… out like a light during the evening, I found it difficult to drop off to sleep last night. Long after midnight and I was still trying to drop off.
When I finally did drop off, it was a difficult night with tossing and turning and all of that, and it was a struggle to leave the bed when the alarm went off.
But leave the bed I did and after breakfast and a little work on the laptop, I was out on the road by 09:30.
First disappointment was at the docks. There were a couple of big ships in there but there were road works, the bridge across the canal was out of order and, try as I might, I couldn’t find my way out there.
In the end I gave it up as a bad job and headed out of town.
First stop has of course to be our famous Tracel de Cap Rouge out on the edge of town.
Tracel is of course a French word and it’s where the English word “trestle” come from.
And this is probably the most magnificent trestle railway bridge in the whole of North America, even if it is made of iron and not of wood.
Cap Rouge is said to be the site of the first permanent settlement in North America.
In an effort to establish themselves in the New World in competition with the Spanish And Portuguese, the French sent colonists here in 1541.
However scurvy and what has been enigmatically described as “deteriorating relations with the natives” led to the surviving settlers being recalled to France.
There was a road – the Chemin du Roy – which was the first public highway in Nouvelle France, running between Quebec and Montreal.
I spent a good while over the years tracing its original route although much has been lost to modernisation and coastal erosion.
I never found an original plan of the route, but my assumption is that the road hugged the coast around here, somewhere along the line of tbat footpath.
Like I said, coastal erosion did for a lot of the original route.
You can see here where the official sign (which don’t necessarily follow the route, but never mind) points off to the right, but there’s a nice straight road ahead.
That disappears off down there and comes to a sudden stop at the bank in the bend of a river.
Yes, don’t count on the official signs.
The Chemin du Roy is signposted to follow the highway which is to the left of the photo just here
But when you see the orientation of this traditional Quebec cottage and the pathway that passes in front of it, it’s easy to imagine where the original trace of the Chemin might have been.
One of the things that we do when we are driving around is to look for proper football pitches.
They are quite common these days but when I first started coming to Canada they were few and far between.
This is the first one that I ever noticed – in Neuville – and access to photograph it was always difficult. But today, for some reason, it wasn’t a problem to go down there and photograph it properly.
A little earlier I talked about road alignments along the Chemin du Roy.
The area around Donnacona has been badly hit by coastal erosion and so tracing the original route is quite difficult.
But seeing a house orientated in this fashion with the trace of a track running past the front of a house, it’s easy to imagine where the original course might have been.
And here we had a moment of excitement.
As I pulled up here, I noticed an old guy peeking out at me from his window across the road. And he walked out onto his porch for a closer look.
“Are you having a problem with this?” I shouted across to him. He turned tail and walked back into his house.
When you see on an old map a street called “rue du Station”, you have to go to investigate … “well, one of us does” – ed.
I wasn’t expecting much because if you think that the Beeching cuts in the UK were severe, they were absolutely nothing compared to what happened to the railway network in Canada.
There are a few freight lines still operating, but passenger service outside the major cities has gone more-or-less completely. There’s nothing here in the former “rue du Station” to indicate what might have been a railway station.
But this is much more like it, isn’t it?
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen one of these before in 2010 when we were in Goose Bay.
And here’s another one – a Bombardier “Auto-Neige” from the late 1930s, I reckon.
It’s for sale too, and if I had room in my suitcase this would be coming back to Europe with me because I think that it’s gorgeous.
On the two occasions that I’ve been to Deschambault I’ve been soaked with rain and I’ve never been able to photograph the town properly.
One of the places that I came here today to look for was the Ile Richelieu. The navigable channel up the St Lawrence is quite narrow here and there are rocks and rapids and the island was the icing on the cake for any defensive force.
The French built a fort out there on the island to control the passage upriver but a combination of a rolling fog, a very high tide and a strong wind enabled a British fleet to slip by and on to Montreal before the French could bring their guns into action.
Deschambault regularly appears in lists of the most beautiful villages in Quebec and it’s a listing that isn’t undeserved. That building over there is, believe it or not, the Town Hall
It’s not the only building in the place that’s in that particular “North American ante-bellum” style. The convent (every town worth its salt in Quebec has to have its convent) is also in the same style.
In our quest to fill out the missing gaps in the Chemin du Roy I’d seen an old track away by the Moulin de la Chevrotiere that would correspond with what I knew about the original trace of the route
I went to have a look, and I could identify ditches that resembled those that Becancour and Lanouiller – the architects – had specified for the sides of the road, and the stones of the type that they had specified to be placed in the marshy parts of the roadway.
We are told that at Grondines there’s a huge submarine electric cable that runs underneath the St Lawrence
This takes electricity from the Lower St Lawrence hydro plants (such as the Manic and Outardes complexes) over and into the USA.
There’s no visible trace of the cable from what I’ve been able to find, but this “Hydro Quebec” transmission post just outside the town might give us a clue as to where the cable might disappear into the earth.
If the village of Grondines has any claim to fame, it might be for its windmill.
When a Peace Treaty was signed with the Iroquois and the land was subsequently parcelled out to the local gentry – the Seigneurie System – one of the duties of the Seigneur was to provide a mill for the peasantry to grind their corn.
A water mill wouldn’t be much good on a slow-flowing river because the river would be frozen up for four months per year.
A great many windmills were thus erected by some of the Seigneurs, several of which survive today.
I arrive at Trois Rivieres just in time to be caught in the rush-hour traffic. And seeing as there are major roadworks in the town I reckon that I lose a good hour of my time.
I have to hit the Highway instead and arrive in Berthierville just as the light is starting to go.
Berthierville was the home of Formula One racing driver Gilles Villeneuve and it’s another place that I’ve always managed to miss while I’ve been out and about on my travels.
But today I make a determined effort and actually manage to track it down this year.
One last thing to do, and that’s in Repentigny down the road.
That’s to track down the hideously modern Church of Our Lady of the Fields – Notre Dame des Champs.
I’ve absolutely no idea what the designer of the church – Roger D’Astous – must have been smoking when he was drawing up the plans, but he’s managed to produce something that is so hideous that it’s almost attractive.
By now I’m running extremely late and there’s no chance of reaching Montreal tonight. But there’s a motel down the road that’s very tired and very shabby – and also very cheap.
They do me an excellent deal on the room, which is very good news, and I celebrate by having a shower and washing my clothes.
Pasta, mushrooms and tomato sauce make a nice meal, and then I crash out while working on the laptop.
I’m definitely beginning to feel the pace now.
