of Liverpool Astronomical Society was making a video using a digital video camera on his equatorial telescope mount which cost him a lot of excess baggage fees to bring.  Those who watched my copy of this have heard his running commentary of the event.  Time then seemed to slow as the bite out of the sun got very gradually larger.  Photos were taken at decent intervals, though unfortunately none of them show the pair of huge sunspots at about the 4 o'clock position half way to the limb.  It was now that real worries set in as the cloud became thicker and thicker and even worse began to appear between the sun and us!  At times the cloud was so thick that the sun all but disappeared.
As totality got ever closer the cloud then started to disappear.  As the sun's heat was suppressed by the moon shadow the cloud stopped forming.  What a relief.  Now worry was replaced with excitement and eeriness. The shadows began to fade, rather like as if our bodies were cutting off less and less light.  Were we becoming transparent.  Obviously not but even to educated folk - I think so anyway - it is a very strange sensation.  The light levels continue to drop on sunset appears to be coming from the wrong side of the sky.  Another very weird effect, as the mind seems to know that this is wrong.  At this point I had two cameras recording the scene. I was looking through the lens at the sun dying to whip off the filter and see the total eclipse.  Joanna, my wife had my other camera pointed at the approaching shadow and was taking shots of this.  Sunset never comes this quickly normally!
The filters come off and the last few seconds before totality occur.  Even now 6 months later it raises the hair of my scalp to think about it.  It is a truly beautiful sight that needs to be seen with the naked eye.  No photo movie video or anything else can come even close to the effect.
The diamond ring appears and then ever so slowly the corona springs into view.  All around we could hear cheers and fireworks from the taverns and cafes about half a mile distant on the edge of the village.  Cameras are fired, speed settings are changed and as you try to get decent photos of the prominences and corona.
The picture left is a negative solarised image of the prominences.  Note the detached prominence at 3 o'clock. 
The eclipse was due to last 2 minutes and 22 seconds and I had planned to take pictures for a minute and watch with the naked eye for the rest of the time.  Well I got very little time watching with the naked eye as there must be a new law of Physics that time speeds up during totality.  No sooner had it started that various timers started beeping to note the coming end of totality.  I got some decent pictures, far from perfect but worth looking at but my plan to look at the sun came to nothing.  As also did my plan of a series of differently timed pictures.  Totality affects the mind with excitement and all the plans went overboard so I do not even know what lengths of exposure each photo had.
Another diamond ring appeared the sky lightened and we saw the sun rise in the west.  The rest is a big anti climax.  We watched for about another half hour or so getting a picture or two of the re-emerging sun, but we soon packed up the gear and went off for a well earned drink and meal a local taverna.

To sum up.  Even the two minutes were well worth the trip even if the rest of the holiday had been a total disaster, which it was not.  My wife was not sure about going to see the eclipse. She was not very interested about such things, but and to quote "We can go and see that any time again in the future"  An eclipse if you are lucky enough to see it, and you need a lot of luck as all plans are at the whim of the weather, is an experience of a lifetime.  It is a pity that most of them appear to be in school term time and that as a teacher it is difficult - nay impossible -  to get time off during the school teaching sessions.  It looks like being a retirement special for my next eclipse because there WILL BE A NEXT ECLIPSE.