Tag Archives: atlantic ocean

Monday 30th September 2019 – IT’S BEEN …

… a pretty rough day for me today.

What didn’t help matters was that I couldn’t sleep last night. 01:30 and I was still struggling away trying my best to drop off.

At some point I must have done, I suppose, because the alarm awoke me at 06:00. Just in time to catch the vestige of a nocturnal voyage disappearing out of my head, so I grabbed the dictaphone and dictated it before I forgot. The only one from last night, apparently.

For a change, I remembered the medication and then I grabbed a quick breakfast so that I could take the kids to school. And then down to Hartland to take Hannah the lunch pail that she had forgotten.

Back at the tyre depot there wasn’t a great deal to do today. In fact, I just mauled around a few sacks of feed when customers came a-calling. My new gearchange cable is a Ford main agent part and won’t be in Woodstock until early tomorrow morning.

At lunch-time I went off to buy a sandwich from the Irving garage by the Trans-Canada Highway and then went back to the garage. Where I fell asleep not once but twice.

That was the cue for Rachel to send me home as I was clearly in no fit state to do anything.

Once I’d regained my second wind I made a start on adding the blog entries for the second leg of my voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. To see how far I’ve advanced, you can go to THIS LINK and work your way forward.

There were just Hannah, our visitor and me here for evening meal so I made thin-fried potatoes with carrots, onions, garlic and chili with herbs, and vegan burgers on baps with cheese. And it was all so delicious, especially when followed by one of my chocolate soya desserts left over from Montreal.

Talking of Montreal, I have (rather regrettably) booked my bus back to Montreal, Much as I dislike the idea, I suppose that I ought to think about going home some time soon.

As well as the bus, I booked a room in Montreal for the night that I’ll be staying there before I fly out. I saw the ideal place – and for $20 CAN too. A bed in an 8-bed dormitory in a hostel for women. But they wouldn’t let me reserve the place.

Instead, I’ve booked a room at one of my previous haunts in the rue St Hubert at the back of the bus station, seeing as there was a place on special offer. But then I remembered that that’s the place that doesn’t offer breakfast, by which time it was far too late.

So that’s that. My route from here as far as Brussels is now arranged, for better or for worse. And I’m going to be having a hard time leaving, I reckon. One thing that I’ve always been wary about is putting down roots, especially in places where it’s clearly impractical, if not impossible.

And emotional attachments are the worst of them all.

But onwards and upwards, hey?

I WANT TO …

… tell you all a little story. And it’s really down to the insistence of one of the regular readers of this rubbish.

It’s something that I wrote to myself late one night about a week or so before my final voyage across the Atlantic Ocean came to an end.
—-

Wind the clock back to 1969/70 when I was studying Latin … “well, puer amat mensam” – ed … at Grammar School and having to translate – either from the English to the Latin or vice versa (and if there’s any vice involved, you can bet your life that I’m in there somewhere!) – a Roman myth or legend.

For reasons that I no longer remember, I chose the story of Castor and Pollux, and I can recall the story quite clearly even to this day.

Leaving aside all other kinds of myths and legends concerning Castor and Pollux that people might think are quite apposite, and other names by which they might have been known, which may be even more apposite to some, I’m referring to the fact that one of them (Castor) was a mortal being and his twin Pollux was the creation of the Gods, fathered by Zeus who having disguised himself as a swan, came down to earth and seduced Leda, wife of Tyndareus King of the Spartans and who were the mortal parents of Castor.

Therefore Castor and Pollux were in fact half-brothers.

Cutting a long story short … “for which we are all grateful” – ed … and missing out quite a few very relevant thoughts, including the phenomenon of St Elmo’s Fire (canwyll yr ysbryd or “candles of the spirit” as it is known in Welsh) and which has more of a bearing on this story than anyone might imagine, Castor the mortal died, and Pollux, the immortal, was heart-broken.

Pollux pleaded with the Gods and eventually Zeus changed things around so that half of the immortality of Pollux was given to Castor.

This meant that they took it in turns to be immortal, so that whoever was the mortal on any particular day was in Hades and whoever was immortal on that day was on Mount Olympus, and they changed over on a regular basis.

To whichever bank of the River Styx Charon the boatman had taken you, whether to Hades or Mount Olympus, you would only ever see the one and not the other until they alternated. For the casual observer, whether you were in Hell or in the Paradise of the Gods, it was really exactly the same situation and the same circumstance as in the other place but on different days depending upon who was the immortal God and who was the mortal being on that particular day.

A schizophrenic’s delight or dilemma, you might say. And I should know all about that of course.

So there are things going on right now that I don’t quite understand. And maybe I ought to understand them, I dunno. But right now I have a couple of quotes going round in my head, and seeing as we are on board a ship in difficult seas a nautical metaphor is appropriate. It’s an exchange between Peter Ustinov and Mia Farrow in Agatha Christie’s “Death On The Nile”
Ustinov – “You are embarking on a hazardous journey in troubled waters. You face who knows what currents of misfortune”.
Farrow – “One must follow one’s star wherever it leads, even unto hell itself”.
Such is the price of loneliness, boredom, inaction and, most importantly, curiosity.

—-
I hope that you enjoyed that little story.

Friday 5th July 2019 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about the sunset last night. It really was beautiful. And still going at round about 23:30 too. We are approaching the Land Of The Midnight Sun and at the right time of the year too.

So having taken a few photos I toddled off to bed.

Much to my surprise I awoke bang upright with a jolt at 05:40. I’d been dead to the world, out like a light. And I’ve no idea what had awoken me because the engines were at “slow ahead” and we were crawling along, almost stationary. Mind you, 05:40 is actually 07:40 in real money due to the time difference so that might explain some of it.

Yesterday we had seen land in the form of a couple of islands. But this morning we really were in sight of the mainland.

So up and about, I took a couple of photos of the Icelandic coast, round by Keflavik to start with, and we hit a problem. The laptop hadn’t switched itself off last night and this morning the flattery was bat. So I had to find a power socket in which to plug it while I did some work. But that gave me an opportunity to gaze out of the window at the beautiful morning.

After breakfast, I went up aloft and watched as we slowly inched our way into the harbour at Reykjavik, picking up a pilot on the way. There was plenty of shipping in there, including an Icelandic gunboat, which I imagine will be seeing plenty of action pretty soon when the silly Brits realise just how stupid they have been.

I took a really good action photograph of one of the sailors throwing a line to the quayside.

We had lunch, which was a buffet, and then we headed off onshore. While the crew and the staff were sorting themselves out, they had arranged for the half dozen of us to have a guide and go for a walking tour for 90 minutes.

It was quite interesting, and I came to the conclusion that I could live quite happily live in Reykjavik, provided that I could afford it. Prices here are astronomical. A portion of fish and chips would cost something like €12:00.

We needed to find a bank, which was easier said than done, but eventually we came across a cash machine. So now I have 8,000 Icelandic Kronor, which is about €55:00. I might be able to buy a coffee or something with that if I’m lucky.

Back on board the ship we had a briefing and a lifeboat drill the latter of which took an age. We’ll be in trouble if we ever spring a leak. We were also issued with our expedition jackets, which took longer than it ought to have done too.

The portions of food at teatime seem to have diminished which is probably just as well because we were eating far too much.

Later on, I sorted out the photos and wrote up some of my notes, although not be any means all of them. Now I’m waiting for the sunset and if I’m lucky it will be another beautiful one. I’ll have to make the most of them because they won’t last for ever. It will be bound to rain before long.

Thursday 4th July 2019 – LAST NIGHT …

… I was in bed early and having watched a film, was soon off to sleep.

And to my surprise I managed to sleep for most of the night too – with a brief awakening round about 04:40.

Plenty of time to go off on a little travel too. I was in Shavington somewhere and we’d had friends staying – American friends. I awoke, and these people were awake too so I asked hem what time it was. They replied that there was 12 minutes to go until the alarm. So when the alarm went off these people got up and got ready. I directed them to go back to Crewe via Chestnut Avenue, that way, so they could see the houses and the town and see how people lived, councillors and so on. But whoever I was with said that councillors don’t live round here. They all live in the big houses on the new estates. We were out after that trying to find something and we wanted a newspaper. We had to work the controls to this machine in a certain way in order to work it, but I couldn’t get it right. The newsagent had some papers on display but it was things like the Daily Sexpress and the Daily Wail, Tory party garbage newspapers or whatever and I had no intention whatever of reading any of them. The rest of this dream has evaporated.
No it hasn’t because it suddenly came back. The woman was actually Rose Stephenson but a trimmer version of her. We were in a car somewhere and had been for a drive, but had parked up on the edge of the road at the entrance to a narrow secluded lane. every time that a car came up behind us I’d move the car further down the lane. She started to become annoyed about me driving her car, not very happy at all. But then she cottoned on to what I wanted to do, which was to be alone with her in a quiet dark secluded place, so we ended up in a quiet, dark secluded place further down this little lane as you might expect.
Later, we were back on board ship and she decided that she would go for a swim. She met up with Rosemary, who already had on her bathing costume and Rose was getting into hers. Rosemary was ready first and went to dive into the pool.

This morning though I didn’t manage to beat the first or second alarm, but I comfortably beat the third alarm to the bathroom which is always a good sign. Then I came up on deck to photograph the early morning sun.

Realising that I had forgotten my medication, I went back down again. And I might just as well have gone back to bed because I hadn’t realised – and no-one had said – that we’ve passed into a different time zone (we’re at 62°N 16°W) so we’ve gained an hour and instead of it being 06:30 it’s actually 05:30.

Eventually it was breakfast time and afterwards, I spent all of the morning attacking the rest of the photos for June 2019 and organising them correctly. And there were more than enough of them too. 301 to be precise.

We had a pleasant surprise at lunchtime. We have a Nepalese sous-chef on board and he prepared a delicious curry for us. Of course, it was nothing like as spicy as I would have liked but this is a North American company with mainly North American clients so it can’t be helped.

This afternoon I went up into the observation room and read a book on Iceland. But we are in the shipping lane now so there was a fair bit of marine traffic. And on one occasion, a container ship going past bounced its wi-fi signal off us so we even had an internet connection, so I was able to wish Amber a happy birthday.

For tea, we had a pleasant surprise. All six of us were invited to sit at the captain’s table with the captain and a representative of the owners who is on board performing an audit. While we were there we had our first sight of land for a while too. Some offshore islands, including the one that suddenly appeared out of the ocean 50-odd years ago and the name of which I’ll tell you in early course (it’s called Surtsey).

But I didn’t stay too long because I was struggling to avoid bursting out into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. The Canadians were complaining about Muslims coming to their country and bringing all their clothing and their religion with them. So I had a close look at these Canadians to see if they were wearing buckskins, with feathers in their hair, warpaint on their faces, worshipping shamans and living in a tepee, speaking Huron or Iroquois.

Of course they aren’t.

They brought their European clothes, their European habits, their European religion and their European language with them. North Americans don’t “do” irony of course, but the hypocrisy of these people is totally staggering.

I had to walk away before I either burst out laughing or before I said something completely injudicious.

It’s quite late now but I’m staying up until late. It’s beautiful weather outside and I’m sure that we are going to have another magnificent sunset. It will be worth waiting for.

And I was right.

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 – SOMETHING HAPPENED …

… during the night that awoke me and I’m not sure what it was. But I wasn’t awake long. I turned over and went back to sleep. I did have enough time to go on one of my nocturnal rambles but seeing as you are probably eating a meal right now, I’ll spare you the grisly details.

Rudely awoken by the alarm, I didn’t leap out of bed but had a slow steady awakening and only just managed to fail to beat the alarm. We had the usual medication this morning of course and then I bounded up onto the deck all ready to take a few early morning sunrise photos only to find that I had totally wasted my time and could have had an extra hour in bed because we had a very thick North Atlantic fog and visibility wasn’t even 50 yards.

That was how it stayed for much of the day. Misty, foggy and overcast. There was the occasional break in the clouds and on one occasion the sun even tried to break through but it soon closed up again.

With nothing much going on, I spent the time in the upstairs observation lounge catching up with the backlog of photos, with the occasional break for food and coffee. And that was that.

But there was a sudden, if brief moment of excitement. My laptop suddenly announced that there was an internet connection – the “Cyber Café at Sea”. But no sooner did it come up then it went again.

All that I can think of is that somewhere out there in the fog one of these enormous cruise ships must have gone sailing past in the opposite direction and I had picked up their internet signal.

So that’s the sum total of my day. Nothing whatever to report really. And it’s not going to be any better because it’s now raining heavily. If ever there were a good time for an early night this would be it because I won’t be seeing the sunset tonight.

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 – TODAY WAS A DAY …

… of doing nothing at all. We’re actually on what is called a “positioning voyage” between a drop-off point for one group of passengers and a pick-up for the next. But as I know some of the people who lease the ship, and it’s actually travelling in the direction that I want to go, we’ve been allowed to leap on board.

But there’s no entertainment and nothing organised to help pass the time.So luckily I have plenty to do.

And talking of plenty to do, last night I settled down in my comfy cabin to watch a film, but I think that I lasted less than 5 minutes before I switched everything off and went to sleep.

Not for long though. At 04:15 exactly the ship hit a heavy rolling swell and the change in rhythm awoke me immediately. It was difficult for me to go back to sleep but I must have done because I was awoken by the alarms.

And if I went anywhere on a nocturnal ramble, I really have no idea at all.

By 06:15 I was up and about and 06:30 saw me, mug of coffee in hand, on the open deck at the rear. We sailed through a procession of oil rigs a windfarm or two and the odd ship here and there, but nothing of any great excitement. There was no land visible.

During breakfast, some land became visible on the port bow. It seemed that through the night and early morning we had been travelling across the mouth of the Moray Firth and now we had struck shore again somewhere in the vicinity of the town of Wick.

A couple of us stood on the wings of the bridge admiring the view and taking photos. Duncansby Head and John O’Groats were quite interesting, and one of my photos even picked up a couple of people watching us from the cliffs;

Past the lighthouse on the Pentland Skerries and into the Pentland Firth, threading our way through the Orkney Islands. Apart from the numerous lighthouses, we saw plenty of former military installations from when the British Royal Navy was stationed here, a couple of ferries out of Scrabster, a trawler or two and a big gas tanker.

There were plenty of inhabited places too but I’ll need to refer to a good map to identify those, so it will have to wait until I return home.

The weather had started off very misty and hazy and many of the long-distance shots were veiled in a kind of fog. But by now the weather had improved and some of the photos, even taken at full-reach with the big zoom lens.

But it wasn’t to last. We were enveloped in a sudden and dramatic squall that passed our way like a cyclone and disappeared just as rapidly.

We passed the Old Man of Hoy and into the open ocean of the North Atlantic. That was the cue for a heavy swell, and also the cue for lunch.

A couple of my fellow-passengers are cinephiles and they wanted to watch a film, so I repaired to the observation lounge on the top deck to attack a great pile of photos.

There wasn’t all that much to observe out here in the wilds, but I did notice a couple of islands away to port. I’ve no idea what islands they might have been because apart from Rockall, which neither of these islands resembled in the slightest, I’m not aware of any islands out here.

That’s something else that I shall have to check in due course.

Away in the distance was a ship. I couldn’t see it too clearly as it was so far away, but it seemed to have what looked like a crane on the back. if it was indeed a crane, it might well be a supply ship of some nature and might even have some connection with the islands that we had just passed.

At our evening meal I asked if anyone else had seen the islands but apparently not. I managed to track down an atlas but that wasn’t a great deal of help.

Later that evening our cinephiles wanted to watch another film so they pulled all of the curtains. I retreated once more to the quiet of the top deck lounge where I could at least see anything that might be going on and to carry on with the photos.

I did manage to see a ship – away in the distance – and so I’ve no idea what type of ship it might have been. Not even cropping and blowing it up (the copped photo, not the ship) could give me much of a clue.

Later still though, there was a huge ship away to port, and that was easier to identify once I enlarged the photo that I took. That was another cruise ship, but one of the big ones with 10 decks and about 3,000 passengers. I’m glad I’m not on that.

Just before going out of bed I stuck my head out of the door. And I’m glad that I did because I was treated to the most glorious sunset – one of the best that I have ever seen. And there was only me out there to enjoy it so I had it all to myself.

Back in my cabin I settled down to try to watch a film but after about 10 minutes or so I gave that up, turned everything off and went to sleep. And quite right too.It’s amazing just how tired you become when you have been doing nothing all day.

Thursday 4th April 2019 – REMEMBER YESTERDAY …

trawler storm port de granville harbour manche normandy france… when I told you that winter had returned to Normandy?

Well, it’s here and with a vengeance too. The storm is blowing up right across the bay and churning up the sea something wicked.

This little trawler, with its lifeboat in tow, is making heavy weather of leaving port this morning and struggling out into the wind.

night high winds storm waves over plat gousset granville manche normandy franceBy the time the evening came round, the wind had dropped slightly.

Ever so slightly, and as it was high tide when I went out for my evening walk, the waves were crashing down over the top of the Plat Gousset in an impressive fury.

All in all, it’s been quite a spectacle today with the weather the way that it has been.

Despite a night that was rather later than I wanted, I had a decent sleep up until about 05:30 when I awoke. There was a little bit of awakening during the night but nothing much to worry about.

There had been plenty of time to go on a little voyage or two though. I was at a meal last night and sitting at the table were a couple of people whom I know – Zero being one of them. She at one time was a regular feature in my nocturnal rambles and who seems to be making something of a comeback just now). She was saying to the man who was with her – probably her father – that if only she had said something different to … (a former school-friend of mine) … he might be alive today. My ears pricked up at this news. “Is … (so-and-so) dead then?” “Ohh yes” said the reply. “Died last night”. There was another friend of ours working in the same place so I dashed down to tell him the news. He wasn’t there so I left a note on his desk. But on reflection I reckoned that the note wasn’t very clear and should have been written in a different way to clarify it.)

A little later I was caught in something of a no-man’s-land between here and the Auvergne. I had a piece of land down there and there was a wooden chalet-type thing there but it was just a shell, no inner lining and no inner dividing walls. I’d had it up for sale and people had been looking at it. A princess had liked one version of it and someone else liked another version of it, and all in all I was becoming confused about what I was going to do. The land down there was full of stuff including a Honda 500cc twin motorbike – a really nice parallel twin from the 1980s, a few cars and a couple of those were nice too, and an alsatian dog that stayed down there and guarded the place when I was away for months on end. I went back there with a former friend from Stoke on Trent. He was saying how he liked one particular style in which the chalet could be arranged. He started to pick up the wardrobes, even those full of clothes, and carry them about to put them in other places. I was wondering about all of the work that needed doing to organise everything so that I could sell it on but it’s not even worth thinking about. He had a drive around the field on this Honda and said how he thought that it was beautiful. He asked what I was going to do with it, and I replied that I was going to take it to Brussels. Getting it into the van won’t be a problem but getting it out at the other end might be because I’m on my own there. He’d let this dog loose. It was sniffing around everything. There was a Ford Anglia estate and the tailgate was open. We were having a look inside it and this dog came and jumped inside. I was saying “get the dog out. It has no business being in there”. I was worried that it was going to disgrace itself and ruin the interior.

And for a change, I was up quite early too and I’d quickly dealt with the morning procedures. I’d even managed a shower too.

It’s shopping day today but before I went out I transcribed a few notes from the dictaphone.

Terry turned up to say hello too. One of my neighbours wanted some DiY work doing and he’d been signed up to do it.

trans-shipping goods rue st jean walled town granville manche normandy franceOnce I had Terry settled in, I headed out to the shops, braving the howling wind. But again, I didn’t get very far at all.

I’ve mentioned before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … that large, heavy vehicles are not allowed into the interior of the city walls. They have to park up outside and the goods trans-shipped to a smaller vehicle.

We’ve seen that happen a few times already, and there was another occurrence this morning.

fishing trawlers unloading port de granville harbour manche normandy franceThe fish dock by the Fish Processing plant was busy too.

They must have just opened the harbour gates because there are three trawlers down there unloading their catch, and a whole fleet of vans and lorries waiting to take away the produce.

It must have been a really impressive sight down there 40 or 50 years ago when the cod-fishing on the Grand Banks was at its height.

crane port de granville harbour manche normandy franceRegular readers of this rubbish will recall that every so often we are treated to the presence of a rather large crane on the quayside.

The last one was in April last year, and here sure enough almost exactly a year later, there’s another one here today.

From up here, I couldn’t see what it was doing down there, and in view of the weather I didn’t fancy the idea of going down there to make further enquiries. I’ll save that for a better day.

moving gravel port de granville harbour manche normandy franceThat’s not all of the excitement down in the harbour either.

We now have a huge load of gravel accumulating on the quayside, and a digger moving it around so that it’s by the conveyors.

That can only mean one thing, and that is that Neptune or one of her sisters will be here in early course. She’s actually in London right now, but Shetland Trader is at large in the English Channel a mere cockstride from here.

From here I strolled up through the town on the way to the railway station. There, I collected my tickets for my next trip to Leuven. I like to have them in my possession well in advance because the ticket machines aren’t always reliable and the ticket office is closed when I arrive for my train.

Next stop was at LIDL for the midweek shopping. Apart from the usual stuff and a packet of brazil nuts, I bought one of these shower hanger trays. I’m fed up of my soap and shampoo floating around all over the place and I’ve been looking for one of these.

Today, LIDL was having a bathroom equipment sale and these shower hanger trays were one of the articles on offer.

new housebuilding rendering rue sainte genevieve granville manche normandy franceOn my way back home I went down via the rue Saint Paul into the rue Sainte Genevieve to check up on the new house-building.

As I suspected the other day, they are now rendering it with crépi.

And it’s quite interesting to see how they do it. They have a mixing machine that makes it come out like a rather wet clay and the spray it onto the breeze blocks and then smooth it over with some large floats.

Back here, I made myself a nice hot chocolate and then set down to work.

All of the blog entries as far back as 12th July 2018 are now up-to-date. But I’ve run aground temporarily because I’m back to when I was prowling around the Somme front line.

The searchable text database is done back to there too and, as it happens, so are the dictaphone notes for that period.

So one of the projects on hand is to tie them all together and make up a couple of web pages about the whole voyage. But when I’ll do that I really don’t know right now.

Terry came round for lunch and a chat, and after he had left I had another session indexing the photos from my trip to the High Arctic. I’ve probably done another 100 or so and I shall be glad when they are all done and dusted, because then I can add them to the blog entries for those dates.

That’s a task that is long-overdue.

While all that was going on, there was a terrific rainstorm going on outside, but by the time that I was due to go for my walk it had stopped.

chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy franceOnce outside, I didn’t bother to loiter in the wind.

A brisk walk around the headland and a quick look at the chantier navale. They weren’t spraying today, which is hardly a surprise given the wind.

But I did notice that there seems to be a layer of colour in a stripe low down on the hull, so it looks as if they are getting close to putting on the final coat.

Back here, I whacked another pile of notes off the dictaphone list, in the middle of which I was roused by Terry telephoning me to say that he’d been banging on my door for 10 minutes. I must have … errr … had a litle relax.

We had a chat and after he had gone home (and I had forgotten to give him some stuff for Liz) I carried on with the dictaphone.

So engrossed was I with what I was doing that I was late for tea. So i did a quick plate of mixed veg and pasta tossed in powdered garlic and olice oil followed by pineapple and coconut soya cream.

night high winds storm waves over plat gousset granville manche normandy franceAfter the washing-up, I headed out for my evening walk.

The wind had dropped slightly so I could actually walk, but there’s an incredible amount of force in the sea, as I have said before.

It’s all stored up in some incredible reserve of force and with a 3,000-odd mile uninterrupted journey across the Atlantic, the force can remain in the mass of the sea for quite a considerable time.

night high winds storm waves over plat gousset granville manche normandy franceBy the time that I made it round to the view overlooking the Plat Gousset, it was not far off high tide.

I could see that the waves were crashing over the sea wall with an incredible amount of violence. I stood there and watched it for quite a while.

It’s really quite a spectacle when it’s going full steam ahead, as you can ses.

After a while, I headed back home, giving a little kitten a stroke on the way

With being a little late this evening, it’s rather last now so i won’t be having my early night tonight. But I’ll do the best that I can.

But I’ve had two lots of news today. And both concern little projects that I’ve had on the go for a while. Things have no accelerated and one of them is now complete and the other one, I’m now locked into.

And so there’s no turning back now, and I have an awful lot of work to do before I’m very much older. I wish I had been more selective and brought more books back from the Auvergne.

I need a good sleep tonight.

crane port de granville harbour manche normandy france
crane port de granville harbour manche normandy france

night high winds storm waves over plat gousset granville manche normandy france
“night high winds storm waves over plat gousset granville manche normandy france

night high winds storm waves over plat gousset granville manche normandy france
“night high winds storm waves over plat gousset granville manche normandy france

night high winds storm waves over plat gousset granville manche normandy france
“night high winds storm waves over plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Thursday 12th October 2017 – I HAD AN INTERESTING …

… flight back from Canada. Playing “Bejeweled” all the way across the Atlantic.

That’s not a polite way to say that the in-flight entertainment was total garbage either. I mean – it was, but once I found the “games” section of the things, I didn’t bother too much about the rest.

And never mind my worries about not having a special meal either. The two options of food offered on board was either chicken or … pasta with vegetables in a tomato sauce – with no cheese.

Sleep wasn’t too much of an issue either – I just had a fitful doze here and there and that was really my lot.

air canada flight paris charles de gaulle airport france Octobre october 2017It seems that Air Canada is having issues with the landing fees at Charles de Gaulle airport too.

Admittedly we were considerably early in landing, thanks to a helpful tail wind, but we ended up moored on the concrete apron and having to be bussed over to the terminal.

And just two passport control officers at the “EU” desk to screen us. But they weren’t too bothered about much and we were soon through.

The baggage was reasonably quickly out too so I was able to make good my escape. On the way out I was accosted by a couple of pirate taxi drivers. “Do I have the word ‘idiot’ tattooed on my forehead?” I growled.

10:30 was when I made it to the railway station – that has to be something of a new record. And my train from Paris to Brussels was at 14:35. A mere 4 hours to get into the city.

But – wait! There’s a train from here direct to Brussels at 11:07!

TGV paris charles de gaulle brussels belgium Octobre october 2017My ticket is not refundable, and it’s more expensive than I was expecting.

But sodomisez ça pour un jeu de soldats! as they say around here. I’m not struggling all the way into Paris and hanging around on a draughty station for several hours.

The moral of this story is – don’t book your ticket from the airport “on-line”. Wait until you arrive and then do it. It works out cheaper in the long run.

When the train was called we all trooped off to the gate, to be turned away by a security guy. “You have to use the other gate”
“Why’s that?” called out Our Hero
“Because over there they are controlling the passengers”
“So what are you doing then?”.

I ended up in the company of a woman who needed help to find her seat. She told me that she was from Russia, to which I replied “Ja ne gavariou nichivo pa-Russki”, which always helps in moments like this.

So, by 13:00, instead of still having ages to wait on a draughty station 320 kilometres away in Paris, I was banging on the door of my hotel.

And “banging” too, because it was all locked up, in darkness, with “FULL” on the door.

Eventually, the manager appeared.
“Sorry, we’re full” he explained, which with the Hotel in total darkness looked totally unlikely.
“I’ve a booking here!”
“Ohhh yes – you must be Mr Hall”.
Manager takes me to a hotel down the street – a much better one than the one where I am supposed to be staying.
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience. You’ll need to stay here tonight. But you’ll be back with us tomorrow”
Manager retreats into the total darkness of his hotel.

So what’s going on here then? Knowing the usual kind of places where I stay when i’m on my travels, my money is on a Police raid.

The Hotel de France is quite nice, and so it goes without saying at all that the first thing that I did when I arrived was to crash out. And that was that for … errr …some time.

Later on I went to the café around the corner and had a bowl of lentils, some bread and chips for tea. And the thing about that was that they had the TV on. And being in this particular little corner of Brussels I was entertained by watching RAJA Casablanca beat FUS Rabat in the Moroccan Cup.

concrete lego pieces Octobre october 2017I went down to the all-night supermarket in the Gare du Midi for a bottle of pop and some food for breakfast, and encountered these giant lego bricks or jigsaw pieces all over the place.

They are probably road-closers or something like that actually, but my imagination had endless moments of fun imagining builders in giant cranes amusing themselves with these lumps of concrete, building all kinds of things.

Keep them out of mischief for days.

Back here, I sat on the edge of the bed pondering my next move, and the next thing that I remember was that it was 23:00. i’d been out for about 90 minutes.

Well out too. I wasn’t going anywhere else so I curled up under the comfortable sheets. I needed it too.

Thursday 8th October 2015 – THAT WAS ANOTHER …

… sleep of the dead last night. I was watching a film on the laptop but after about 20 minutes I gave it up as a bad job and that was that. I didn’t feel a thing until the morning and I was awake long before the alarm went off.

I’d been on my travels too, and they really were travels. I’d started off back on the buses, doing the regular Friday night run that I used to do for Shearings – up around Central Scotland and that area. Then Cecile and I were living somewhere in Belgium and it was midwinter. We had a day and a half spare and so I suggested that we go off to the Arctic Circle. I had three Cortinas in various conditions (all of them running, after a fashion) and I chose the worst one to do the trip, if I could remember where it was and if the Council hadn’t towed it away. But although it took me about 30 seconds to pack (and I was amazed at how little I needed) it took Cecile almost all of the day and a half to make herself ready.

Finally, I was in Stoke on Trent with someone whom I used to know and we were just stilling around doing very little and talking. And Zero put in an appearance too.

All in all, I’m surprised that my journey through the night hadn’t thoroughly worn me out. And on waking up I noticed that there was no condensation on the roof even though I’d been cooking in here and it had rained during the evening.

sawdust barge gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaThere’s no photo of my spec from last night, because while I was putting away everything into Strider I noticed through the trees some movement in the bay away in the distance, so I shot over to see what it was.

I know that there’s a sawdust barge that works the coast around here collecting the waste products from the sawmills to take to Matane and while I wouldn’t recognise a sawdust barge even if I were to trip over one, this one looks as if it could be something to do with that.

autumn colours cabin in forest gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaI went back on the road, having forgotten about photographing my camp, and instead of going around the coast I ended up in the mountains taking a short cut.

The autumn colours up here really are magnificent. You can understand why it is that I enjoy travelling round the eastern part of Canada at this time of the year. And to live in one of those cabins over there would be superb. If only I could see the sea from there.

riviere au renard gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaI rediscovered the sea at Riviere au Renard and found myself head-on in a howling gale. I parked up and went for a walk around the harbour but the wind blew me back to Strider and so I didn’t get to see too much.

The harbour was however quite full of fishing boats but many of them were up on stocks. The fishing around here these days has been having an enormous struggle since the collapse of the cod industry in 1992

gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaThe north coast of the Gaspé Peninsula – the southern shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence – is really beautiful.

The road along here is something comparatively new. It’s all up steep headland and down into deep inlets, and in almost every inlet there’s a small fishing village with a quay and a church, and is usually called St-Something or Anse (Cove) au Something Else.

Every one of them is extremely photogenic but the difficulty that you have is finding a good uninterrupted view of the place.

gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaPrior to the roads being here along the coast, the only access to these small villages was by sea and you’ll remember when we were in Matane the other day we visited the marine museum that was situated in the old quay from where all of the coastal boats used to depart.

And if you know anything about cloud formations (which you will do if you’ve been reading this rubbish for any reasonable length of time) you won’t need me to tell you where the northern shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence might be.

bulk carrier ship superstructure gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaWhile I was stopped and having my lunch, I noticed this object way out in the gulf. And it was moving too, and so with the telephoto lens I squeezed off a good long-distance shot.

You can’t tell what it is from here, but from the headland at the back it was easy to identify. It’s the superstructure of a large bulk carrier heading down the Gulf of St Lawrence towards the Atlantic. As I said before, it’s hard to understand why so many people were unable to believe that the world was round when you see evidence like this.

maersk container ship gulf of st lawrence gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaTalking of ships, we haven’t had a real ship of the day for a couple of days. And so when I saw this one steaming (or rather dieseling) past the foot of the headland upon which I was standing, I had to take a photo.

She’s too far out for me to be able to identify her name but she’s one of the fleet of Maersk Container Ships and according to the company’s interactive fleet map, 24 hours after I saw this ship, the Maersk Carolina was leaving the Gulf of St Lawrence and the Maersk Palermo was still in the river.

It’s more likely though to be the Maersk Penang that had arrived in Montreal from Antwerp and was now on its way out to Halifax.

From here I went off to find a place to stay. As I said, it’s becoming darker earlier and earlier and I don’t want to be caught out again.

Wednesday 23rd September 2015 – I HAVE MADE A STARTLING DISCOVERY!

I woke up this morning to find no condensation on the roof of the truck cap. There was quite a bit down the sides, so clearly there was plenty about, but none on the roof.

What had happened was that in the confined and cramped circumstances yesterday, I’d put the pack of insulation outside on the roof of the truck cap instead of by the side of Strider as I would normally do. This seems to have had the effect of insulating the roof but from the outside.

And so what I’ve done is to go to a supermarket and bought a pile of giant-sized plastic bin bags. I’ll wrap the insulation up in those and stick them on the roof of the truck cap at night – I’ll be interested to see if this might solve the problem.

But apart from that, I’d had a reasonable night’s sleep last night even though I was on a truck stop and some of the trucks were idling away all night. even a train on the railway line across the Canso Strait didn’t disturb me all that much.

But next morning, I was surprised to find that the Tim Horton’s at Aulds Cove didn’t have a wifi connection. It’s the first that I’ve found that hasn’t had one. I had to decamp off onto Cape Breton Island and the Nova Scotia Tourist Board offices there

rt hon paul e martin aulds cove nova scotia canadaAnd I’m glad that I did, because when was the last time that we have had a “ship of the day”? Back in Montreal I reckon, and that was by default too.

This ship is the Rt Hon Paul E Martin, whoever he was when he was at home, if he ever was, anchored up at the huge quarry at Auld’s Cove. She’s a CSL (Canadian Shipping Lines) ship and has come here from Brayton Point, which is the site of a coal-fired power station on the coast of Massachusetts, USA, although she was seen in the Panama Canal a couple of weeks earlier.

canso canal st peters cape breton island nova scotia canadaIt’s been years since I’ve travelled up the southern shore of Cape Breton Isle – 2003 in fact – and so I reckoned that I would go up to Sydney that way, even though it’s the least interesting route.

I’d had a brief glimpse of the canal here when I passed by back then and so I reckoned that, seeing as how it was a nice day, I’d go and have a closer look.

atlantic ocean st peters canal cape breton island nova scotia canadaThat’s the Atlantic Ocean just there and just a couple of hundred yards away to my right is the Bras d’Or Lake which almost cuts Cape Breton Island in two. This little strip of land is all that prevents Cape Breton Island being split in two.

This area has always been a favourite portage site and the French had a fort around here – Fort Toulouse – that guarded the crossing

st peters canal breton island nova scotia canadaAt one time there was a rolling plank road that enabled sailors to drag their boats from one water to the other but in the 1850s the canal was built and this is what we have today, one of only two canals east of the St Lawrence that are still working.

You’ll notice that there are two lock gates at each end of the lock, and the gates are pointing in opposite directions. That’s because with the tides, the Atlantic Ocean can be either higher or lower than the Bras d’Or Lake and so the water flow needs to be controlled in either sense.

earthworks fort dorchester st peters cape breton isle nova scotia canadaThere’s nothing at all now left of Fort Toulouse but the British had a fort up here on a dominant eminence for a short while.

This was called Fort Dorchester and you can still see quite a few of the remains of earthworks up on the top. This appears to be part of an earthen bank that might have been part of the walls of the fort at one time.

louisbourg cape breton island nova scotia canadaAnother place that I had passed by back in 2003 was Louisbourg, the principal town and seaport of the French on Ile Royale – Cape Breton Island – in the 18th Century.

It’s quite an astonishing place, being effectively a fortified city in the middle of nowhere, and was a city over which the French and British fought on many occasions.

louisbourg cape breton island nova scotia canadaThe French engages in a triangular trade route between Nouvelle France, the French West Indies and France itself, and they needed a seaport somewhere in between to be a naval base, ship repair centre and trans-shipment port for the interior.

They chose Louisbourg to be the place, in view of the magnificent bay here, and so they build a fortified city.

louisbourg cape breton island nova scotia canadaAnd it needed to be fortified too. Its central position meant that it was miles away from anywhere else, and so miles away from where reinforcements might be obtained.

And with it straddling the British trade routes from British North America and Newfoundland, it was quite likely that in the event of war between Britain and France – a regular occurrence in the 18th Century, the British would want the fort neutralised.

louisbourg cape breton isle nova scotia canadaIt was captured on several occasions by the British and returned at the end of conflict, but finally the British captured it for keeps and it was abandoned, falling into ruin.

It’s been slowly rebuilt over the years and the result is quite spectacular. It’s just as it was back in its heyday and there are all kinds of 18th-century trades being undertaken here. I ended up having a lengthy chat with a couple of 18th-century boatbuilders who were building a caravel.

sydney louisbourg railway museum cape breton island nova scotia canadaLouisbourg is alwo well-known as the terminus of the Sydney-Louisbourg railway, and there’s a kind-of railway museum here.

I say “kind-of”, because no-one in their right minds would call it a real museum. While most “museums” in North America “preserve” their artefacts by slapping layer after layer of thick black paint over their exhibits, they can’t even be bothered to do that here.

sydney louisbourg railway museum cape breton island nova scotia canadaThe “exhibits” here are just rotting away and in a few more years there won’t be anything at all left.

This is beyond embarrassing and beyond shameful – it’s a total disgrace and how the administrators of the museum have the nerve to exhibit artefacts like this is totally beyond me. There’s nothing left for these artefacts except the scrapyard because they are way beyond any kind of preservation.

The administrators should be ashamed of themselves.

So having dealt with that rant, I went up to North Sydney, the Marine Atlantic terminal where I booked my passage on tonight’s sailing to Newfoundland. $155 too – it’s becoming more and more expensive. But then again they have a new ship and, this year, a new ferry terminal to pay for.

It’s the new “Highlander” upon which we are sailing, and it’s not sailing until 23:45 so that gives me plenty of time to organise some food. And in the terminal I have a very lengthy chat with an old guy who is also retired and is also off on his travels.

On board, we are stuck in the bowels of the ship, and I mean that too. There’s a hatch in the middle of the deck with a ramp that goes down another level with room for about 100 cars, and that’s where we end up – well below the water line. It’s a good job we don’t stay with our cars during the crossing. I’ll be a nervous wreck down here.

Thursday 27th February 2014 – THIS IS WHERE …

hotel grain de sable ares gironde france… I spent the night. The “Grain de Sable” in Ares. So called because all of the walls are lined with bottle containing sand from different beaches throughout the world.

A little on the expensive side, but you would be surprised how difficult it is to find any hotel here in this tourist area, never mind one that is open. Camping and chalets and flats seem to be the order of the day.

But you can see what the weather was doing. Cold, wet and miserable. It caught me up during the night. But not as cold, wet and miserable as last night in the mountains of Nova Scotia where I wqs picking up bits of the Swissair flight that blew up over the Atlantic just offshore from Halifax. Must have been a strong jetstream to get aircraft parts onto the mainland, that’s all I can say.

I had a slow, leisurely drive all the way around the bay and to the town of Arcachon. There I was disappointed as it really is a “twee” place. No chance to park as firstly the weather was so bad and secondly, parking is very strictly controlled and it wasn’t easy to see a space, let alone reverse into it seeing as how the streets were so narrow (well, they weren’t – it was just that the roadway was deliberately narrowed so that pedestrians would have more room to walk about, not that it stopped them stepping off the road in front of the traffic without even looking or caring whenever the fancy took them. How was it who once famously said “There are two types of pedestrian – the quick and the dead”?)

phare de cap ferret lighthouse gironde franceI did stop a few miles out of Arcachon because I reckoned that from there I would be able to see the Cap Ferret lighthouse across on the other side of the bay.

So there you are – that’s where I was yesterday afternoon. Round by the lighthouse across the bay.

And you might have noticed that the weather has improved sightly too.

sand dunes pyla sur mer gironde franceAs you come out of the bay and hit the Atlantic coast, the effects of the currents going in one direction and the wind blowing in the opposite direction has created some immense sand dunes, such as this monster dune near Pyla sur Mer. It’s enormous.

I was going to have a close look at it but it’s all fenced off until you come to the car park, which is a “pay to leave” car park with ticket control, automatic barriers and the like. I did a U-turn and drove out of the entrance – I’m not being caught for parking like that.

Next stop was Biscarrosse Plage in Les Landes. Odds-on there being loads of hotels here seeing that this is one of France’s major unsung holiday resorts.

biscarrosse plage les landes france
But why it is unsung is that there are in fact only 5 here (and a couple of enormous camp sites) but none is open. And not only that, there isn’t a single open boulangerie in the whole town.

The beach is closed too, but there’s a reason for that. There’s been a howling gale blowing here for the last month with enormous waves. This area is the neck of the funnel that is the Bay of Biscay and the whole of the Atlantic Ocean is trying to fit into this little coastal strip. There’s nothing out there until the south-eastern seaboard of the USA. IMpressive, what?

So with no hotels, no bakery, no nothing, I drove on and on and now I’m in Mimizan Plage where not only is there a little democratically-priced hotel but also a Morroccan restaurant that has made me a delicious vegan couscous.

Thursday 14th October 2010 – WELL, STRAWBERRY MOOSE HAD A GOOD DAY TODAY.

strawberry moose family labrador coastal drive canadaOn the road between Port Hope Simpson and Mary’s Harbour we encountered some more of his cousins. This time it was mother and daughter.

And a short while later we encountered another juvenile. So he’s having fun anyway, meeting up with all of his family and he’s ever so excited about it all. Good old Strawberry Moose

wunderstrand norse viking visit site cartwright labrador canadaAs for me, I’ve done nothing like as much as I hoped. But then again, I’ve been distracted. For a start I couldn’t get out to see the Wunderstrand.

Although it’s just across the bay from Cartwright, it’s actually a 10-mile walk followed by a 10-minute kayak journey (you need to carry your kayak the 10 miles, by the way), or else it’s half an hour across the bay in a kayak (in a howling wind across freezing cold water) and of course regular readers of these columns know that you couldn’t get warm again. You know that it’s against the law to light a fire in a canoe – you cannot have your kayak and heat it.

wunderstrand norse viking visit site cartwright labrador canadaThere is however a certain spot to which you can drive and with a long telephoto lens and a little judicious crop and sharpen, you can make out the beach right away in the distance and see just how beautiful it all is.

Of course a photo isn’t the same as actually walking in the footsteps of Eirik the Red at the climax of his magnificent epic voyage to Vinland, but I suppose that it’s the best that I can do

pinsent's arm labrador canadaAnyway, back on the Labrador Coastal Drive (as this bit of the Trans-Labrador Highway is called) the next stop was the most delightfully-named Pinsent’s Arm, a small fishing village on the coast in a sheltered bay off the Atlantic. I always thought that the name was quite romantic.

I had to ask directions when I got to Charlottetown. I hailed a passing native (who picked up a handful of gravel and hailed me back)
“Excuse me – can you tell me where I can find Pinsent’s Arm?”
“Why yes alrighty” she burred (I just love the way they talk in Labrador). “It’s over there in that bucket”.

fishing boat pinsent's arm labrador canadaPinsent’s Arm has a population of 64 and they were all on the quayside waiting for me to arrive.

One of the fishing smacks that operates out of here had just put in to port.
“What do you catch here now that the cod has finished? Shrimp like out of Cartwright?” I enquired.
“Why no” he replied. “We get them thar whelks and scallops”.
But if they were whelks and scallops in those baskets they were unloading then I’m going to have my eyes tested as soon as I get back to Europe.

atlantic ocean pinsent's arm labrador canadaThe natives, obviously wishing to see the back of me, pointed out to me the way through the rubbish dump and local tip to the point where you can see the Atlantic through the cove.

This is quite impressive, and would have been even nicer had I been more lucky with the weather. But it could have been worse – it could have been snowing.

iceberg alley st lewis labrador canadaI also went off down Iceberg Alley for a visit to St Lewis – the farthest easternmost settlement on the mainland American continent.

And if ever I have the luck to be able to choose a place out here to settle it would be here. St Lewis is easily the prettiest place that I have ever visited on the North American continent.

It was settled in the earliest days of white exploration and then forgotten.

iceberg alley st lewis labrador canadaAnd when it was “rediscovered” in the 19th Century, the person who discovered it (I can’t remember his name just now) remarked on the “industry and divinity” of the inhabitants. I suppose that a couple of hundred years of isolation had had its advantages for the inhabitants.

But all of that changed after World War II

pinetree radar station st lewis labrador canadaIts more modern claim to fame, as everyone will tell you, is that it was a station on the DEW line – the Distant Early Warning radar system installed by the Americans on Canadian soil to track and then shoot down the atomically-armed Russian bombers so that the nuclear fallout would be in Canada and not in the USA.

But of course it wasn’t on the DEW line, despite how romantic the legend sounds, as you can tell from the antennae. It was actually a site on Pinetree – the forerunner of the DEW line but which operated on a much shorter-reach traditional radar system and with all the defects of a traditional system.

Once the Russians mastered the art of low-flying, Pinetree’s days were numbered.

alexis river port hope simpson labrador coastal drive canadaBut it’s unfair to single out places like St Lewis and Pinsent’s Arm for their beauty. The whole of this road – the Labrador Coastal Drive – is full of spectacular scenery.

This is, I think, Alexis River near Port Hope Simpson and if there is a more beautiful place to stop and eat my midday butty, I would really love to see it. In fact, the nice lay-by here would be an ideal place to stay for the night, if only I had a camper.

And after that, with me not being halfway around where I wanted to go, and having found some playmates for His Nibs, I’ve had to lay up for the night in Mary’s Harbour (spelt correctly – this is Canada not the USA).

Friday 9th October 2010 – TODAY WE CROSSED THE RUBI … ERRR ….. ST LAWRENCE

motel tracy quebec canadaThis morning quite early, we said goodbye to our host of the previous evening. And as you can see, Strawberry Moose was particularly sad to depart.

And what a nice motel that was – there was even a microwave oven in the room and that made me wish that I had some proper food on board. In fact, I’ll stock up with a few bits and pieces next time I pass by one of these supermarkets just in case I find another microwave in a motel room.

Tracy, where the motel might be found, is a small port on the south bank of the St Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec and you may remember that I had a good wander around there last night.

pont laviolette trois rivieres quebec canadaNext item of interest is this gorgeous bow-girder bridge, the Pont Laviolette that spans the St Lawrence on the outskirts of Trois Rivieres, which is on the other (north) bank of the river.

I had a good drive around to see if I could have a closer and better view of the bridge, but no such luck. However, I’ll be coming back this way and I’ll spend some time then to have a really good look around.

pont de quebec canadaAnd while we are on the subject of bridges, what do you think about this one?

This is the legendary Pont de Quebec, built at the turn of the 2Oth Century to carry the road and the railway across the St Lawrence to the city of Quebec. It’s been the subject of two major construction failures and cost more lives than the Tay Bridge disaster did, although it was never immortalised by William McGonagall.

You can read more about the Pont de Quebec on this page.

autumn colours deciduous trees quebec canadaThere’s no doubt about it though, the southern shore of the St Lawrence around by the city of Quebec is absolutely beautiful at this time of the year as the leaves are falling (and it’s funny that the further north-east I travel the more the trees have lost their leaves – it’s quite remarkable).

I chose this spot to stop and eat my butty, with the St Lawrence over my left shoulder and the city of Quebec across the river.

It was something of a late lunch because I went to the Walmart just up the road to buy another SD card – they had Kodak ones on special offer – 4GB for $10 but they had sold out. And in line with my resolution of this morning, I bought a tim opener, a mixing spoon and a microwave bowl to go with the pile of pasta in tomato sauce (4 for $5) and tins of beans (99 cents each) that I bought in a food supermarket across the road in case I find another motel with a microwave.

I have to be prepared.

After my lunch I crossed over into Quebec and had a drive around. Old Quebec is really beautiful but I didn’t stop as I’m running to a tight schedule. I hope I’ll be able to fit a day into my return journey to go for a wander round. It’s just like a late medaieval European city in places and has somehow managed to escape the developer’s bulldozer.

highway 138 stunning view city quebec cape tourmente canadaAfter that I headed north-east along the north shore of the St Lawrence and this is really where the beautiful part of Canada begins.

After maybe 15 miles you abruptly leave civilisation and go right into the mountains. It is just so spectacular, as you can see in this pic taken from halfway up Cap Tourmente. The St Lawrence is down there in the valley and Quebec is on the skyline.

highway 138 cap tourmente quebec canada>And this is what it is like – all up hill and down dale all the way along the coast, with the St Lawrence never more than a mile or two away.

Here, at the top of Cap Tourmente, you can see what I’ll be encountering. The mountains, the undulating road, the deciduous trees shedding their leaves, and the possibility of encountering a moose, if the one sitting beside me wasn’t enough to be going on with.

motel st simeon st lawrence river quebec canadaTonight I’m staying in St Simeon which is a ferry port across to Riviere du Loup on the southern shore where I crossed over last time I was up here. This is the view of the ferry terminal from my motel bedroom.

And what I don’t understand is that last time I struggled to find a motel and had to drive another 25 miles until I found one quite by chance.

motel st simeon st lawrence river quebec canadaJust now, I’ve passed 6 at Malbaie, a small town about 15 miles west of here and there’s 5 motels that I can see from my window just here. I really must have been asleep that evening.

But even now I’m not lucky. It’s quite expensive here and there is nothing – no coffee machine (although I’ve sorted that out) and no microwave either. And even worse, there’s nowhere around in the town where I can find a meal.

I’m really not having much luck, am I?

Tomorrow I’ll be driving the 4 hours up to Baie Comeau, going by the famous ferry at Tadoussac, which you will have seen from the last time I was here, and then it’s into the interior. 400-odd miles of dirt track through the interior of Quebec and then 600 or so miles through Labrador and out to the Atlantic Ocean.

Now that’s what I call the wilderness!

Wednesday 6th October 2010 – I RECKON THAT I MIGHT JUST STAY IN THE USA FOR GOOD ..

weird road sign derby new york state usa… if I could keep on finding business opportunities such as this one. What a way to earn a living, hey?

But seriously – I can’t live here. Driving through Buffalo earlier today and already in a really bad humour (I’ve had a run-in with another security guard) I came across a woman in tears on the edge of the street, with a baby, and with all her possessions scattered around her. And it was in the driving, streaming rain too.

Apparently the bailiffs had just been.

buffalo new york usaBut Buffalo is a city that is already in my bad books, and has been for quite some time. In 1860-something a steamer launched in 1846 – one of the earliest lakers – sank in Lake Erie in a storm.

A few years ago a couple of divers located it and it was raised from the sea bed and taken to Buffalo for restoration. However the mayor declared it an “eyesore” and called in the scrapmen, who promptly cut up this rare, if not unique historical artefact.

In 1813 the British burnt Buffalo to the ground during one of the American wars, and believe me, I was sorely tempted to make my own re-enaction of that historic event. 

There can’t be any greater eyesore in any city anywhere in the whole world than the sight of a crying woman and her child out in the street in the middle of a rainstorm with nowhere to go and no-one offering any help. 10% of the American working population is out of work, there are thousands of jobs going every day, and there’s no state aid for anyone.

dodge power wagon pennsylvania usaAnd talking of that, just a short while later, I stopped to take a photo of an absolutely ancient Dodge Power Wagon plant mover used as a haulage truck in a boatyard. Fishing from the quay was an old guy. I got talking to him about things.

“Well”, he said “I worked for 29 years as a shopping centre manager and I was laid off in the spring. I don’t suppose I’ll ever work again and I don’t know what I’ll do now. And in my spare time I was a bailiff for the sheriff’s office but I had to give that up too. It was just so distressing turfing all of these people out into the street.

It’s the rich who are causing all of these problems in the USA – it’s high time a few of them were turned out into the street and made to suffer”.

I once heard someone say that the USA is a great place in which to succeed. Indeed it is, but it’s a dreadful place to fail. If the USA has the highest standard of living in the world, then there must be some awfully rich people somewhere well-hidden, because all I ever seem to encounter are the poor. And there are plenty of them!

el patio motel erie pennsylvania usar>After all of that, there isn’t an awful lot to say about my journey. I wasn’t really in the mood for much.

I left my rather expensive motel on the edge of Erie, Pennsylvania, in the rain and the further along the road that I travelled, the more the weather. Just like my humour did, I suppose. It was going to be one of those days.

sea lion barcelona harbour westfield new york state usaBut it’s astonishing, the things that you encounter along the road. At Westfield, near the quaintly-named Barcelona Harbour, I came across the Sea Lion.

It’s a replica of a British 3-masted sailing barque of the late 16th Century and it gives you an idea of the size of the ships that they used to cross the Atlantic in the early days of exploration.

But I can’t think what was going through their minds when they decided to build it, and why they have let ths ship degenerate subsequently into such a poor condition. Seeing that the bay in which the ship is situated is so depressing, perhaps they wanted their barque to be worse than their bight.

strawberry moose new york police usaStrawberry Moose had a good photo opportunity today as well.

I’d stopped at a local Moose Lodge to see if there were any friends and family of His Nibs in the vicinity, but a local copper stopped to find out what was happening. So having given my explanation, he very kindly (and much to my surprise) allowed His Nibs to have his moment of glory.

So let’s hear it for the New York Police!

graycliff derby new york state usaI also stumbled upon Graycliff – one of the houses that was designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright.It dates from the late 1920s and was built for the Martin family.

The were wealthy entrepreneurs in Buffalo and in fact sponsored Wright in his early days, but were wiped out in the Depression and the house was sold to a Monastic Order who used it as a school.

graycliff derby newyork state usa When the school was closed in the 1990s, there were plans to demolish the place and build a huge housing estate here, but the property was saved by a preservation group (a rare event in the USA)

And famous architect as Frank Lloyd Wright might have been, he designed his house without guttering as it would spoil the aesthetic effect. I suppose that that was much more important than spoiling the foundations and the clothes of the people entering and leaving the property.

It wasn’t actually open when I arrived but I managed to blag my way in for a look around the garden

niagara falls new york state usaNo-one can pass by Buffalo without going for a look at Niagara Falls and once more, Strawberry Moose was in luck as a Tourist Guide/Security Guard agreed to pose in the same photograph as His Nibs.

It’s all quite astonishing, this. All of these officials and dignitaries and so on agreeing to be seen with him. Maybe there is an underlying sense of humour in the USA after all and I have been missing it for all of these years.

niagara falls new york state usaThe view from the Canada Side of the falls is even more impressive – well-worth the walk across the bridge to the other side of the river.

What was even more impressive was that parking for the whole day (had I decided to stay that long) was just $5:00, entry to the park was free, and the border crossing in and out of the USA was relatively painless. I wasn’t expecting anything like that.

niagara falls new york state usaIf you have been following my adventures from previous voyages you will be well-aware that I have been extracting the urine from the United States over its self proclaimed status as “Land of the Free”, because everywhere I have ever been to that has any kind of importance, it has been “Please Prepare Your Admission Money

It’s only right and proper that I record the events surrounding my visit to Niagara Falls.

fort niagara new york state usaAt the head of the river, on Lake Ontario, is Fort Niagara. There’s a British fort on the other side of the river directly opposite and during the various revolutionary wars and so on, there have been a good few battles between the two sides.

There was also a major battle between the British and the French in 1759, and in the grounds was a German Prisoner-of-War camp from World War II

lake ontario toronto canadaSomething right across the lake caught my eye but I couldn’t make out what it was, so I photographed it at the fullest extension of the zoom lens in order to have a play with the image later.

And this is what I saw – it’s the city of Toronto – probably 30 miles or so across the lake and it’s astonishing what a really good camera and lens can capture in the right kind of weather conditions.

You can see that the weather has brightened up – and so have I by now.

Tonight, I’m now in a small town called Ontario, in Upper New York State. Tomorrow I’m going to stay on the south side of the St Lawrence as far as I can until the last bridge across (round about Quebec I reckon) and then head north to Labrador.

Thursday 30th September 2010 – 2nd DAY IN CANADA …

ambassador bridge windsor ontario canada detroit michigan usa… and I’ve had my first run-in with the farces of Law and Order.

Here I was, taking a photo of the Ambassador Bridge – the big bridge that goes over between Windsor and Detroit in the USA, and a copper pulled up. He told me to stop taking photos of the bridge
“Why?” I asked
“Because the Department of Home Security doesn’t like it” he replied
“But isn’t the Department of Home Security an organisation from the USA?”
“Yes it is” he replied
“Right” I said. “Tell the Department of Home Security to f$@µ off!” and I carried on taking photos.

Yes, the United States of America getting the Canadian Police to do American police work on Canadian soil – that’s a weird situation isn’t it? Whose country is it anyway?

But then as someone once said to me, when you are living next door to a well-known paranoiac who is armed to the teeth and has no intention of obeying the law, then you’d be a little wary too.

But I’ve been in Canada less than 24 hours and all my illusions about the country have been shattered.

fog and mist shores of lake erie ontario canadaI set off this morning quite early and drove down to the shores of Lake Erie, which was swathed in fog and mist.

First thing that I encountered was an abandoned railway line. Apparently the Beeching Cuts in the UK were nothing compared to what happened to the Canadian rail network in the 1980s and a huge proportion of Canada’s rail network was lost.

Admittedly much of it was unnecessary duplication, with three railway companies building transcontinental railway lines within 20 miles of each other, but an awful lot of it wasn’t.

lighthouse lake erie port glasgow ontario canadaMy road down to Lake Erie took me to the little harbour of Port Glasgow. This is a huge pleasure marina with all kinds of leisure activities going on.

There were several people around here and I had a couple of quite interesting chats – a fine way to pass the time. And the weather was now quickly improving – the sun was out and the heat had burnt away the fog.

dutch barn lake erie ontario canadaThis brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “Dutch barn”, doesn’t it?

Just as in France, there has been a wave of Dutch farmers coming over to Canada. Land in the Netherlands is difficult to find and is frightfully expensive. Many young farmers have crossed the Atlantic in the search for a place of their own.

And this place is up for sale, with an estate agent named Verbrugghe – just as in France, the Dutch have started to capture the Estate Agency market.

oilfield lake erie ontario canadaThe whole of the shore of Lake Erie are covered in wind turbines, and I must have had to dodge about three or four lorries coming down these narrow roads carrying assorted bits.

But there’s also a small oilfield here. I counted about 20 small pumps and I’m sure that there must have been others that I didn’t see. I’ll have to look into this oilfield and see what’s going on.

ford cortina mark II 1600GT kingsville ontario canadaAnd old cars too – there are plenty of those around here in southern Ontario.

A casual observer might not find a Mark II Ford Cortina to be the most exciting of the cars that I could have depicted as an example, even if it is a 1600GT, but I have a very strong affinity with British Fords, going back to my childhood. And when I had my taxis, I had nothing but Ford Cortinas, but the later Mark III and IV versions.

do not push lorryI was intrigued by this photo. I wonder what this “Do Not Push” on the back of this lorry is all about.

It does make me wonder what it is that Canadians have for breakfast, if people are worried about them being able to push lorries around. But whatever it is, I’d like to have a plate of it. It could come in handy with what I need to do back home.

fisherman st clair river windsor ontario canada detroit michigan usaIn Windsor I found a cheap motel, parked up Casey and went for a walk along the riverfront where there is an impressive view of Detroit, ships passing by, and fishermen trying to find something worth catching.

The weather had turned out nice in the end.

So while I was waiting for Katherine to finish her classes (I’d arrived a little early) I wandered off to take a photo of the Ambassador Bridge and for my confrontation with the farces of Law and Order.