.. at Newhaven ferry terminal, waiting for my ship home. A lot has happened in these last few days, not the least of which being to find the truck drivers’ showers here at the terminal an hour or so ago.

So Tuesday morning I was at the bank sorting out a few things, although nothing will be sorted out because it is after all the RBS and all of their salesmen are away on a compulsory training course – I wonder why?

From there it was St Helens and my clothes, Warrington and a wheelbarrow, Stoke and some stuff for Bill, and then a wheel that I had ordered off the internet for just £11:50 plus vat dramatically turned up so off back to the tyrefitter’s from last week and another Hankook. That’s 3 new Hankooks and a newish Hankook-profile tyre, so at least we are okay for summer tyres, even if the blasted tyrefitters did break Caliburn’s spare wheel carrier.

I made it down to Hatfield after that to say “bye” to Kit and I met her new boyfriend. We ended up chatting till quite late, and then I hit the road towards Aldershot.

Next day I kicked my heels all around Guildford and Aldershot waiting for a phone call and when it finally came (at 21:00) I was told that the meeting that I was to have had been cancelled. I shan’t be doing that again – waste of two whole days there, especially as Stafford Rangers were at home on Tuesday night. Still, you live and learn. Better to find out these things right at the very beginning rather than later.

This morning, scraping the ice off the inside and outside of the windscreen for the third day in succession, I spent the morning wandering around the ancient town of Arundel and then ended up in Woking where I found a second-hand DVD shop having a sale, and so despite my promises to myself that I have more than enough films to last for a year, then here I am again.

And here I am again – in Newhaven, waiting for my ship. If all goes according to plan, a clean me will be back home this time tomorrow night. But of course we have snow to contend with. Apparently they’ve been having blizzards back in the Combrailles today.

I’m glad that I have plenty of wood. 

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… at Sandbach Services. They’ve taken to locking the door of the lorry-drivers’ shower. Mind you, having said that, they haven’t locked the door of the disabled toilet, so if I can’t have a proper shower, I can have a really good scrub. at this time of night there won’t be anyone else needing it.

This morning, it was comparatively warm when I woke up. The rain that we had had through the night seemed to have done the trick. And after a coffee etc at the ASDA down the road from my little hidey-hole, I blitzed the store to buy everything that I needed that they could sell me.

From there I went down to my little storage locker and cleaned it out. There are still quite a few things to come but at least the weed-suppressing blanket had arrived – all 100m² or so of it. I hope that the rest of the stuff comes before tomorrow mid-afternoon as that’s my absolute deadline for moving on south.

Toolstation couldn’t come up with half of the stuff that I needed and so I’ll have to find another branch on my travels – see what they can come up with, and then down to the sign-writer’s. A couple of my phone numbers have changed just recently and Caliburn’s artwork needs to reflect them. Mind you, he’ll have to go back again as Brain of Britain here couldn’t remember his Canada phone number. Rhys – do you have it anywhere?

Once I had sorted out Caliburn, a visit to the big new Tesco and then the big Morrison’s at Hanley finished off the shopping apart from a few bits and pieces that I can pick up on my travels. Caliburn now looks like a rolling bazaar.

While I was in Fenton having the signwriting attended to, I went off for a walk and noticed a take-away selling curries at £4:50 – with a special offer of rice only 49p extra, and a naan bread included for only 1p more. I haven’t had an Indian meal while I’ve been here, I’m surprised to say, so guess what I had for tea, sitting on the station car park at Alsager and reading the copy of “Last of the Mohicans” that I bought for 50p in a charity shop.

Tomorrow, it’s the bank at 09:30 and then off to St Helens to pick up my clothes that are now ready, and then to Warrington for Terry’s wheelbarrow. Stoke on Trent in the afternoon for the final emptying of my post box, and I’m having coffee with Kit in Hatfield at 20:30.

It’s all go, isn’t it?

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… venue for an overnight stay. It’s close to Ferrybridge Power Station about 3 miles north of the M62. It’s on a diverted section of the A162 and ticks many of the important boxes that are required in an overnight sleeping spot –
1) separated from the main road
2) out of the way but not in the wilderness
3) beichstuhl close by (at the Services)
4) coffee ditto

In fact, apart from the cold Caliburn, Strawberry Moose and Yours truly had a very decent night’s stay there.

But today was something of a disappointment. I had three people pencilled in to see today and not one of them was available. Consequently I had a quiet restful day driving down to Sandbach.

I did drop off to somewhere in Stockport – Terry had won a set of wheels and tyres for his van and they needed picking up. I eventually found the place where I should have been (hasn’t Stockport changed since I was there in the mid-80s?) and picked up the aforementioned. And Terry won’t be disappointed with them.

So tomorrow I’m back on the rounds picking up the stuff that has been ordered while I was here. My little visit is drawing to a close.

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Yes, McGuinness’s didn’t have any 15″ Transit wheels at all but there was some kind of better luck at the Ford breaker’s at Fenton. He pulled a superb set of 15″ wheels out of the back of his shed, with some really nice tyres – 205s, not 195s like mine, but a set of four would have done the job just fine. However, closer inspection revealed them to be 6-stud, not 5-stud, and so they were no use at all.

He did however point me in the direction of a tyre place that was the cheapest in the whole of the Potteries for van tyres, and all they had in stock of my size was a pair of Hankooks. Needs must when the devil drives, and that was when we found out that the wheel was in fact slightly buckled. Ahhh well.

But apart from that, I accomplished all of my tasks in Stoke today, and had one or two pleasant surprises, and that’s not counting the half-dozen DVDs I found in the local charity shops.

You might think that a set of three pyrex casserole dishes with lids, to use in my little oven, would be a major purchase, especially at £7:50, but that pales into insignificance when compared to the slow cooker that I found in one of these cheapo shops. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in 2010 I bought a cheap 1.5 litre slow cooker in a Walmart in Newfoundland – one with a porcelain insert and running at 120 watts. That lives in my lock-up in Montreal and I use it on my travels in the car and in motels. All of the slow cookers that I’ve seen in the UK are big things, 3.5 litres and 200 watts and the like but there, at £9:99, was my little slow cooker, exactly the same as the one back in Canada.

The aim, as you know, is for me to get away from using gas as a means of cooking. In winter, that’s not so difficult as the oven attached to my fire will do most things, but in summer it’s not so easy. The little vegetable steamer did a good job, but it won’t do everything. The slow cooker, if I can teach it to fry onions, will do the rest I hope.

Another thing was that one of the shops was selling onion and shallot sets – £2:00 a bag and buy one, get one for free (or BOG OFF in the vernacular) so I bought a few bags of those.

Tomorrow it’s to the bank, and then I’m heading off on my travels, calling at Car Transplants on the offchance that they might have a wheel or two.

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… since I last updated this load of rubbish that you are reading. In fact, right now I’m in a windswept and wet Dieppe Harbour waiting for a ferry, having slept overnight on a supermarket carpark somewhere between Chartres and Rouen.

My ferry’s not until quite late but I wanted to arrive earlier so that I could have a good wander around the town, but no-one is going anywhere in this depressing and miserable weather. At least it isn’t snowing.

So on Wednesday I tidied up the place ready for Cécile and she came round in the afternoon to help me dig over the potato beds. We managed three of the raised beds in between the showers, and then knocked off at dusk for food – a dollop of my legendary red pepper and lentil curry, with rice and fried mushrooms.

Later, we went to Gerzat to pick up a settee and armchair that she had bought off Leboncoin.fr . That’s one of the problems with only having a small car like a Nissan Micra – you can’t move anything with it. We ended up chatting for ages afterwards and it was something ridiculous like 02:30 when I arrived home.

Thursday was cleaning, fetching Kate’s stuff, loading the van, socialising for our games evening with Cécile, Nan and Zoë, and afterwards I hit the road.

And here I am.

I’ve no idea where i’ll be next.

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Well, at least, I think I am.

It’s hard to tell with all of this plant growth that seems to be everywhere all over the place. It’s like something out of the Amazon rainforest around here right now.

One or two disasters while I was away. The wind seems to have blown over a bin full of kindling and brought down the solar shower. As well as that, the new revised dump load that I installed while I was away has proved too much for the fuseholder, which burnt off one of its terminals. Fuseholder is rated at 100 amps and the fuse in there is just 50 amps. Surpisingly the fuse hasn’t blown, and so I don’t think that I’ll be using these fuseholders again, that’s for sure.

Leaving Rachel and Darren’s, I drove up to the St Lawrence somewhere around the Trois-Pistoles – Riviere du Loup area. A beautiful drive through the mountains with some lovely scenery – gorgeous lakes and all kinds of things. And a historic fort where there was a bannock-baking class going on. And I found a really good place to camp – probably the best so far – behind a hedge on the south bank of the St Lawrence.

Next morning though the weather had broken and we spent most of the day in the rain. And it was wet too. 78mm of rain fell in Montreal during one two-hour period. But even so, it was a really nice drive too. I shall have to do it again though when the weather is nice. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I was so carried away that I was hours behing schedule and that’s no good.

At the motel I washed and cleaned everything and then next morning filed it away in my little storage unit. I also found the most amazing car wash ever, where three immigrant people washed and vacuumed the car from top to bottom to such an extent that it looked as if it had just come out of the showroom. And all for $23 as well – a bargain.

We had the usual stress issues at the airport again but this time we had free internet and a pile of electric plugs to help pass the time and that’s a change from the stinking reception that I have had in Dorval in the past. And it gets better than that too. On the aeroplane one of the films was Some Like It Hot and then we had a whole pile of albums by Hendrix, Springsteen, David Bowie, Led Zep and Neil Young. I’ll fly by Air France again, even if I don’t ever get to sleep.

A good decision was the TGV – straight back with no problems and Bill was waiting for me at the station, so thanks very much to him. I crashed out back here, woke up again, couldn’t go back to sleep, finally did and rewoke at 14:30. I tried my best to avoind jetlag by going to bed early and getting up early but it’s clearly not worked. I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow.

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Just like old times in fact. What I’ve been doing is helping Rachel’s husband Darren fit a rear differential in his tractor tonight. And if you would like to see the tractor that we’ve been working on, have a look at this link.

Some tractor isn’t it? A 428 cubic inch hemi engine pushing out over 3000 bhp and pulling about 25 tons in that film clip. It makes your eyes water just to look at it.

So what else have I been doing just recently? Apart from the usual family kind of things that you do, I had a few days where I went down to Fredericton for a few things that I needed to do. This included
i)  visiting the blues festival offices to pick up a promotional CD of the acts that will be appearing this year and arranging a press pass for the festival (such are the privileges of being a radio presenter),
ii)  seeing this University Professor who I have been trying to track down for over 6 months, only to find out that his project finished a couple of months ago (as I reckoned that it probably might)
iii) sorting out a few things relating to my property up the road here, such as
    a) paying the property taxes
    b) orgainising a mailing address
    c) discussing planning permission with the rural affairs office
as well as loads more that I’ve probably forgotten and that I’ll remember as soon as I press “send”.

I went down to Fredericton Junction where the old railway line up here left the St. John – USA line and poked around all of the railway relics there

Today I’ve been wandering around the USA border looking at all of the abandoned border posts as well as some current ones, including the controversial one at Forest City. Here, the Americans are busily destroying the environment of this beautifully peaceful valley to build ahuge mega-frontier-post complete with bomb-proof shelter, bullet-proof glass and a couple of prison cells – for a border post that has on average one car every half-hour during an eight-hour working day. If you want a definition of the word “paranoia”, you need look no further than this. It really is confirmation that the Americans are the most frightened people on the planet. It was either Goering or Goebbels – one of them anyway and I can never remember whom – said that the best way to control your population is to frighten them – and the Bushbaby and his croneys managed to scare their citizens to death.

In case you are wondering by the way, the Canadian border post here is a small wooden hut.

The most interesting part of all of this was that I had a guided tour of the installations from across the river by a woman named Anne, whose property borders the river that is the international boundary. She told me many stories about the things that go on here. But even better than that, she is someone who is living an alternative lifestyle and is very interested in all of this kind of thing and so we spent a very pleasant morning discussing such delightful topics as rainwater harvesting and composting toilets. It was really enjoyable to meet a kindred spirit.

Tomorrow I have more things to do around here, such as checking out standard Canadian timber sizes, and then in the evening we’ll be carrying on reassembling this tractor. First tractor pull of the season is at Grand Sault in three weeks time so we need to get a move on. 

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… as Rachel and Darren’s without any further incident, which is more than can be said for two motorists way over the frontier in the USA several miles away. Seems that there’s been something of a fender-bender over there between two vehicles and both of them have caught fire.

Not every day that you see something like that, but it is worrying just how easily modern cars catch fire after an accident. I don’t remember cars catching fire this easily back in the good old days when I was nought but a pup.

By the way, the photo was taken from a distance of several miles with the new zoom lens. I’m clearly going to have to work on my technique but you can see the advantages of going a-wandering in the spring before the leaves are out on the trees.

For the last couple of nights I’ve been sleeping out in forests – driving into logging roads and looking for clearings to park up. This seems to be the answer because i’ve had a couple of decent nights’ sleep.All these dirt roads aren’t doing the car much good though as you can see. It’ll need a good wash before I hand it back.

Nevertheless, this idea of hiring a big 8-seater and converting it into some kind of motorhome is definitely the way to go on these kinds of trips. Despite the extra cost and the higher fuel consumption I’ve spent 14 nights asleep in the car and at a saving of about $70 per night on motel fees, that’s about $1000 saved and it’s that kind of thing that makes these journeys much more affordable.

Since the last time  blogged I hit the USA border and I’ve been basically following the roads through the mountains along the frontier. Choosing an extreme destination and setting the SatNav to “shortest route” isn’t half finding me some astonishing roads over the mountains, even if there is too much haze for the camera to take full advantage of the view. But it’s been sending me up and down roads like this, and I’m not complaining.

Eventually the road joined up with the road that I took in the autumn and so this part of the circuit is complete. From there I hit the highway to Rachel and Darren’s. And I have my work to do here as well. Zoe, the eldest girl, has her driving test on Thursday and is a little shaky on parallel parking and so we were out for a few hours yesterday and we’ll be out in a short while for another couple of hours as well.
.

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Seems that the Nikon is beyond the kind of repair that can be carried out at Québec. It needs to be sent away. And so I put plan B into motion and went and bought the last one of those end-of-series D3000s in Québec. I’m using just the body of it now – nothing else. Everything else like the battery and the lenses are those from my other one. The idea is that when I reach home (if I ever do) I’ll send the Nikon off to the manufacturers for repair. If they can’t fix it I’ll trade it in for a factory-refurbished more-upmarket model. And then I’ll sell the one i’ve bought just now and probably get back most of my money. That’s why the new one is sitting in the habitual place under the front seat, but wrapped in a plastic bag to protect it.

So now I’m mobile again and what I’ve done is to leave Québec City and the north shore of the St Lawrence and head south to the USA border, follow Highway 277 that also follows thz border, and reach Edmunston. From there, I’ll go to see what gives on Mars Hill, see how Rachel and Darren and the saucepans are doing, nip down to Fredericton where I have things to do, and slowly come back to finish the south shore of the St Lawrence between Matane and Québec, the bit that I missed in 2010.

But of course, the best-laid plans of mice and men …. I’m wondering what catastrophe awaits me next.

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… in the waiting room of the swimming baths in Loretteville, Québec – about 20kms from Québec City. It opens in about 45 minutes and I shall be the first in. I look like something that the cat has just dragged in through the cat flap and spilling half a mug of cold coffee over my clothes this morning has not helped

“And Québec City?” I hear you say. Yes – nearest camera repairers to anywhere along the Lower North Shore and so I had no option but a 920km (I measured it) drive through the night to get here. So now the camera is in good hands and it’s a question of “wait and see”.

Luckily, Walmart is offering a special this week – the obsolete Nikon D3000 (the model one or two lower down the scale than mine) with a cheap lens, for just $420 and so that is the fallback position if nothing else works. At least, it takes all of my lenses and accessories so that’s a good thing.

In the meantime I’ve been manfully … “personfully” – ed … keeping on with the camera in the Samsung mobile phone that I bought over here last year. And while it’s not a patch on the real thing, it’s not disappointing me at all.

When I remember the journey that I did all around the Rockies and the American desert in 2002 with a second-hand Fuji Finepix, it is in fact in some respects a big leap forward from those days. But the days of up-market digital SLR cameras has spolit me, I suppose.

But seeing this pic of the meltwater from the Canadian Shield cascading in full fury over the dam at Magpie shows that it can do the business well enough in the right kind of conditions and I can’t ask any more of it than that.

And now having been told that I need a bonnet for the swimming baths, I suppose that I had better sod off and buy one.

Watch this space.

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… that I wouldn’t let this journey lie just there up an impasse. At Havre St Pierre where there’s a decent internet connection I made a few phone calls and sent a couple of internet messages. And that led to me retracting my steps back up the coast 90 miles or so.

Back up the coast at some kind of ridiculous hour I boarded the Nordik Express and we set off to deliver some relief supplies to an island way offshore in the St Lawrence estuary.

A rather nice 19-hour sail in a storm – blinding rainstorms, wind and fog. And then we had our disaster. The ship didn’t sink …“shame” – ed … but something even worse – the camera has ceased to function, and I’ve no idea why. I haven’t a clue about that and that’s a calamity.

But not to be outdone, remember that I bought a portable phone over here – a Samsung thing? Well the fact is that the resolution of the camera is far better than the camera that I had when I first started travelling. and what’s more, I had a charger with me as well and there was electricity on the boat.

Consequently, for what it’s worth, I had a camera of sorts ready when we hit the ice and had to carve our way through it. It’s not a very good pic and you’ll have to see it in the correct light, but it was the best I can do in the circumstances. Nevertheless, it’s all the proof that I need that I’ve been in an ice fied, which was my aim, even though hardened “coasters” might not think all that much of my efforts. But then again, I can’t control the weather and I would be here in colder conditions if I could.

So after spending a couple of days effectively marooned on an island (I did mention the fog didn’t I?) we set off back yesterday afternoon and at about 10:00 having done a second round of battle with the ice, I made it back to land. And no-one had stolen the car either, and that was what amazed me.

So I now have to sort out a new camera body for tomorrow or whenever – I can’t go round like this. It really is a calamity, this blasted thing not working.

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That’s not it – the Chemin du Roy ends another 18 kms down there. And down at the end is a construction site, a crane and that’s that. No little man handing out Blue Peter badges or anything. That was disappointing.

What is even more disappointing is that I can’t go any further. There’s a boat about 15 kms from here – at Natasquan – that plies up and down the coast going to all of the isolated ports and islands and ends up on the road much higher up the Labrador coast, but with the ice melting 3 weeks earlier the boat will be full of supplies and provisions for the next three weeks and there’s no space for a car in the hold. And so that has scuppered that idea.

What I’ll have to do is the try again to complete my route next September after the Music festival, but book it well in advance. I could really enjoy a 60-hour boat trip. I won’t get to see the icebergs higher up though, but I can do something about that as well for later.

But apart from that I’ve had a lovely drive out here and I’m not driving all of the way back because one of the seasonal ferries starts up tomorrow – from Forestville to Rimouski and I’ll see about crossing the St Lawrence on that.

I’ve found a few good places to park up but none of them so far beats the Pointe des Monts not too far from Godbout where I was on Sunday night. What with a full moon at one of the times in the century when the moon is the closest to earth with a cloudless sky and next to the St Lawrence, this will not ever be bettered.

I had a day too of not spending any money at all – the second one of those so far. having a camping stove and a supply of tinned food and coffee as well as stuff to make a few butties – this was really a good move. And hiring a Dodge Grand Caravan and putting a bed in it, that was a good idea too. I’ve had a few nights’ sleep just recently that have been the best that I have ever had. 

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In the front seat behind the steering wheel, as the old saying goes. Well, anyway, apart from that, I’m at a small village called La Chute des Outardes, along the St Lawrence estuary, where there is a public wi-fi connection that is open.

And where have I been since I left St Félicien? Basically, down the south-western shore of the big valley that contains the Lac St Jean and the Sageunay Fjord. And this area has totally surprised me as despite how far into the interior it is, the shore of the Lac St Jean is a heaving metropolis. Chicoutimi itself has 60,000 inhabitants! There’s also farming and cattle too, would you believe?

What there are too are some stunning views of the lake and it’s very difficult to find a photo that really does justice to the area – there are so many to choose from. But at least with this one here you can see the trees, the beach, the sky and the water.

Yes, beach! There are some of the best beaches that I have ever seen, especially on a lakeshore. I don’t fancy the water too much though – it all flows in from the north and the Arctic Divide. “Glacial” is a good – and probably correct – word to describe it.

We had something of a minor hiccup as well – a puncture. One of the tyres blew out and left a split down the wall. Jacking up the car was no picnic on a dirt road – eventually I had to use a couple of my bed boards to stop the jack sinking into the surface. And the space-saver spare tyre takes some finding as well – it’s not where you think that it might be and it had me fooled for a while.

Eventually I found one of these rural barn-type of tyre places and he had a second-hand tyre that was almost the same size and with a reasonable amount of tread and that cost me $45 including fitting and so on and I’m not complaining at that. It’s put me back on the road and I’ll sort it out properly at Rachel and Darren’s when I get there, whenever that might be.

So now I’m back on the north bank of the St Lawrence again, creeping imperceptibly towards my destination. That there is Tadoussac where I catch the ferry that takes me over the mouth of the Sageunay again across to the other side. Tadoussac has some fond memories for my – my first ever night in Canada, outside a heaving metropolis of course, was spent there. Not to mention, of course, that it has a ferry too.

But ferries always put me in a bad mood – in fact every time I see a ferry it makes me cross.

Okay – I’ll get my coat.

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I left Québec via Highway 138 as usual, up along the north bank of the St Lawrence and after a few detours (including a lesson in how to do roofing in Canada, for which I was exttemely grateful) climbed over Cap Tourmente into the Charlevoix which is the most beautiful region in the world.

Highway 362 then hugs the coastline and took me to a small village called St Joseph, where there is a ferry out into the St Lawrence to the Ile aux Coudres – and what a stunning place to stay for the night that was too (the gloom in the photo is because it was 06:00 by the way).

Back on the mainland it was back along the St Lawrence, a few more detours (of course), a trip over the Saguenay Ferry, and then branching off along the River Ste Marguerite and the Saguenay Fjord all the way to the headwaters of the Lac St Jacques.

I’ve never been this way before (said the actress to the bishop) and I was astonished. It’s well-worth the drive. To reach the fjord there’s a really narrow canyon that beats anything that I’ve ever seen in the Alps or in the Rockies and it astonishes me that no-one has publicised this area very much.

The Lac St Jacques is huge too. So much so that it has its own micro-climate – nothing like the alpine tundra that there is only a few miles away. There are animals such as cattle and goats (and no buts about it), even a couple of llamas, hayfields, gardens, cops, greenhouses, all  that kind of this – nothing at all like what I was expecting. The weather too is glorious and I feel a bit guilty sitting around doing this when I could be out walking down the banks of the river just here in the sunshine.

But now I shall be going back down the other side of the lack and the fjord to St Simeon where I’ll rejoin Highway 138 (that met up with Highway 362 at La Malbaie) and then back over the Saguenay Ferry to continue my route along the north bank of the St Lawrence in the general direction of Sept-Iles.

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… in Québec City. I’ve been through here a few times and I’ve always been hassled by the farces of law and order about parking issues and so on and while I’ve drive miles around the town I’ve never been able to stop and photograph it.

Until this year!

Arriving on a Saturday morning and with what promised to be a gorgeous weekend I threw caution to the winds and found a motel here in the Street of A Hundred Motels. Talking to the proprietor, he showed me the local bus stop and the bus took me to a terminus a few miles away where there is an express bus service right into the heart of the city. And so I’ve been on the buses.

140 or so photos of Québec City and the surroundings, piles of notes, and there we are. Trois Rivières last year, Halifax the year before, and now Québec City.

Anyway, I’m leaving here in a minute and off to the Charlevoix – the most beautiful area in the whole of Canada.

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