… what happened during the night but for some reason or other I was tossing and turning quite considerably.
In fact, I was so wide-awake at 01:00 that I was giving serious thought to actually getting up and doing some work. But I abandoned that idea and went back to sleep and off on my travels.
I was back chauffering again in the main office – my first day back for years and I wasn’t sure of how everything workec – the post needed to be sorted for distribution and I wasn’t sure of how to do that and where it was supposed to go. But then there were all kinds of changes taking place on the very day, and our office was one of the ones that had been selected for revision so no sooner ha I settled down when all of the workmen suddenly appeared. I ended up outside wanting to go downstairs but there were issues with the lifts and we had to wait hours – and when a lift did arrive it was going in the wrong direction. Some girl missed her lift and ran round to the back of it (I’ve no idea why) to see if she could catch it there.
I was still up and about by 05:30 though and that gave me a good opportunity to attack some work on the laptop. And I made a major mistake too – the slow cooker certainly lives up to its name and if I want to have porridge for breakfast at anything like a reasonable hour I need to start it off as soon as I awake.
It wasn’t until about 10:30 that I was ready to hit the road. And I remembered to stop and take a photograph of the motel this time too.
And the verdict about last night’s motel?
I refuse to be drawn into an argument about “Value for Money” because motel prices in Canada this last couple of years have for some reason or other gone through the roof.
A few years ago I was recoiling in horror at the thought of paying $75 per night for accommodation. Today, getting away with double figures is something of a miracle.
First stop wasdown into the town of Carbonear itself.
It’s another former port and fishing station that at one time was one of the busiest along the coast but became a victim of the incessant growth in size of merchant shipping.
120 years ago you couldn’t move in the bay for schooners but now no commercial traffic comes in because the ships are too big for the depth of the bay.
But the town has undergone some kind of growth spurt in modern times, and that is due to the concentration of services here.
One of the big things that the town has going for it today is the regional hospital and residential care for the elderly, of which there are more than enough left behind in Newfoundland and Labrador as the younger generations dash off to Alberta to seek their fortunes in the oilfields.
But then, they aren’t likely to be making their fortunes with what remains here.
Take the railways for example.
he building of Newfoundland’s railway network at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century brought a new wave of prosperity to many places, including Carbonear.
But the entire system was brutally axed overnight in the 1980s in favour of road transport, and the roads here are disgraceful. They must have been appalling 30 years ago. Many places just fell back into the slumber from which they had been awoken
And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my opinion about what passes for “preservation” in North America. And it’s shameful to admit that Canada is as bad at this as their cousins across the border.
This is one of the surviving diesel-electric locomotives from the Newfoundland Railway – A GM EMD G8. Built in 1958, she’s just dumped here outside the station and is slowly rotting away without even a pretence of preservation.
But then this is not time for me to go off on one of my rants. I have things to do.
Instead of leaving Carbonear by going up the hill and along the new road, I followed the coast for a while.
You’ve seen a few beautiful views of Newfoundand to date but all around here can certainly equal whatever the rest of Newfoundland has to offer.
I was told on several occasions that this is the most beautiful part of the island.
And they are certainly not wrong, are they?
There are a few beaches around here but they are mainly shingle. You can’t build a sand castle on there.
And I wouldn’t like to go swimming off there either. Beautiful though the water may be, the cold Labrador current comes right in and I bet that it’s freezing in there
And all of the tiny villages and communities out here too that are really picturesque.
Many of them were cleared away in the controversial resettlement programmes of the 1950s and 1960s but a few still cling on, and here just by Freshwater Cove is one of the most beautiful examples that I have seen.
It’srather a shame that I’m in something of a hurry otherwise I could prowl around here for weeks.
When I arrive at Victoria, I turn off onto Highway 74 that takes me across to the western side of the peninsula.
It’s quite a climb up but when you arrive at the tip it’s well-worth it because the views from up here are stunning and it’s a shame that the camera can’t do them justice.
But with a good bit of peering you can make out the sea just beyond that range of hills in the distance.
I try to make these tours something of an educational trip as you know, and so this is another reason why we have come across here to the small town of Heart’s Content.
This is notable for being the landing site of the 1858 transatlantic telegraph cable from Ireland and although it only lasted a few weeks until it ruptured, it proved that cable transmission between Europe and North America was perfectly possible and the world was brought into a new technological era.
Once the American Civil War had ended, they had another go at laying a cable from Valentia in Ireland.
They were much-better prepared and much better-equipped this time round and using the massive “Great Eastern”, which had by then been transformed into a cable-laying ship, they could bring a tougher cable ashore.
And right where we are standing is the spot where the cable was pulled ashore, and started 100 years of cable communication between North American and Europe, lasting until radio transmission took over completely.
The cable was so successful that several other cables were laid across the Atlantic.
We’ve already visited a few sites in North America which were transatlantic cable stations, but several more followed in the wake of the 1866 cable and came ashore right here.
The redbuilding over there opposite where Strider is parked was formerly the cable company receiving station but today it’s a museum.
I was tempted to go in for a look around but it’s one of these places where they ambush you with the admission charges and I’m going to have to watch my spending very carefully given how prices have gone through the roof over here.
There are loads of “Heart’s” along here. Heart’s Content and Heart’s Desire, but here weare in Heart’s Delight having a look over the Marina and across the bay around which I have just driven.
Landing fees aren’t so expensive here I noticed – $10 for a night and $115 for the season if you turn up in a small boat.
And so the way that prices are going in Canada right now, next time that Icome, I’ll be coming by sea. It makes much more sense to me.
We run out of “Heart’s” shortly afterwards and end up in the community of Islington.
There was formerly a railway branch line that ran along this side of the peninsula. Built as late as 1915, it only lasted until 1940 when it was all torn up.
Very little, if anything, remains these days of the railway but having a look at that embankment across the bay there, and I’d seen plenty of others in similar situations, then if anything had “railway” written on it, then that does.
But I doubt if I’ll be able to find anything to confirm it.
Meanwhile, my attention was diveted a little further out into the bay by that geological formation just there.
I’m not certain whether you would call it a rock or an island, but the fact that it has grass growing on it woould seem to indicate that it may well be more appropriate to call it the latter.
At least the seabirds call it “home” and it’s probably their droppings that have fertilised it to enable the grass to grow.
A few miles down the road Strawberry Moose persuades me to come to a sudden halt.
He has seen sign on the side of the road that has caught his interest.
I have to explain to him that it’s referring to a kind of seabird similar to a cormorant or some such – hence the “rock” – and so we leave the area with something of an air of diappointment.
But not so this town in Newfoundland.
This place is well-known throughout the whole world as being the favourite holiday destination of the female inhabitants of the Isle of Lesbos in Greece – it’s certainly all Greek to me, that’s for sure.
Who says that 16th Century explorers didn’t have a sense of humour?
And what do people buy when they come to Dildo?
Here’s a notice at the side of the road advertising certain items for sale. and for a town with a name like “Dildo”, then somehow they seemed to be quite appropriate.
It all adds to the flavour of the place, I suppose.
Leaving childish schoolboy humour behind for a moment, we have to go down and investigate the town.
And it’s a small Newfoundland coastal town like any other with nothing to distinguish itself apart from its name.
But have you noticed a change in the weather? We are now all grey and overcast and a terrific wind has sprung up. Look at the sea!
another thing that regular readers of this rubbish will remember is the situation that many Labradorians feel about the exploitation of their region by St John’s.
We have the Muskrat Falls hydro project that might bring some money to the community over there, but where is the power all going?
Not on the Coasts of Labrador, that’s for certain. A company called Valard is building the high-tension lines out of Muskrat falls, and there they are, building a high-tension line not to far from St John’s.
Work it out.
Feeling a desperate urge for a pit-stop I find myself back at the Tourist Information site o the Trans-Canada Highway where I started when I arrived on Newfoundland.
It was also quite late too and I was hungry, so I took this as being the appropriate place for a lunch stop. And shame as it is to admit it, I went away with the fairies for a while too.
After a while I awoke and, searching in the toursit guide, came across a motel that had a room at a price that wasn’t quite out in the realms of fantasy.
I’d planned a little trip around rhe Belle Vue Beach area because that was another place that was quite beautiful, but it just wasn’t my lucky day.
An hour or two ago, I had said that the weather was changing – and I was right. By now we were in the middle of something of quite a rainstorm.
Leaving the comfort and safety of Strider to admire the view was not going to be all that muchof a good idea.
But nevertheless, abandoning my drive around the bay due to the miserable weather, there’s a good view across the bay from the climb back up to the Trans Canada Highway.
It’s a shame that the weather has turned like this. The view looks so good in these conditions, so imagine what it must be like in glorious sunshine.
It’s quite disappointing.
One final place to visit on this journey, and that’s the little town of Come By Chance.
It’s here that an early explorer by the name of John Guy found a portage across the island and encountered a group of friendly Beothuk natives with whome he engaged in trade.
The site of their meeting is quite famous in Newfoundland lore but if anyone thinks that I’m stepping out of Strider in this, they are mistaken. It’s absolutely dreadful out there.
And so I make my way through the driving rain as far as the Trailside Motel.
It’s not as cheap as I was expecting it to be, and it’s crowded with a bar and café where bikers and people like that hang out. Not exactly my ideal but then again it’s the cheapest place on offer right now.
The room is reasonable and I rustle myself up a meal of pasta, mushrooms, bulghour and tomato sauce. Having learnt my lesson from the other day I set it up as soon as I arrive – this slow cooker lives up to its name.
The internet is pretty lousy too – it won’t hold a connection for more than five minutes. I try to talk to a few people but give it up after half an hour of constant interruption.
Searching the internet (when it lets me) I find a thesis from 1965 about the displacement of settlements in Labrador so I download it (on one of the slowest connections I have ever seen) to read at my leisure.
But for some reason I can’t keep going and I end up calling it a day.
At 22:00 too! I really am slipping!
