Festival organisers and campsite operators were left licking their financial wounds yesterday as arguments raged about the reasons for the smaller than hoped-for rush to the west country for this week's total solar eclipse.

Promoters of the Moonshadow festival in south-east Cornwall cancelled the last two days of the event after Van Morrison, the headline act, pulled in only 1,500 people on Wednesday night.

Organisers of the much larger Lizard 99 festival on Goonhilly Downs are also reported to be facing financial difficulties following complaints that security guards and other service providers have not been paid.

And in a further blow to the region's entrepreneurial spirit, receivers were called in yesterday morning at one of the best organised of the temporary campsites set up in west Cornwall. Directors of the Total Eclipse of the Sun site at Wheal Prosper, Marazion, said they were doing everything possible for those people still camping there.

The company, formed two years ago to provide accommodation for some of the 1.2m extra visitors then expected in the county, said it had been advised by the county council to offer at least three weeks accommodation. It had invested £200,000 to do so but the anticipated numbers of visitors had not materialised.

Emergency planners on Cornwall's eclipse steering committee estimate that by the time of eclipse the county's population had increased to around 1.2m - at least 300,000 below the figure they had made plans for and considerably less than the more optimistic of the region's entrepreneurs had been banking on.

Eclipse co-ordinator Gage Williams, blamed in some quarters for talking up the likely inrush of eclipse watchers, said the steering group had drawn up contingency plans for a total population of 1.5m, based on spare road capacity. To have gone way over that figure would have put "considerable strain" on the county's infrastructure.

Rejecting criticism of the steering group's projections, the former army officer said the event had been "hostage to the weather". Many eclipse watchers had made the last minute decision to head for Torbay, where forecasts had been better.

Unhelpful advice

He also blamed unhelpful government advice to watch the eclipse on television and "a pretty good amount of cynicism" in some parts of the London media from deterring some people from making the journey, including one weekend headline declaring the event a flop even as people were still heading for the region.

Heavy traffic continued to pour out of the region yesterday as visitors set out on the slow journey home. Traffic management experts, pleased that motorists had heeded advice to stagger their journeys into Devon and Cornwall, yesterday appealed for people to travel overnight where possible on their return. They warned that tomorrow would be particularly busy on the roads.

Many visitors began heading back "up country" within 40 minutes of totality on Wednesday. By yesterday an estimated 30% of those who travelled to the region for the event had set off home. Traffic was leaving Devon on the M5 at the rate of 3,200 cars an hour, compared with 2,000 on a normal August weekday. Heavy traffic was also reported on the A30 through Cornwall.

Cornwall's emergency planning officer, Steve Winston, said there had been no reports of deaths or serious injuries in the county attributable to the eclipse. The only casualty was a young man who was so overcome by what he had seen at the moment of totality that he forgot to turn left and bumped into a wall.

Sight problems

But elsewhere in the country yesterday, hundreds of people attended special eye clinics complaining of sight problems. While most patients who ignored official advice and looked at the sun with their naked eyes were reassured by doctors that they had done no real harm, some eclipse-watchers have suffered permanent damage to their retinas.

More than 1,000 worried people called London's Moorfields Eye Hospital helpline within 24 hours of the eclipse, re porting headaches, watering eyes and blurred vision. One hundred people also attended a special clinic in the casualty department after watching the eclipse without proper protection, but only two were found to have suffered any permanent damage.

Hospitals around the country and NHS Direct, the national advice line, also received hundreds of calls about eclipse-related problems, while the national eclipse helpline referred more than 200 callers to their GPs.

At the Bristol Eye Hospital, where a special 24-hour clinic has been set up to assess patients, more than 90 people telephoned a helpline, and at least 40 people have booked into a special "eclipse clinic" at the Birmingham and Midland Eye Centre.

The flood of inquiries came despite repeated government warnings that the only totally safe way to watch the eclipse was through a pinhole projector or on television. However, many medical and astronomy experts dismissed this advice and urged people to use special solar sunglasses. Although millions of eclipse viewers were distributed, thousands ignored the safety advice and used no eye protection at all.

A spokesman at Moorfields Eye Hospital said: "If people don't develop any symptoms by the weekend, they should be fine."

 More than 13m people watched the moment of total eclipse on television, one of the biggest daytime audiences recorded.