Well I was right about the burnin' (see previous post).
The Illumination of the Wall went off incredibly well with around 1100 volunteers lighting the way from Segedunum in the east to Carlsile in the west. The trail of light was tracked by a helicopter of indeterminate colour and , apparently NASA. I was involved as an illuminator with Cell4 , led by Andy who'd appeared on teh Country File rehearsal preview. I was lucky in the group I got who were all extremely sociable and technically more than competent in getting the beacon going. Neil and Alison did the beacon while Jay , Julie and Billy were the other torch bearers , the dreadlocked Jay giving us an impromptu juggling display with the (unlit) torches!!
I got one of the torches , which burned rather more enthusiastically than originally estimated , with the flames and wax almost catching fire to my gloves resulting in some slight skin singeing. The torch at this point was discarded and doused using half a bottle of coke. A compilation of pictures and video from today can be seen below soundtracked by "Shining Light" by Ash, available for download here.
One phenomenon that we did observe was the formation of frost on the gas bottles as the day got col
der and the cylinders emptied. We were told of it but it was still fascinating to see.Here's my online photo album of the day.
And finally a bit of start to finish video taken from the helicopter:
Illuminating Hadrian's Wall from IHW on Vimeo.
