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Saturday 2nd September 2017 – I’VE HAD A COUPLE …

… of worse nights than I had last night I’m sure. But not many. Curled up on a reclining seat is not my idea of spending a night, and I ache in places that I didn’t even realise that I had places.

But that didn’t stop me going on a mega-ramble during the night. And I wasn’t on my own either. I started off with Alison but at some point I ended up with a young girl with very short ginger hair, and I’m not sure when the changeover took place. We were in a hotel somewhere in Italy and it had only taken us two and a half hours to get there too – the kind of thing that you can do on a nocturnal ramble even if the people out there were as surprised as they might have been in the real world. We went out for a walk and ended up along a sea coast but you couldn’t see thesea because of these rows of terraced single storey tenements all in a damp dark red brickwork. All very run-down and depressed. I explained to my partner that this was how Italian families lived – in a big room with a little add-on annex of toilet and cooking space. We walked through and found that all of these habitations were abandoned and there was domestic refuse and rubbish all over the place. By this point I had some kind of four-wheeled vehicle and I’d changed one of the front wheels for another that was of a better style. And in all of the rubbish lying around here – old cameras and all kinds of things – were piles of old motor bikes – the 50cc type of moped and a couple of them were worth recovering, including one in particular that would furnish the front wheel that I needed for my machine. Nevertheless, I wasn’t convinced that it was a good idea to liberate them even though they had the air of being long-abandoned.
A little later I was on my own with a few different people, one of whom was a girl and one of whom was a boy who was quite interested in her and, I suspected, she in him. He was asking all kinds of questions about things and I was replying in my usual cynical manner and it wasn’t until long afterwards that I realised that he was trying to ask specific questions about this girl and my replies would have been exactly the kind of replies that would have frightened him away and that wasn’t my intention at all.

newfoundland canada aout august 2017So crawling off into the bathroom for the usual reasons, I then made my way onto the deck for my first glimpse of Newfoundland – and the huge storm that was just about to envelope all of us.

And here’s a weird thing.

Looking at the messages on my mobile phone there was one from my French network provider “Bienvenue au St Pierre et Miquelon” – the last French possession in North America.

Had we passed so close to there in the night?

storm newfoundland canada aout august 2017And as we approached closer and closer to Newfoundland we could see that there was a major storm brewing along our way.

I’ve heard about these sudden Newfoundland storms before and I didn’t much like the look of this one.

I could picture all of the sailors dashing out to batten down the hatches and all of that, and casting all non-essential gear over the side.

michael averill atlantic vision newfoundland canada aout august 2017So while the sailors were dashing outside, I went a-dashing inside out of the rain.

and here I collided with Mike Averill who was just setting up shop for another performance on his guitar. I stayed and listened to his performance and even bought a CD.

I must be mellowing in my old age – but I really did enjoy his music.

multi-lingual signs atlantic vision newfoundland canada aout august 2017I told you that Atlantic Vision, in her previous existence as Superfast IX had been built to provide a ferry service in the Baltic on behalf of the Swedish Government

Here on the car deck are several signs that are clearly a relic of those days.

This one is written in English, German, Swedish and Estonian – a sad reminder of one of the shortest-lived ferry routes in the whole of history

atlantic vision jana argentia newfoundland canada aout august 2017Having been decanted out of Atlantic Vision onto the mainland I drove off round the headland to find a suitable spot to take a photograph.

Also sitting at the quayside is the extremely controversial freighter called Jana.

She limped into Halifax three years ago with a load of rails from Poland and a misfiring engine, and has been stranded in Canada ever since as no-one knows quite what to do with her.

argentia newfoundland canada aout august 2017The last time that I had been here was in a driving rainstorm and none of my photos had really worked.

But today, with the squall that we had had offshore having passed by so rapidly, I was able to catch up on what I had missed of the bay here.

It really does have an extraordinary beauty.

newfoundland canada aout august 2017And so does the rest of Newfoundland really. Not quite as rugged or as grand as Labrador but beautiful all the same.

I could have taken 100 photographs to show you what I mean, but one will have to suffice.

It should give you a really good idea of just what I mean

So braving the Newfoundland roads, because they really are unbelievably shocking, I found the Trans-Canada Highway and headed for St John’s.

On the outskirts of town I found a Tim Hortons where I could have a coffee and use the internet, and also a Sobey’s where I could stock up with a few more bits and pieces of food. After all, in a week’s time we’ll be in Labrador.

signal hill st john's newfoundland canada aout august 2017Driving all the way through St John’s I headed for Signal Hill and the absolutely beautiful view of the town and its harbour.

It’s the ideal place for me to eat my lunchtime butty, for it’s one of the most stunning views in the world.

You can understand just why the early English and Portuguese seafarers of the 16th Century chose this spot as their favourite harbour in North America.

signal hill st Johns newfoundland canada aout august 2017Having had a good look around and eaten my butty I headed back into town for Donald’s house.

He’d very kindly invited me round for the afternoon and seeing as how we had never actually met in person I reckoned that it might be a good idea to go and catch up.

So braving the potholes, the trenches and the other pitfalls in the road I headed off back through the city.

Donald lives on the edge of town in an upside-down house that backs onto the former Newfoundland Railway tracks, although he wasn’t there when the Newfie Bullet used to go puffing by.

We spent hour chatting about all kinds of things to do with Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador and North America in general, and then I invited him out for a meal.

We ended up in a Chinese restaurant where I had a stir fry of vegetables with rice. And trying to remember my chopstick-eating habits from 40 years ago, I ended up with more on the table than I did down inside my stomach.

They also gave me a fortune cookie. Apparently I am “very sociable and welcome the company of others”. It got my age wrong too.

Donald asked me if I would like to stay the night. And to be honest, his sofa did look rather large and comfortable. I didn’t even have to nip out to Strider for my sleeping bag as Donald rustled up some blankets and the like.

So here I am, in all luxury like a King and I shall be sleeping the Sleep of the Dead.

Good night.

Thursday 31st August 2017 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that Tuesday night’s sleep was bad, you ain’t seen nuffink yet.

Because last night’s sleep beat just about everything. Wide awake at 01:30, tossing and turning and all of that. I really was having it all.

Nevertheless I did still manage to go off on my travels, but you won’t be interested in them, because such was the nature of my bad night that it will put you off your supper.

The torrential rainstorm that we had didn’t help matters much either. And it was so humid that the washing that I had hung up under the verandah seemed to be wetter than when I hung it out.

I wasn’t in the mood for breakfast, having had a good meal before going to bed (and don’t large packets of crisps go off with an enormous bang when you kneel on them by mistake in the dark?) and so I did some stuff on the internet;

Despite the pouring rain, I emptied out Strider and tried to sort out everything – but that was quite a maul and wasn’t the work of 5 minutes either, so I was quite exhausted afterwards.

bras d'or lake camp ground baddeck nova scotia canada aout august 2017Pausing only to take a shot of my cabin and the lake (which, due to the weather I was not able to enjoy) I went up to the office to hand in the key.

Free coffee was on offer there and seeing the expense that I had had to incur, I took full advantage. And quite rightly so.

And then I headed off into the doom and gloom.

The drive to North Sydney, beautiful though it is, is one that we have taken on many previous occasions so I didn’t stop to take any photographs.

And at the ferry terminal, my luck was in. There were still spaces free on Friday’s overnight long-distance sailing to Argentia. And so we are now booked aboard.

It might sound expensive to some (and it certainly did to me) but you need to look at it in perspective.

  • I would have to pay a ferry fee for the short (ie 9 hour) crossing anyway, and that’s not cheap
  • I would then have a drive 900 kms instead of 130 kms – and imagine how much extra fuel I would have to buy for a rather thirsty Strider.
  • I’d be looking for at least one, if not two nights in motels and you’ve seen what motel rates are right now.
  • I’d be whittling into the victuals along the way
  • I’d be quite worn out at the end of it all
  • And not least – this is a ferry crossing that i’ve been wanting to make for quite a while

All in all, it makes good financial and personal sense to travel this way.

Next thing to do was to organise accommodation for tonight.

I like the privacy of motels, but not at the price that they want to charge right now. So I phoned up the cheapest B&B in the book that I had picked up yesterday.
“Sorry, we’re full”
“That’s a shame. Do you know anyone else with a spare room?”
“No I don’t … ohh – wait a minute – if you just want a basic room with just a bed in it I can fix you up. Is $55 for cash with breakfast okay?”
Do bears have picnics in the woods?

Off I went to the shops.

As you all may remember from previous excursions, food in northern Newfoundland and Labrador is shockingly expensive, and if I’m going to be spending a week or two out there, I need to stock up.

The Atlantic Superstore, the Dollar Store and Walmart all did the business and for about $100 Strider is now full of tinned and packet goods to last a couple of weeks.

Bread will be an issue of course, but we have packets of crisps if we can’t find anything on the road.

But I made a startling discovery at the Atlantic Superstore. Their “own brand” od wine gums don’t have gelatine in them. There’s a few packets missing from their stocks right now.

I had a very late lunch on the car park by the ferry terminal, and then went for a coffee at Tim Hortons where, shame as it is to admit it, I fell asleep.

Rousing myself from a dangerous slumber I decided to head out for my digs. The address wasn’t on the SatNav but Josee’s mobile phone picked it up (that was a good move on her part to lend me that).

The street signs were confusing though and I ended up going three times round a roundabout before I fathomed it out.

The cheapest digs so far, and seem to be the nicest too. It seems that I have the room of a student who isn’t due back until tomorrow. So I’m not complaining.

I settled myself in and promptly crashed out again, only to be awoken by the aforementioned student who has returned unannounced a day early.

I would gladly have shared half my bed with her, but the landlady rather unfortunately rose to the situation by ushering her off to a spare bed put up hastily in the office, which rather disappointed me – but you can’t win a coconut every time.

So I’m going to have an early night and try to sleep the Sleep Of The Dead.

Heaven knows I need it.

Thursday 24th September 2015 – I MUST BE GETTING OLD

It used to be the case that I could sleep anywhere at any time. At one time I was even found asleep leaning up against a wall in a garage. But just recently, as you know, I’ve been having some sleeping issues, but none such as I had last night on the ship out to Newfoundland.

With some of the nicest reclining seats that I’ve ever sat on, I just couldn’t drop off to sleep. And when I did, I was awake 10 minutes later with aches and pains everywhere. And this went on throughout the night until we docked at Channel Port Aux Basques.

We had a very long wait there too before we could unload. I did mention that we were parked right in the bowels of the ship, and so we had to wait until everyone else was out and gone before we could be liberated.

I went for a coffee and some biscuits at Tim Horton’s so that I could use their internet without any pangs of conscience, and then went over the road to Canadian Tire for a big roll of waterproof duck tape, the reason for which I shall mention in a moment.

channel port aux basques newfoundland canadaYou’ve seen plenty of photos of the ship and of the town – Channel Port aux Basques – in the past, but I bet that you have never seen it from this angle before.

I’m a mile or two outside the town here at the Newfoundland and Labrador Tourist Information Office where I stopped to search Strider for the charger for the mobile phone, and there’s a good view of the town across the bay from here. I couldn’t resist taking a photo to add to the archives.

typical southern newfoundland scenery canada. In the past, whenever I’ve driven out of – or into – Channel Port Aux Basques, I’ve always followed the coast. But today, I’ve driven due north along the Trans Canada Highway and seen parts of the island that I haven’t seen before.

The eastern part of the island has all of the accessible coastline, but the western part has the mountains and the lakes and here, only a handful of miles outside the town, we start entering some really beautiful country. This photo is just typical of the scenery on the southwestern side of the island.

newfoundland railway bridge coopers brook canadaNewfoundland once had a very important railway network – one of the longest narrow-gauge systems in the world. But it struggled along, suffering from chronic under-investment and lack of modernisation despite having one of the most beautiful routes of any railway network ever.

However, as I’ve told you before, it was yet another victim of the ruthless decimation of Canada’s railway network and while very little of the equipment remains, the railway line itself is almost complete and you will see loads of bridges such as this one on your travels.

trans canada highway climbing up into newfoundland mountainsIt’s not long before we start to climb into the mountains of Newfoundland, and the Trans-Canada Highway makes some stunning ascents and descents as we continue northwards.

Here’s one of the most exciting climbs as you can see, a few miles south of the turning for Stephenville. The flattest route is indeed via Stephenville but that puts dozens of miles onto the route and so we take the short cut.

At Deer Lake I stop for fuel again. I fuelled up at Channel Port aux Basques but that’s not enough to reach the Labrador ferry at St Barbe (the short range of Strider is depressing me) and so the Big Irvings at Deer Lake comes up with more fuel and also enables me to fill up one of my big containers. There’s 20 litres in that and once I’m across in Labrador I’ll put 20 litres into the other container. I hope that that will be enough to enable me to do this 418 kms between Port Hope Simpson and Goose Bay.

gros morne national park newfoundland canadaDeer Lake is the entrance to the Gros Morne National Park and if you think that the road has been beautiful to here, then you ain’t seen nuffink yet. Gros Morne really is spectacular.

This is one of the lakes here, nestling into the foot of what looks like a glaciated valley, and once more, this is just one of a thousand photos that I could have taken of the area. I’ve been here a few times now and I never tire of it. One day I’ll come here and stay for a week, and maybe I will, seeing as I now have transport of my own.

st pauls newfoundland canadaAs I was walking by St Pauls, I was seized by this beautiful view. I had to turn off the highway to see it and found myself on a little dockside.

There’s a big inlet here and the harbour is on the inside of the inlet, sheltered from the wind by the embankment for the beautiful metal girder bridge that spans the inlet. This is a typical Newfoundand photograph, isn’t it? The water, the fishing boats, the little harbour and the mountains away in the background.

18:00 is my usual time to start to look for a suitable place to stay (unless something astonishing presents itself beforehand) and tonight, at about 18:30, I’ve found an abandoned cut-off that leads down to a dismantled bridge. The house here seems to be abandoned so the hedges are all overgrown and as it’s a downhill slope to the bridge I’m pretty sheltered. Of the six sheets of insulation, I’ve put two each into a huge bin liner, fitted another bin liner over the open end and sealed them up with the duck tape.

The three packets that I’ve made, I’ve put them on the roof weighted down with the wood.

We’ll see what that is like through the night as far as the condensation issue goes, but the roof does feel much warmer than the sides of the truck cap already.

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 6th June 2013 – I MIGHT HAVE BROKEN …

… the back of all of this paperwork. I think that I’ve found it all and I’ve sorted it into at least things that need to be taken home for a further sorting or things that I can simply throw away. A mere 14 sacks there are – and that’s just the stuff for throwing.

Anyway, I’ve started emptying the sideboard in the living room now and that’s exciting too. I opened one of the doors and a couple of bats flew out – it’s that kind of sideboard. I’ll be here for a bit yet.

That was this afternoon though. This morning I made a rather startling discovery – or, rather, rediscovery. I went to Labrador in 2010 as you ll know by now and I wrote all of the web pages to cover the journey from Baie Comeau in Quebec all the way round to getting on the boat at Channel-Port-aux-Basques in Newfoundland that was going to take me across the Gulf of St Lawrence to Cape Breton Island.

But while I was ferreting about looking for something else, I came across a huge file that was in fact a large part of the journey, all properly written up as far as New Glasgow, and I can’t think why I never finished it all off. Anyway, I reckon that now I’ve done all of the radio stuff for the next while I deserve some time to myself so for a couple of hours each morning I’ll be doing that.

And pet hate of the day? When someone asks for my advice and I give it, and they go off and do something else completely, and when that all goes pear-shaped they spend half an hour ranting at me. Agatha Christie wrote in the Sleeping Murder, “Good advice is almost certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason for not giving it” – I’m not convinced of that if I’m going to be getting a pile of earache. I have better things to do with my time.

Friday 22nd October 2010 – SO WE WERE ALL DISCHARGED …

caribou ferry north sydney cape breton Channel Port au Basques newfoundland labrador canada… from the “Caribou” … “He wasn’t discharged, he was expelled” – ed …  at 07:30. We weren’t torpedoed during the night after all. And the first thing that I did, after getting a coffee from Tim Horton’s, was to go to have a look around Sydney.

I’d been here in 2003 but with not being very well at the time I’d never really seen the place and so I resolved to rectify the matter.

main street north sydney cape breton island nova scotia canadaSo here’s a photo of Main Street, just to prove that I was here. This is actually North Sydney, where the harbour is and I drove all around the harbour and I didn’t find a flaming Opera House or a blasted bridge anywhere.

Nothing for it but to head into Sydney itself, and that’s quite a hike away. And the road down to there has grown a roundabout. 10 years ago you could drive all around North America and not find a single one. Now they are all the rage and everyone wants one.

sydney opera house cape breton island nova scotia canadaThere may not be an Opera House here at Sydney but this is the next best thing to it.

Someone has certainly been on the fiddle here and I’ll probably find, if I were to go in, that it would be quite a vile inn. But there’s no chance of that at this time of morning.

But anyway, now you know that I’ve been here and seen it. That’s dealt with that outstanding issue.

seal island bridge cape breton island nova scotia canadaClimbing up Kelly’s Island, where in a space of 7kms the road climbs 240 metres, we can pull up at the viewpoint and take a good look at one of my favourite works of engineering, the Seal Island bridge.

It’s a shame that I have the early morning sun to deal with, but never mind. Lurking in the shade of a convenient pine tree, I can still manage something and the bridge still looks quite impressive regardless.

st anns lookout cape breton island nova scotia canadaOn the other side of Kelly’s Mountain there’s a lookout on the way down and I missed that completely in 2003. And it really is beautiful too.

There’s a ferry down there that goes across to the start of the Cabot Trail and I went that way in 2003. I’m going to go down there and cross over on the ferry and then do the Cabot Trail in the other direction.

grave of giant macaskill englishtown cape breton island nova scotia canadaI had to take a little deviation to visit the cemetery at Englishtown. Here is the grave of Giant MacAskill. A normal-sized baby, during adolescence he just “grew and grew” and reached a height of 7’9″, a height that puts him well up in the ranks of the tallest men in history.

Born in Berneray in 1825 and christened Angus, he came here to Nova Scotia with his family in about 1831 and died in 1863.

estate of Alexander Graham Bell baddeck cape breton island nova scotia canadaBaddeck is said to be the birthplace of canadian aviation, with the flight of the “Silver Dart”, and it was also the home of Alexander Graham Bell.

There’s a museum here that is open for visits, but if you want to see the home of Bell, you can’t because it’s still occupied by his family and so is off limits to tourists. But out of pure interest, it’s over there on that headland where that tower is.

canso causeway cape breton isle nova scotia canadaCape Breton Isle was formerly an island as you might expect, but it’s been joined to the mainland of Canada by a causeway which carries a railway line and a road, as you can see down there.

There’s a canal through the causeway so that ships can still pass from one end of the Canso Strait to the other, and the bridge swivels out of the way whenever a ship needs to pass.

pleasant street nova scotia canadaI followed the western shore of the Canso Strait southwards for a while and it really was a beautiful drive, far too nice to ignore, and I must have taken hundreds of photos.

This is Pleasant Street, a very apt name I do say, but I forgot to record the name of the town in which it is situated. But the whole area was as beautiful this and I was having the right weather for sightseeing.

commercial cable company hazel hillAnd as well as beauty we were having plenty of history too.

All around here was a very important area 100 years ago, being the part of the North American continent nearest to Western Europe and several submarine trans-Atlantic telegraph cables came ashore here. This was the Hazel Hill terminal of the Commercial Cable Company and the story goes that the company built its offices and staff houses in brick in order to attract employees from urban areas to come and settle here

stormont country harbour ferry nova scotia canadaBut after my marathon drive today, I began to lose the light. Here on the Good Ship Ve … Stormont, Strawberry Moose took the helm with his assistants Seaman Staines and Roger the Cabin Boy while I worked out my next move.

According to the crew of the ferry, there’s a place down the road where they take in boarders  – “what do they tell them?” … ed – and that’s where I went.

bed and breakfast country harbour nova scotia canadaAnd if I could find more places like this on my route – nice friendly and cheerful proprietors, bed and breakfast in a comfortable room with use of cat and kitchen, for $45 cash, all of my troubles would be over.

>No internet though, but you can’t have everything I suppose.

Thursday 21st October 2010 – I KNOW THAT I SAID …

caribou car ferry channel port aux basques newfoundland north sydney cape breton island nova scotia canada… that I wouldn’t be blogging tonight but here I am in the harbour (well, the terminal, not actually in the harbour) of the ferry terminal at Channel Port Aux Basques with a few hours to go before I sail back to civilisation and I’ve discovered an internet hotspot.

And furthermore some very kind lady fellow passenger has shown me how to configure my computer to use it, so here I am

bed and breakfast corner brook newfoundland canadaLast night’s B&B was exciting. $50 a night for the room and breakfast. Breakfast was help-yourself, make it yourself, cook it yourself – just like last night’s meal where my stock of food was put to good account.

And although the room was advertised as “with private bath” I quickly learnt that what that meant was that when it was your turn to go in, you could have it to yourself without 20 people clambering in with you.

And that’s not as strange as it might appear either as all through breakfast different people kept on appearing – out of the attic, from tunnels in the ground, all kinds of places. It was a hobbit-hole to go with the best. But who’s complaining? $50 with breakfast and I could do with some more places like that on my travels.

typical newfoundland scenery canadaI wasn’t in a great rush to get to Channel Port Aux Basques as the ferry wasn’t until the late evening so I had a leisurely drive southwards.

The scenery along the road is typical of the western side of Newfoundland and in the early morning sunlight with a hanging cloud so typical of my own home in the Auvergne in France, I could be quite at home here.

abandoned American air base USAAF stephenville newfoundland canadaAlong the road I noticed a sign for the town of Stephenville and that rang a big bell with me. During World War II Britain mortgaged everything that it had in order to raise the cash to buy weapons from the USA and when the money ran out, they started selling off the land.

The US Air Force took over a large area of land here at Stephenville and built a huge air base, aimed primarily at refuelling the bombers that were always on patrol ready to attack the Soviet Union. It remained in service until guided missiles and rockets took over from bombers, whereupon it was abandoned.

lighthouse cap anguille newfoundland canadaI stopped for lunch by the seaside in the shadow of the Cap Anguille lighthouse. We’re close to the entrance of the Strait of Belle Isle here, and this is the short cut out of the Gulf of St Lawrence and Western Europe.

The Strait is narrow and is quite often beset with icebergs, so navigation is not as straightforward as it might be. There are hundreds of wrecks littering the shoreline of the Strait as we know, hence all of the lighthouses along here to warn mariners of the dangers.

typical south western newfoundland scenery canadaWe’re back on the road and back in the typical Western Newfoundland scenery again. This is what the road looks like between Woodville and Codroy, at Bear Brook Cove not far out of Channel Port Aux Basques.

But now you’ll notice something else, and that is that the weather has closed right in. Rain is something that it’s impossible to avoid in Newfoundland and although I’ve done well this last couple of days, it’s finally caught up with me as I prepare to leave.

railway museum channel port aux basques newfoundland canadaAt the entrance to the town of Channel Port Aux Basques is a small railway museum exhibiting relics of the Newfoundland Railway. As a good way to pass the time in the middle of this torrential rainstorm I went over for a wander around to see what I could find about the history of the railway.

However, as you might expect, the museum was closed, and that was that.

fox roost harbour newfoundland canadaI wasn’t going to hang around in the town and so instead, I went for a drive along the southern shore of Newfoundland. After a short drive, I found myself at the harbour at Fox Roost.

In fact, this is what most of the southern shore of Newfoundland looks like and had the weather been better, I would have been happy to spend much more time along here having a really good explore around.

newfoundland railway waggon body fox roost canadaAnd not only is the area famous for its beautiful scenery, it’s also famous for being littered with old waggon bodies from the Newfoundland railway.

The metal frames would be quite valuable for scrap but there would be no market for the bodies and they would make excellent garden sheds and storage units. In fact I could do with a few around here.

harbour le cou road newfoundland canadaThe road only goes so far down along the coast – you have to take a ferry the rest of the way – but right down as far as it is possible to go, there’s harbour le cou road – the road to neck harbour.

And the view from down at the end is just as stunning as the view from this end, but there is a limit to the number of photos that you can put on these pages. To see the rest, you need to go to this page.

By now, it’s going dark and I can see my ship in the distance heading towards port. I need to be heading back or I’ll miss it. And it’s not the Joseph and Clara Smallwood either – it’s the “Caribou”, and so when I went into the ticket office, I did say to the girl at the desk that I hope it doesn’t get torpedoed tonight in mid-channel. But that went clean over her head.

But here’s a thing.

There’s a cigarette lighter socket in the boot of Casey, and it only works when the ignition is switched on. I’ve wired a small inverter in there, one that I bought the other day, and I’ve wired the slow cooker into that. At lunchtime I threw in some water, a couple of handfuls of pasta, a small tin of veg, half a tin of beans – and a while later 1/3 of a tin of sauce into it and that’s been cooking away as I’ve been driving around.

While I wouldn’t say that it was boiling, it was certainly hot enough to eat. I reckon that meal cost me less than $1:00 and if I can keep this up, it’ll go some way to bringing the budget back under control.

strawberry moose casey chrysler PT cruiser caribou channel port aux basques newfoundland car ferry north sydney cape breton island nova scotia canadaEventually, we were allowed to board the ship and Strawberry Moose did well to park Casey correctly.

And having wined and dined, I’ve now found myself a nice comfortable reclining seat and I’m all set for a long voyage across the Gulf of St Lawrence, some of the most unpredictable waters in the world, submarine attacks notwithstanding.

Wednesday 20th October 2010 – I ALMOST FORGOT TO BLOG TONIGHT.

Yes, I was about to go to bed for an early night. I’m in Corner Brook for my last night in Newfoundland – a B&B in a private house at $50 for the night and they even let me use the kitchen to cook my tea from my supplies.

puncture casey chrysler pt cruiser canadian tires clarenville newfoundland canadaSo a cheap night tonight – but it needed to be, because this morning I had a nasty surprise. Casey had a flat tyre. 2000 miles down the worst roads in the world and not a thing, and a puncture on the Trans-Canada Highway. And so off to Canadian Tyres it had to be.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom because they were having a sale of inverters – and I picked up a 75-watt and a 150-watt for just $19.98 for the pair.
And then, incredibly, at Walmart, a 40-watt slow cooker for just $9:99. So off to the dollar store for a pile of tins and so on and I now have all that I need to cook my meals in the car as I drive.

newfoundland railway ruins bridge joeys lookout gambo canadaWe’ve talked about the Newfoundland railway before and every so often I’d been encountering relics that looked very, very railway-like.

Here from my good spec up on Joey’s Lookout, whoever Joey might have been, near Gambo, I had this view and I don’t think that I’ve ever seen anything looking more like a railway line than this. It’s ironic in a sense that the railway, the 20th Century form of transport, has cut off access to the bay for boats, the previous method of transport around here

douglas dc3 dakota cockpit gander air museum newfoundland canadaAnother good stroke of fortune was that the Air Museum at Gander was open and while the girl in charge knew nothing about the missing artefacts she did know two authors of aviation books who are “friends” of the museum.

One of these men worked on the project for the replica flight of Alcock and Brown’s Vimy to celebrate the 75th anniversary. So if anyone knows anything about these objects one of these will.

hunter trapper selling rabbits by roadside gander newfoundland canadaOutside the museum was a fur trapper selling rabbits that he had trapped.

This took me by surprise. I thought that they only did things like that in the Last of the Mohicans but here he was – a genuine 21st Century trapper doing his stuff at the side of a main road in the middle of civilisation. If you were to read this in a novel you wouldn’t believe it.

newfoundland railway relics elmwood bridge canadaA little further on I can actually get in touch with the railway line.

This is a beautiful bow girder bridge across the river at Elmwood. And having been for a little walk along the line, I can tell you that it’s single-track and judging by the radii of some of the curves, narrow gauge too.

So now I know.

bed and breakfast guest house corner brook newfoundland canadaSo now it’s an early night in my guest house at Corner Brook.

There won’t be a posting tomorrow as I’m spending the night on this 7-hour crossing to Cape Breton Island where I’ll be picking up where I left off from my 2003 voyage.

And if I don’t blog the night after, it will be either because wherever I will be staying won’t have internet access, or else the ferry will have sunk. And don’t laugh about that either. On October 14th 1942 the Caribou, one of the predecessors of the ship I’ll be sailing on, was torpedoed by a U boat while crossing over the Gulf of St Lawrence.

And the ship I’ll be sailing on – it’s the first voyage since its rudder and steering gear have been repaired. So anything can happen – and it probably will, but I’ve got my Strawberry Moose to keep me warm.