England to Scotland
New Eclipse Cross hunts the dark side of the sun
SOMETIMES THE STARS align, and all you need do is tag along for the ride. So when we heard that the arrival of the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross coincided perfectly with a partial solar eclipse on 21 August, we hatched a plan coast to drive of Scotland. the new mid-size Once there, SUV we’d to the let west the solar system take the strain as we pointed a camera at two different kinds of eclipse. Easy. But as we park up a couple of hours before the partial eclipse is due at sunset, rain thrashes against the windscreen and we can’t even pick out the sun, let alone worry about staring too intently at it; we sit tight, hoping to get a break in the weather, finger-drumming tedium drowned by the great gobs of rain hammering down on the Eclipse Cross’s panoramic roof. ‘Did it just go a bit darker?’ asks photographer Charlie. ‘I swear it just went a bit darker…’
Wind the sundial back two days and we’re in the Kielder final leg Forest, of our northern Six Nations-inspired England, to kick tour. off Not only does Mitsubishi have form in Kielder, notching up six consecutive victories on the Pirelli International Rally from 2006 to 2011, this neck of the woods also forms part of the Northumberland International Dark Sky Park, the perfect place to gaze up at the moon shortly before it insinuates itself between Earth and sun like a giant cosmic photobomb. With a long schlep up to Northumberland from CAR headquarters, and sinuous roads that course north of the famous reservoir, a trip to Kielder would also give us ample chance to sample Mitsubishi’s new mid-size SUV. Mitsubishi isn’t being shy about the Eclipse Cross. It describes it as ‘the first of a new generation of Mitsubishi cars – more capable and desirable thanks to their sharp designs; engaging driving characteristics and advanced
technologies.’ It’s also keenly priced – starting at £21,275 – for a car packed with safety equipment and cutting-edge gadgets.
Measuring 4405mm long, it certainly looks convincing, with muscular creases, a tapering coupe-ish roofline and LED lights nicked from the XR PHEV II concept. There’s no doubting this interior is a big step on from previous Mitsubishis, with soft-touch plastics, eyecatching silver and black trim and a horizontally split dash, with info up top, controls below. The leather front seats offer comfort, support and a good view over your neighbour’s hedge, and the rears can split 60/40, slide back and forth by 200mm, and recline in nine steps between 16 and 32 degrees. With a wheelbase of 2670mm, there’s good legroom in the back, and the twin-bubble roof design ensures ample headroom despite that tapering roofline – and, yes, it works with the panoramic roof.
There’s no in-built satellite navigation – a little inappropriate given our spacey theme – because Mitsubishi argues people habitually use their smartphones to get around. So a Smartphone Link Display Audio (SDA) system is standard kit, offering Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility. Plug in your smartphone for pared-back access to its functions on the seven-inch touchscreen, including Maps.
You control the screen either directly by touch or via the touchpad located near the gearstick. This takes a little while to fathom, but spend a couple of minutes and it quickly becomes second nature: gentle swipes across the touchpad take you from highlighted box to highlighted box on the main screen, while you push at the slightly squidgy surface to select options.
We arrive at Kielder around 5pm, dropping down from the brilliant B6357 that wriggles its way over the landscape. After the steady
cruise that revealed impressive refinement on the way up here, this is the first time I can sense that this Eclipse Cross is equipped with Mitsubishi’s Super All-Wheel Control four-wheel-drive system, not the front-wheel drive of entry-level specs. Mostly it still feels as front-wheel drive as you’d expect of any car with a transverse engine (the standard bias is 80/20 front-to-rear). But accelerate hard and early and you can sense the bias shifting rearwards to take some workload off the front tyres – in low-grip conditions, up to 45 per cent of torque can make its way to the rear. Like the Lancer Evolutions, you also get Active Yaw Control to accurately direct torque across the rear axle, and a choice of three settings: default Auto, Gravel or Snow. That night we head up to the Elf Kirk lookout, LED headlights picking out startled rabbits as we crawl up the gravel road to the car park at the top. A location that seemed benign during our daylight recce now seems eerie, every sound making us twitch nervously. Then again, there is a solo traveller in a Let’s Off-Road Discovery rustling around in the bushes with a torch, and a pair of campers steaming up the windows in a VW California. It’s all very disquieting, but the sight of us with our cameras and spotlights seems to out-weird them all, and soon we have the idyllic blackness to ourselves. glinting like the It’s Big diamonds a breathtaking Dipper, off Kielder on an black aeroplane, Water, scene, velvet and the and, overhead: stars moonlight oh, sparkling erm, Orion, billions and billions of stars. The next day takes us over the border into Scotland, west past Gretna Green and on to the A75. Our destination is the Galloway Astronomy Centre, where we’ll arrive the evening before the eclipse. Fast and flowing, the A75 is the main route west and carries all the traffic to Stranraer and the boat to Belfast. It’s easy to get stuck in a line of cars behind a line of lorries, so you need some poke to make progress. The Eclipse Cross gets a 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol in either front-wheel drive (with a manual gearbox) or four-wheel drive (with a CVT auto) or a
A location that seemed benign in the day now seems eerie, every sound making us twitch
2.2-litre turbodiesel that comes mid-2018, with four-wheel drive and automatic gearbox. 161bhp Our car and has 184lb the ft, 1.5 with with 40.4mpg CVT, meaning economy and 159g/km CO2 emissions. Clearly it’s no performance car, but the direct-injection unit is smooth and quiet at a cruise, and delivers a healthy slug of mid-range power when you need to make up a few places in traffic – the peak torque kicks in at 1800rpm and hangs about until 4500rpm. At Castle Douglas, we take a detour north through Galloway Forest Park. It’s another Dark Sky Park and a beautiful spot in daylight, blessed with some great roads too. We grab a few photographs, then head for the Galloway Astronomy Centre near Whithorn, meeting Mike Alexander. Alexander has been fascinated by astronomy since the 1969 moon landings captivated him as an 11-year-old; in 2003, his hobby became his life when he quit his job designing safety systems for the oil and gas industry to set up the star-gazing centre with wife Helen. The lack of light pollution was key to the decision to establish the observatory here. Mike and Helen provide B&B accommodation with astronomy courses for beginners, and more advanced guidance on observing the night sky and buying telescopes for those who really get into the subject. During their time here, they’ve had guests from the UK, Singapore, South Africa, Australia and even the man from China Central Television. The small observatory at the bottom of the Alexanders’ garden could admittedly be mistaken for a three-metre-square shed, but the roll-off roof opens up to reveal the heavens and a 16-inch telescope inside, much like a rock sliding out of the way during the Thunderbird 2 launch sequence. We don’t need the observatory today, but we do need an expert. With the patience of Father Ted helping Dougal visualise the difference between ‘small’ and ‘far away’, Alexander explains that the moon orbits Earth every 28 days. The moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, but the sun 400 times further away, making the two appear the same size. Normally this all comes to nothing, as the moon’s elliptical orbit takes it either above or below the sun. But every now and again the moon passes directly in front of the sun. That’s what’s happening tomorrow, with the
USA experiencing a total eclipse, as the moon completely obscures the sun to leave only a fizz of white around the sun’s perimeter (the corona) and an arc of red (the prominences). North-west Scotland will see the moon skirting past the bottom of the sun for a partial eclipse, the cold small orb taking a little chunk from the bottom of the hot big one like a bite from an apple.
That evening, we head down to the beach to snap the Eclipse Cross under a sunset of reds and pinks and blues, but early next morning it’s clear the weather has deteriorated, and a few hours before sunset there’s nothing to see but cloud. Then the rain starts.
Ever optimistic, we file out of the Alexanders’ place, into the Eclipse Cross, loading a telescope (complete with necessary filter) into the boot. After wowing us with stories of the solar system, it’s our turn to impress Alexander with the Mitsubishi’s surround camera system – the optional system brings not only a reversing camera, but also an overhead view patched together with cameras at the front and rear of the car, and under its mirrors. With an overhead image of a car providing the perspective, it’s like having your own personal satellite watching over you.
Little more than 10 minutes’ drive from the Galloway Astronomy Centre, we park up on cliffs near the Isle of Whithorn, which should give us a perfect vista out over the Irish Sea as the partially eclipsed sun sets in the west. But the windows steam over and the rain continues to hammer down so hard that our video crew struggle with the audio quality. ‘Typical,’ jokes Alexander, ‘the story will reinforce the myth that Scotland gets terrible weather!’
And so we wait until the August light fades, lashed with torrential rain every time we step outside like we’ve inadvertently signed up for an ice-bucket challenge, the Mitsubishi’s windows misting over after we rush back to its cosy sanctuary. Somewhere out there, around now, the moon is partially obscuring the sun, but that astrological sleight of hand is entirely eclipsed by a thick blanket of cloud. Finally, we give up and retire to the pub.
Thankfully, eclipses are predictable things, and NASA lists the time, date, location and duration of every eclipse due until the year 3000 on its website – there’ll be another partial eclipse visible from the UK in 2021. But predicting the British weather? That’s another thing altogether.
Somewhere out there the moon is obscuring the sun, but that astrological sleight of hand is entirely eclipsed by the cloud