Category Archives: trans canada highway

Wednesday 12th October 2022 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I had one of the best sleeps that I have had for a long, long time. So much so that there was absolutely nothing at all on the dictaphone. I must have been really deep in the arms of Morpheus.

In fact, I was in bed quite early too. I fell asleep while I was listening to the radio but I must have awoken at some point to switch it off because the laptop was off when the alarm went off.

There was no time to hang around this morning. For a start, I had to clear off a huge pile of ice from Strider’s windscreen. We’re in the grip of autumn here with sub-zero temperature through the night and cloud-free crystalline skies.

But when I could see where I was going, I set off for Woodstock.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the Saint John River isn’t far from here. It runs in a deep valley and early in the morning at this time of year there’s a hanging cloud in the valley, slowly rising up.

Up here we’re well above the cloud but Woodstock is deep in the valley and I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. At one point I drove through a red traffic light that I couldn’t see was there

Having fuelled up, I went to pick up my passenger and we set off for the hospital at Fredericton, about 110 kilometres away.

Following the river valley on the Trans-Canada Highway, we were sometimes in a fogbank, sometimes above it. But by the time that we arrived in Fredericton the fog had cleared away.

My passenger alighted at the hospital and I went to Tim Horton’s for a coffee and bagel – my first visit to a “Timmy’s” for three years – and where the guy at the counter got my order completely wrong.

Next stop was at Bulk Barn. People from Crewe will remember the “Weigh and Save”, where produce was displayed in barrels and you bagged and weighed as much as you wanted of it. It was an excellent shop but Bulk Barn will knock it for 6.

And I had some really good luck there. They had the artificial rum and brandy essence that you can’t buy in France so I bought a few bottles. Now I can make my Christmas cake and Christmas pudding with the proper ingredients

Value Village was next. They don’t have charity shops in Canada as they do in the UK. They all club together and have just one outlet in a town and the price labels are colour-coded so that you know which organisation is which. I bought a couple of books and a couple of CDs to add to the collection and I would have bought more but like most charity shops these days, their prices are somewhat exaggerated.

My passenger wasn’t ready yet so I loitered around in a Sobey’s until she texted that she was ready so I went to pick her up.

We stopped half-way home for coffee and toast and then went back to Woodstock the pretty way where I dropped her at home and she gave me some vegetables for Rachel.

My next port of call was the Scotia Bank at Florenceville to make “certain arrangements” and then went on to the mill.

Just before I left Canada in 2019 I ordered a chip for Strider to curb his enthusiasm and improve the fuel consumption. Darren had fitted it when it finally arrived and I have to say that the fuel consumption has improved slightly and the racing spirit had evaporated somewhat, which is good news for me. Strider has an old-type 6-cylinger long-stroke engine and it’s not made for high revs in low gear. It’s much more comfortable using his torque to pull him along.

After much discussion we all decided on a take-away from the Chinese restaurant in Florenceville so I drove down there to pick it up. I’m not a big fan of Chinese, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and this was nothing special. But I’m going to have to like it because there’s enough for several days.

So now I’m off to bed. There’s nothing to do tomorrow so I’m going to have to find a shipper for this sunroof and book myself a hotel back in Montreal for when I’m on my way home. It’s only a short stay this time, nothing like the usual three months, so I need to organise myself so much better and so much quicker.

As if I could do something like that.

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Wednesday 18th September 2019 – HATS OFF …

… to Strider!

Here we are, sitting in a dingy room in a dingy motel in rue Sherbrooke Est. Old, tired, dusty, tatty and cheap. But that’s enough about me, let’s talk about the motel room. And you’ve guessed it. Old, tired, dusty, tatty and cheap.

In fact, in all honesty, you have to consider that it’s a motel in Montreal right by a metro station, with ample free parking and all conveniences (even a guitar shop, in which I’ve already made my presence felt) not a cock-stride away. And the fact that my three nights here are costing me less than $CAN 90:00 per night tax in, it’s a deal that I won’t find anywhere else in the city.

Even the local coppers won’t have too far to come to find me. They are in the building next door.

It’s the same landlady who was here last time I stayed. She didn’t remember me (which was a surprise) but I remembered her. The type who would have fought the Iroquois single-handedly out of this plot of land 400 years ago and she’s been here ever since.

Last night though was exciting. A reasonably early night (for a change) and a decent sleep, with no less than 4 dictaphone entries that I might not know anything about as yet.

Or maybe I do, because there is certainly one that is running around in my head and has been ever since I awoke. And I wonder if it’s on the machine. Basically, I was joined on my travels at one point by a person who has featured on my voyages on many occasions. And I’ll spare her blushes by not naming her because I have reason to believe that she reads these notes.

And you are going to ask me if I got the girl. And I shall say that after much perseverence and fighting off distraction, then I reckon. Not as intensely as I have done on some other occasions, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall, but nevertheless. And what wouldn’t I have given to have had another half-hour’s sleep in order to make sure that it was nailed on completely and thoroughly?

But that’s the trouble with these nocturnal rambles. They go off at tangents at all the wrong moments.

One theory that we were working on during this project years ago was whether there was a subconscious trigger somewhere that went off to protect you from harm. And there have been several nocturnal voyages, including a few just recently, where such a phenomenon might be identified.

This led us onto another project – that about the “sixth sense”. Intuition, second sight, call it what you will, it was a vital tool when you were struggling to stay alive in prehistorical times. Those who had it were the great survivors and they bred children who would have an even greater perception. Und so weiter.

It’s fallen out of use now but it’s still there and we worked on developing it – like walking around a room in the dark and thinking about what was where in our way. Or staring at people walking past and watching them suddenly turn around. All of that kind of thing. And, more importantly, trusting your intuition and your instincts.

Strangely enough, a while back I actually had this talk with the heroine of last night’s voyage. Do you rememb

So we had the school run despite the fact that I misplaced the key to the Golf, and then came back and picked up Strider.

Down to the depot to say my goodbyes, and also to change my hospital appointment. The list of tasks is building up rapidly and I still have things to do on and after when I should be having my blood transfusion.

So I’ve put it back another week. Zoe is worried that it might make me more ill than I already am, but ask me if I care.

By 10:04 I was fuelled up to the brim and joining the Trans-Canada Highway at Florenceville. And just before 15:00 my time (14:00 Quebec time) I was pulling into the Irving Truck Stop at Levis at the foot of the big bridge at Quebec.

454 kms non-stop in just under 5 hours. So hats off to Strider who performed excellently. There was well over a quarter of a tank of fuel left too and that is even better.

Fuelling him up, having a pit stop and finding a Subway for a sandwich – all of that took about an hour (never been in such a slow Subway) and then back on the highway.

294 kms non-stop and here I am. And what pleased me more than anything was that I actually recognised the streets of Montreal where I was supposed to be. And that’s not something that happens every day either.

Pizza Pizza has vegan pizzas as I explained last year, and the Metro supermarket next door produced some food stuff and spruce beer (at long last) so here I am and here I’m staying. For a few days at least.

Tomorrow I have the painful task of throwing away the rest of my stuff in my storage locker here. I’ll be a little richer in cash but a lot poorer in spirit. it really is the end of an era.

Tuesday 5th September 2017 – TIRED?

I’ll say!

I gave up at about 22:00 last night and fell straight asleep. And that was that until the alarm went off at 06:00 (or 06:30 in fact as Newfoundland is 30 minutes in advance). I remember nothing at all.

It’s not as if I had been doing anything either – there’s nothing that I can think of that had particularly worn me out.

Mind you, when I say that I remember nothing, that’s not entirely true. I do remember a couple of young girls who needed taking somewhere so I hd to organise them onto their bikes and make sure that they followed me closely. And anyone who knows anything about young girls will know that that is a pretty difficult task.
And later there I was on the top deck of a bus with a friend going up Middlewich Road past “the Rising Sun” and seeing an end-of-terrace house that I’d been hoping to buy but hadn’t, and thinking that it would make an ideal place from which to operate a taxi business. There were two other people on board the bus and we ended up talking about taxis. And as the bus took us down Coppice Road the guy I was with was explaining that there aren’t many taxis in the centre of town but each suburb and little village seemed to have its own little taxi business. One of the guys came over to us and in an intimate fashion started to speak to us about his friend who was rather simple and needed a great deal of guidance.

So having missed a good bit of the morning already, I started the porridge and had a shower. Put things in their proper order.

And when I came out of the shower the internet was down so that made me rather miserable.

Not only that, the place was deserted. No-one about, no-one in the car park, no-one in the restaurant etc. Just like the Marie Celeste in fact.

So I breakfasted off my own stocks of porridge (which as usual took ages to cook) and some coffee that I “liberated” from the public area (they had only given me one serving).

And pushed on with the blog entry anyway – that’ll teach me to have an early night.

By 10:30, all done and dusted, I hit the trail west.

First stop was on the Trans-Canada Highway on a stretch of road overlooking Clarenville.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we stayed there in 2010 where I arrived in the dark and then had a flat tyre to deal with, so we didn’t take much in the way of photos.

But you can see just how beautiful the place is, and there’s even a ship in port, although my fleet database insists that the port is empty.

I’ve been down this road before, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall and even wrote two pages about it – this one and this one – so I shan’t bore you with too many photos.

But there’s one here where I turned off the Trans-Canada Highway.

That’s Gander Lake down there and it is for the lake that the town of Gander is so named.

This was where I planned to have my lunch stop (it was that time already) but before I could stop and eat, I had important things to do.

You’ll notice up there on the crest the flags of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, the USA and the fourth one, representing the town of Gander.

Up there is the site of the worst ever air disaster to take place on Canadian soil, and dates from 12th December 1985.

A DC8 flying from Cairo to Kentucky stalled just after takeoff from the airport at Gander just across the main road and crashed to earth, killing all 256 people on board.

The 248 passengers were almost all members of the American 101st Airborne Division and were returning to base after having undergone a six-month tour of duty as part of the multi-national peacekeepers in Sinai.

They had stopped for fuel in Cologne and again in Gander, but despite the miserable weather and the time of year, the aeroplane was not de-iced on take-off.

Furthermore, its reported laden weight had been considerably under-declared.

Even today, the scar where the aeroplane came down is clearly visible and the intense heat of the fire (the plane was carrying a full load of fuel) means that little will grow in the area today.

And although the generally-accepted cause of the accident is the icing and overloading issue, there are as many controversial conspiracy theories as you like about the accident.

As for me, I left the site of the accident and went down to the lake in the gorgeous sunshine to read my book and eat my butties.

And to fight off a dog that had taken a fancy to my food – there was quite a crowd of people down here today.

But then again, why not? It really was pleasant and I found it difficult to heave myself out of my seat and hit the road.

And here’s a thing!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I came by here 2010 I had a fierce argument with the people here about their Lockheed Hudson.

Their labelling stated quite clearly that Donald Bennett flew it from Gander to Aldergrove in Northern ireland – the first aeroplane to complete the “Atlantic Ferry”.

In his autobiography Pathfinder Bennett makes it perfectly clear that he didn’t fly the aeroplane but was in fact the navigator.

And also that his aeroplane wasn’t the first to arrive either.

And while the Museum is still vacillating over the “first” bit – they have in fact amended the plaque to show that he “captained” the plane.

So some progress is being made.

But as for the Karrier Bantam that was here, that has, unfortunately, bitten the dust. “Too bad to keep”, so I was told.

And they had even been offered another one – in even worse condition apparently – and turned that down!

I despair.

Having seen what has been “preserved” in Canada, and just how they preserve it, the Bantam should have been child’s play.

Next stop was Lewisporte up on the coast, and I came to yet another shuddering halt as I arrived on the edge of town.

The Lewisporte branch of the Newfoundland Railway was probably the most profitable, with the town being on of the island’s most major ports, and here is a collection of artefacts too remind us of its history.

At least locomotive 902 – one of the GM NF110 locomotives, is in marginally better condition here

I mentioned that Lewisporte was one of the busiest coastal ports on the island. In the old days, almost every ship destined for Labrador sailed from here.

That slowed down as the road network improved and came to a shuddering halt when the Sir Robert Bond was laid up once the road over the Mealy Mountains was opened in 2010

Today, only the Astron, a small freighter, leaves Lewisporte for the north, calling at Black Tickle and ports north of the Hamilton Inlet, and she won’t take passengers.

But in something of a forlorn hope I presented myself at the port offices to enquire about anything that might be going out, but as I suspected, I was disappointed.

But I was asked if I wanted to buy a car ferry of my own.

She was the Capt Earl W Winsor, built in 1972 and sailed for over 20 years as Prince Edward from Pictou to Prince Edward Island until the Confederation Bridge was built.

Then she came here, acquired her current name from a local politician, and sailed for nearly 20 years on the service to Fogo Island.

And when you think that she cost a mere $300,000 when the Newfoundland and Labrador Government had budgeted $12,000,000, that has to be the deal of the Century.

We discussed Apollo too. Everyone agrees that she is well past her sell-by date, but they reckoned that the Government has no money to replace her.

“There’s plenty of money when it comes to St John’s or Muskrat Falls” I interjected, to which they all concurred wholeheartedly.

On my way out of the port, I was distracted by these.

It’s 30 years or so since the railway on Newfoundland was abandoned but here on the docks you can still see rails embedded in the surface of the tarmac.

You can tell that it’s a narrow-gauge line too – just 3″6″. And that was one of the reasons for the downfall of the railway.

While it’s cheaper to construct and better in tight curves that you find on the mountain sections, it means that everything has to be trans-shipped at North Sydney or Channel-Port-aux-Basques, and that was just too much.

So now I’m off to my motel for tonight, the Westwood Inn at Grand falls. And it took some finding too.

“Come off at Exit 17 and it’s there” they said. And so I did. And after driving around for about 20 minutes and getting back onto the Trans-Canada Highway, I saw it way across the other side and had to do a naughty “U” turn to arrive.

It’s the most expensive place where I’ve stayed, although you wouldn’t think so. Holes in the bath carpet, internet that only works when it feels like it and a kettle that took three hours and still hadn’t boiled

And if I ever have a child I shall call it “Happy” after the receptionist, because I have never yet met anyone who couldn’t care less about her job, her establishment and her customers.

If I had been in charge, she would have been long down the road because her bad attitude is the kind that discourages anyone from coming to stay here again once they’ve had the pleasure of her company.

Monday 4th September 2017 – I’M NOT QUITE SURE …

… 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!

Friday 23rd September 2016 – I WAS OFF …

…so early and in such a rush this morning that I forgot to take a photo of my motel at Caraquet last night. I’d had a communication during the late evening to say that the lorry had been fixed and the tractor pull was on. It’s only about 350 kilometres from here to Centreville but it’s over some dreadful roads through the mountain and they were planning to leave at 15:30 so there was no time to hang about.

Not only that, the weather was dreadful. It was freezing cold and the gorgeous sunny day that we had had yesterday was now miserable, grey and wet with this freezing rain that was getting in everywhere. I wasn’t going to enjoy this drive one little bit.

But stil, the sooner we start, the sooner we finish and I hit the streets. Leaving behind me my breakfast cereal as I was to discover later. There’s always something that I leave behind me, isn’t there?

The drive as far a Bathurst was quite uneventful, apart from the dreadful weather, that is, and I found a cheap Ultramar service station where I could fuel up Strider. Shortly afterwards I found a huge Atlantic Superstore where I could stop to lay in supplies for the next few days, and where fuel was even cheaper that at the Ultramar – but then, that kind of thing always happens, doesn’t it?

The road from Bathurst over to the Saint John valley goes right into the mountains and through the Mount Carleton National Park and some of the roads through there that we will have to take are quite dreadful.

It’s all up and down, through the rainstorms and the low hanging clouds and with a good length of dirt road that I remember driving on back in winter 2003 through the pitch black and the snow … "no you didn’t – you came a different way" – ed

Further into the mountains and the weather hadn’t improved any. In fact I was beginning to wonder if we would be having snow any time soon – that was what it was looking like to me.

In fact I was starting to become rather worried. If the weather doesn’t improve any, we can forget all about tractor pulling and I will have had this long and exhausting drive for nothing. And after a good spell on the dirt road, Strider was looking disgraceful. He’ll be needing a wash.

Hitting the Saint John valley I drove along the old route of the Trans Canada Highway for a while and found a place to park for lunch right by the river, at the back of the seasonal camp site. And having demolished my butty I was back on the road again for Centreville, completely forgetting that I needed to go to the bank at Florenceville for some US money. I shall just have to do without, I suppose.

We went back home and sorted out the tractor and Amber hopped into the driving seat to move it around.

It’s the first time that she’s actually been behind the steering wheel under power so Darren kept her under close supervision. After all, it’s a mere 3,500 horsepower so I was told, and it’s not every young girl of Amber’s age who will have the opportunity, never mind the confidence, to handle that kind of power.

She was doing really well too. She wasn’t just along for the ride

Eventually we set off and had the usual histrionics at the USA border. There’s an extremely long and complicated (and expensive) procedure to be undergone and as a result no-one has really bothered with it in the past. But a Canadian tractor-puller took his vehicle across into the USA – and sold it. And these things are worth hundreds of thousands – the engine is worth $80,000 on its own. And because the border crossing wasn’t registered he escaped paying the import duty and the sales tax.

As a result, the people at the border post had their derrieres very soundly kicked by Head Office and so now everything is done by the letter of the law. And it takes ages to do.

But we were soon back on the road and headed off down towards Millinocket, stopping off for diesel and also for some food. And as we headed south, the clouds blew away. By the time we arrived, the skies were clear and you could see millions of stars.

It was also freezing cold.

What might have been a major problem was that the raceway was all chained up and padlocked – there was no way in. But regular readers of this rubbish will remember from several events that have occurred in the past that a chain and padlock isn’t going to keep me out for long. Five minutes and we were inside, and no-one would ever guess how we managed it.

Darren set a methanol fire – about two inches of methanol in an old saucepan and he tossed a lighted rag into it. The liquid doesn’t burn – just the gases – and the evaporation is slow enough that it lasted for about an hour or so. We were crowded around it to try to keep warm and that wasn’t easy. After a while I could smell something burning, and I was shocked to realise that it was me! I had to move my chair back into the cold.

By now I was pretty tired and so I sloped off to bed. Darren is having the front seats of the lorry, Amber the rear and so I’m having the mattress in the trailer.

I’m glad that we are only staying for the one night.

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.

You’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.

. 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 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.

It’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.

Deer 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.

As 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.

-3

Tuesday 22nd September 2015 – HERE IN THE NICE AND QUIET …

… isolation of my litle spec on the edge of the marshes I was having the best night’s sleep that I had had for quite some time.

However, as I have said before, one of the things that you need to do when you arrive somewhere to stay for the night in North America is to check the immediate area for railway lines, and I forgot to do that yesterday, didn’t I?

This isn’t the train that woke me up of course, but it is one that is very much like it, shuddering, clanking and blowing just about 100 yards away from my quiet little spec

When I did finally heave myself out of my stinking pit this morning, this is the beautiful view that greeted me. I’m shrouded in a fog rolling in off the head of the Bay of Fundy, something that many Ancient Mariners would tell you all about.

I’m shrouded in condensation too inside the truck cap – or at least, the truck cap is. I’m going to have to do something about this in the long term because as the weather cools down even more, the condensation will become worse and worse

I’ve had a little play around inside the back of Strider too and I’ve made piles of extra room. I can actually move around in there now, as well as unfold my chair and sit down. What with that and my little fold-up table, I’m really comfortable in there now. Next trick is going to be a solar panel on the roof and a battery inside so that I can run some lights in there and a little inverter to power a couple of things like my slow cooker.

I still have a couple of plans about the bed too and I shall put them into practice given a nice afternoon and a quiet spot in which to work.

That’s Strider way down there, in the spot where I parked for the night. And beyond it is the head of the Bay of Fundy. I’m actually standing on the ramparts of Fort Beausejour and you can see why the French chose this site for the building of their fort.

We’re on the southern shore of the narrowest part of the isthmus of Chignecto, on the edge of the Tantramar Marshes – and you may remember if you were with us on our voyage in October 2010 we went to Fort Gaspereaux, on the northern shore of the isthmus.

Fort Beausejour was built in 1750 under the orders of the French Governor the Marquis de la Jonquière, and with these two forts, the French could bottle up the isthmus.

Nothing could pass by here without the French knowing about it and so quite naturally they became prime targets for the British Army during the mid-18th Century. The British under Robert Monckton laid seige to Fort Beausejour in June 1755 and it fell after 13 days. Fort Gaspereaux fell a couple of days later and that was the end of French rule in Acadia.

The British had built a fort – Fort Lawrence – in Nova Scotia across the marshes from Fort Beausejour in order to put pressure on the French fort.

The fort didn’t last very long – the British preferred to occupy Fort Beausejour once they had captured it – and so there is nothing left of Fort Lawrence. But the site is well-known in the area and so I went for a wander over there for a look. And while there is nothing of the fort left to see, there’s a splendid view across the marshes to Fort Beausejour

But that’s not the best view of Fort Beausejour by any means. From the offices of the Nova Scotia Tourist Board’s information office, the view of the fort is even more spectacular. You can see its five-star pointed design and it earthen walls quite clearly from here with a good telephoto lens.

In fact, such is the dominance of the site where I am standing over the surrounding area that I’m surprised that the British hadn’t occupied and fortified this point instead. I know that this is the point that I would have chosen.

From up here on this eminence, there’s another good view – this time of an object that is just as spectacular as the fort, even though it’s much less well-known.

Right in the centre of the image, surrounded by cows, is the dock that was intended to the the entrance to the Chignecto Ship Railway and had this been built, it would have been a really impressive structure.

As I said, this is the narrowest part of the isthmus and if ships could find a way across it, they would save hundred of miles and several days, as well as avoid many of the risks of shipwreck, as they sailed between the Gulf of St Lawrence and the eastern seaboard of North America.

The plan was for the ships to sail into the dock, to be raised up by a hydraulic ramp and loaded onto railway wagons, and then transported by train across the isthmus to the other side – to the dock near Tidnish that we visited in October 2010.

Unfortunately the works on the southern side of the isthmus are on private property and not able to be visited, but what we are looking at here are the earthworks that would have carried the track bed of the railway, which were completed for several miles.

Why this all went wrong was that the same technology that enabled the construction of the engineering works of the railway also enabled shipbuilders to build bigger and bigger ships – and so the railway quickly became clear that the railway would be inadequate for the task, and funds could not be raised to rebuild it to larger dimensions.

After lunch I set off down the Trans-Canada Highway through the mountains towards Antigonish. Hannah is at St F-X University there and I hadn’t seen much of her while I’ve been over here so I went to visst her.

We went out for a meal and a chat for a couple of hours, and then I hit the road again. There’s a big Irvings truck stop down at the Canso Strait and while I’m not a big fan of truck stops these days for sleeping purposes, it’s the nest place that I can think of to settle down for the night.

At least all of the facilities are there.

Tuesday 15th September – I WAS RIGHT …

… yesterday when I said that this first month of my stay in North America had been one of 30 disappointments. We’ve had another issue raise its ugly head today too.

There’s only one company in Canada that insures vehicles for people with non-Canada driving licences (and they make people suffer financially for that of course) but it seems that since April this year they have ceased that particular line of business. And so the motor insurance for Strider has been rejected, leaving me without insurance cover.

However, the company has said that cover can remain on a temporary basis while I apply of a driving licence in Canada and so that’s what I’ll do. Apply for a Canadian driving licence.

Of course.

How long it might take, and whether it might be granted is of course another thing completely, and then there will always be an appeal process if it’s refused. But by that time of course I’ll be back home in France and it won’t be an issue. And next year is, of course, next year.

And so tomorrow, I’ll get on the case.

But if you think logically about it, it’s all a nonsense. There is without any doubt at all at least one company that insures drivers with foreign driving licences. If there wasn’t a single one, then how would car hire work? I’ve hired dozens of cars in North America and each hire has been with my French driving licence. And I still can do so (because I’ve checked). You aren’t going to tell me that a car hire company is going to let its customers drive around in uninsured vehicles, are you?

And it’s true (or it was true – at least in the UK) that when I worked in the motor insurance business, a company or a person could insure himself against liability. But he had to deposit a bond of £50,000 (and that was in 1972 – I shudder to think what that figure would be today) per vehicle and that money is tied up. I can’t see a hire company going through all of that, having the money tied up, no tax relief, no interest payments and all of this.

No – there is a company somewhere that specialises in this business and I have to find it. I’ve always said that where there’s a will, there are relatives. It’s just one more problem to solve. Now, how do you go about setting up a car hire business in Canada?

But apart from that for the moment, I slept the sleep of the dead last night. I crashed out at 20:28 and that was that until I had to go and ride the porcelain horse. An early(-ish) start and I did a pile of work and then a copious breakfast. I really can’t believe all of this for just $59:40 (including tax).

But while I was eating my breakfast I was watching TV (something that I rarely do of course) and the disclaimers for the adverts (which are often longer than the ads themselves) are quite often funnier than any comedy programme you would care to name. This morning we had a “do not take {this product} if you are allergic to any of its ingredients”. And you can’t make that up, can you?

Back on the road Walmart came up trumps with the big tent pegs that I’m going to need if I use this tarpaulin oversheet idea for the tent, and it also produced a couple of gas canisters for my cooker (they are becoming harder and harder to find as everyone changes over to the bigger sort) and a set of stubby spanners, which cost just $4:49. Ideal for getting into tight corners. But Mardens couldn’t produce a 19mm ring spanner at any cost. Still, I have an open-ended one and a socket and I hope that that will do me if I need anything.

At the border, I was whacked for import duty on the truck cap. $90:00 or something like that, but I don’t suppose that this is excessive really. It’s worked out as 5% of the value (in Canadian dollars), including, would you believe, the sales tax that I had to pay in the USA. That’s a bit near the knuckle.

I had a race down the Trans-Canada Highway with a lorry – simply because I didn’t recognise his number plate and I wanted to see where he came from.

As it happens, he comes from Georgia (that’s Georgia USA, not the former Soviet republic) and so he was a long way away from home. It seems that the Maritime Provinces are becoming more and more popular.

Af Fredericton I picked up my parking pass for the next three days (foreign visitors can park free in the town centre for three days if they apply to the tourist office for a pass), picked up my media passes for the festival and went to have a chat with the people at Service New Brunswick who gave me a couple of useful tips.

At Value Village, it’s Pensioners Day and I profited to the maximum with a pile of books, a couple of CDs and also (at long last) the Canadian cable that I need for my laptop power pack (which saves having to hump around a pile of adapters. Walmart and Home Depot came up with nothing exciting and so I went for my traditional falafel platter in the Lebanese restaurant and then came back here – “here” being the Mactaquac Provincial Park campsite where I stay when I’m here.

But we did have a very interesting encounter this afternoon. You may remember yesterday that I was talking about big old British single-cylinder motorcycles. Anyway, wandering down the street in Fredericton I noticed a young guy sitting on, of all things, a Triumph T100. 1971 it was, and it looked it too. In original, unrestored condition looking every day as old as it was. We were chatting for hours about old British bikes and of course, AJS and Matchless motorcycles figured heavily. And it turns out that he has a friend who has a fetish about the big AJS and Matchless singles and who, at the last count, has 14 of them, plus numerous crates of bits and pieces. And so he’s taken my e-mail address and says that he’ll pass it over to this guy.

And so that was that. I buried myself in my sleeping bag ready for bed.

Now who is going to come along and spoil my day tomorrow?

Monday 6th October 2014 – IT’S A GOOD JOB …

… that I wasn’t planning on going over to the Charlevoix. I pulled into Riviere-du-Loup just in time to see the ferry to St Simeon steaming out of the harbour.

Mind you it would have been nice to have been on it, but frankly I hadn’t given the matter any thought at all.

And yes, I’m now back on the road having a leisurely drive back to the airport at Montreal. I can’t believe that my time in North America is drawing to a close already.

I was up early and that gave me an opportunity to say goodbye to everyone here. I’ve been here in Centreville for over a week and that’s not like me at all. Normally, there are places to go, things to do and people to see, but I seem to have gone to ground this year.

I had some recording work to do for Rachel and then went up to the tyre depot to say goodbye to everyone there. And then I hit the road.

The Trans-Canada Highway took me up to the mountains where I stopped for lunch (and a little doze in the sunlight too if I were honest) and then down to the shores of the St Lawrence. At Riviere du Loup, I bought a new storage box to replace the mangy cardboard ones that I’ve had since 2011 and also a $100 telephone recharge. That’ll keep my number active for 12 months by which time I’ll (hopefully) be back. It was extraordinarily difficult to have the phone accept the payment and in the end I had to telephone customer services. That’s not like me, but I suspect that the touch screen in the telephone is on its way out.

I drove along the autoroute following the southern shore of the St Lawrence, but leaving at Riviere-Ouelle for a tofu ice cream (we’ve talked about these before) and then back on the highway. As it grew dark I came to a rest area and this will do me for the night. Rachel had given me the rest of the curry and so that did me nicely for tea, and then I watched a film before having an early night – my last-but-one in North America for the moment.

-1

Saturday 27th September 2014 – BACK IN NEW BRUNSWICK

Last night I found a decent place to sleep, at an Irving truck at Grand Falls. And this was a comfortable spec as well. Tucked away around the back of the building there out of the way. No-one bothered me at all and I didn’t feel a thing. But it was a disturbed night for some reason – I was tossing and turning for a bit and I don’t know why.

And I was on my travels as well during the night too. In the town where I was living was a beautiful bake shop that made some of the most beautiful apple cakes that I had ever tasted. And then a while later I was on my way down to the south of France and I stopped at another bake shop down there to see whether or not they had any apple cakes. And who should be working behind the counter of this bake shop but the young girl from the other place. So we had quite a lengthy chat and I told her that this was nothing because when I was down in the South West of France before, I had bumped into a woman that I knew from my days in Brussels. We discussed about how the world was getting smaller and you can’t go anywhere without meeting anyone whom you know.

So having dealt with those issues, I fuelled up (I believe that if I’m taking advantage of someone’s services I should express my gratitude accordingly) and headed southwards on the Trans-Canada Highway.

Down at Centreville I spent a pleasant morning helping Darren in the garage changing some universal joints on the propshaft of a Dodge Ram pickup and the spark plugs in a Chrysler 200. And if you want to know the meaning of the word “difficult”, try changing the spark plugs on a Chrysler 200.

The physical act of changing them is as straightforward as on any other V6 engine, but it’s finding them that’s the problem. There’s one of these huge pancake air filters on top of the engine and then there’s a huge plastic cowling all over the top of the engine and that’s held on by four or five bolts and brackets that are in something of an inaccessiible position. And I can’t think of any purpose for this cowling except to prevent the average d-i-y motorist from carrying out his own servicing.

This afternoon we had a pleaant day outside in the sunshine doing an enormous amount of tidying up and I installed a couple of solar panels and LED lights over the fire pit at the end of the driveway.

Yes, the weather has been wonderful today and apparently it’s going to be just as good tomorrow. I hope so, because the weather will start closing in soon for winter and we should make the most of the few summer days that are left.

Saturday 20th September 2014 – IN WHICH OUR HERO FINDS HIMSELF STRANDED

I had a really good night’s sleep last night which was quite a surprise seeing as I was only about 100 or so metres from the Trans Canada Highway.

And I was on my travels too last night. I was with the two lads with whom I used to play in a rock group in the 1970s, and I still had their gear from the 70s. I had a lengthy chat with Dave the drummer. He had forgotten about his Premier kit and had bought something rather lesser, and was still playing the drums today. Meantime I’d stopped for a coffee. there was an automatic machine that took two dollars, so I put in my two-dollar piece but nothing happened. Damm! Anyway, I became distracted and forgot, so a little later I put in another 2 dollars, and still nothing happened but about 6 2-dollar pieces fell out. So I stayed by the machine and said nothing to those people who were putting their cash into the machine, so they lost it. Every now and again I’d put 2 dollars in and all the cash that others had put in would drop out for me to collect.

And on that note I woke up. Nice and early which is just as well as I had plenty to do. But first, I had to take full advantage of the showers there at this camp site place. It’s why I had stopped here and why I’m not dossing on a car park tonight. It’s been several days since I’ve had a really good wash.

This is my spec at the camp site, the one on the right underneath the trees. Quite comfortable it was too.

I’d done an inventory of the foodstuffs last night and there were no tins of beans left so I had to wander off to the big supermarket at Corner Brook to stock up. And then off up the Trans Canada Highway.

I fuelled up at Deer Lake, as well as putting 20 litres of fuel in the can – I’ll probably need that around Labrador, and then headed off up the Viking Trail.

The first 20 miles or so out of Deer Lake was very monotonous and boring, with nothing of any note, but all of a sudden I came over a rise in the ground and there was the most stunning view down into the valley

I’m about to enter the Gros Morne National Park which is one of the most beautiful parts of Newfoundland – at least, of the parts that are easily accessible.

Entry to the park is free if one doesn’t use the facilities, which I don’t intend to do. But the place certainly was beautiful and I would have taken some marvellous photos had the weather been better. Although it’s not raining, the skies are heavily overcast and there is a very strong wind blowing up the valley

Then again, I don’t really have too much time for sightseeing as I have plenty of ground to cover today and not a lot of time to do it.

By the time I found the seaside the strong wind had developed into a full-blown storm as you can see from the sea here. It’s a real green sea out there, and that is all nothing more than about 100 metres offshore.

From there on, the wind worsened and on one occasion I was blown from my feet as I left the car to take a photo. I’ve never ever been in a wind that was quite like this.

I arrived at the dockside at St Barbe at just after 19:30 after my marathon drive up here in some of the wildest weather that I’ve ever experienced, to find that all of today’s sailings have all been cancelled due to the weather. There’s a queue as long as your arm for the sailings tomorrow. If there are any, that is, because the forecast doesn’t look all that good.

I’ve found a little spec on the docks and I’ll be staying here until further notice.

-1

Monday 15th September 2014 – ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Next morning I troll off early towards Antigonish. It’s a long way away and I have plenty to do en route.

It’s quite an uneventful drive at least as far as Fredericton where I stop to pick up my purchase from Saturday. And in due course I’ll post a photo of it and tell you all about it.

Back on the road south-eastwards and at a certain moment a few miles south of Fredericton, I’m surprised by three tanks that drive over a bridge across the Trans-Canada Highway. And I don’t mean water tanks or that kind of thing, but proper great big self-propelled armoured machines with long guns. I wonder what’s up with them.

Just gone past me is a campaign bus for one of the candidates in the forthcoming elections and if you look very carefully on the nearside you might see something black flapping in the wind. It seems that someone has put out one of his windows, and the driver has covered it over with a black plastic bin liner to keep out the rain, but that’s burst now due to the air pressure as he’s been driving along.

And as we approach Moncton it seems to be brightening up now. We have blue skies and there might even be some sun about to make its appearance. It makes a change from the grey miserable misty morning that we had.

I struck gold in Princess Autos. They are having a sale and I bought an 25-inch power bar for $9:99, a set of 22 spanners, 11 metric and 11 AF, for $12:00, and a tyre pressure gauge for $0:99. An absolute bargain, that all was.

The only downside of this was that they didn’t have a cheap set of sockets to go with the power bar. But these were unbelievable prices.

And at the Salvation Army Thrift Store down the road they gave me a senior citizen’s discount on the CD that I bought. I’m not sure whether to be pleased of humiliated.

And on the Trans-Canada Highway, which is effectively a motorway with dual carriageways, just outside Moncton there’s a railway level crossing. And there’s another one too just a mile or so further on, by the Dieppe and airport turn-off. This isn’t something that you see every day on a motorway. We would have endless amounts of fun with a railway level crossing on the M25 in the UK.

Bob Dylan once sang “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”, and that’s certainly true around here, isn’t it?

I’m at my lunch stop and you can tell that we are at the border between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia because tthere’s a pile of wind turbines down there taking full advantage of this screaming wind.

Where I am is actually in New Brunswick and there’s not a wind turbine in sight. I know that I have a “thing” in favour of wind turbines, owning four myself, but this lack of wind turbines in New Brunswick is just plain absurd.

Where I am is actually at Fort Beausejour and we’ve been here before, haven’t we?

It was freezing cold then in the middle of winter so I didn’t stay there long. And I didn’t stay here long today either as I was in quite a rush – just long enough to take a couple of photos and eat my butties. I’ll have to come back here yet again.

I made it to Antigonish right to the minute and Hannah was bang on time too. We went for a meal and a really good chat and she told me all about her first couple of weeks at University. She’s the first of our family to go to university straight from school by the way, and she’s at St Francis-Xavier University, the best University in Canada if not the English-speaking world. I don’t know about anyone else but I’m intensely proud of her.

The downside of this is that I have left it far too late to find a spec for the night and I’ve ended up in a wickedly-overpriced motel. Still, you can’t have everything.

Sunday 14th September 2014 – BACK IN CENTREVILLE

Last night, I had one of the best nights sleeps that I had ever had. Flat-out almost from the moment that I pulled up at the truckstop at Kings Landing and I didn’t feel a thing, except for the torrential rainstorm that hit us at about 04:00 or something like that.

And I have to say that I needed that sleep because I was dead to the world.

I bOught a coffee in the truckstop and then moved on along the highway a good few miles to warm up the car as it was quite cold. Then I stopped to type up my notes.

On the way back to Rachel’s, I came over the brow of a hill to see Mars Hill swathed in a misty haze way in the distance and it was looking quite spectacular.

You can’t see the wind turbines in this haze and you can’t see my property, but it’s to the extreme right og the hill on the downward slope.

Meanwhile, back at Taylor Towers, it seems that out little jaunt into the USA has been cancelled. There’s been a bereavement in the family and of course that takes full priority. Rachel and I thus spent a very pleasant and fruitful few hours tidying up the house and sorting out a huge pile of rubbish which we burnt outside in the fire pit. Clearly Neitzsche, who once very famously said that "out of chaos comes order" never met anyone from our family.

When the family returned from paying their respects, Darren and I moved a huge pile of stuff from outside and stashed it away ready for the winter. It’s not going to be long before it’s here.

Friday 23rd September 2011 – I DON’T REMEMBER …

… switching off the car engine last night. I crashed out completely almost as soon as I pulled up on this service area at exit 253 on the Trans Canada Highway, just up the road from King’s Landing.

It was cold when I woke up, with a light drizzle coming down. But a cup of coffee soon warmed me up and I carried on northwards towards Rachel’s to say goodbye.

There’s an old abandoned railway line that runs from Woodstock to St Andrews, and these railway wagons over there might give me a clue as to where the tracks might have been – it’s not easy trying to trace abandoned railway lines in Canada, unlike in the UK where every last metre has been recorded.

The wagons here are for sale so that’s interesting, but I wonder if the railway line is included in the deal.

My road round to Rachel’s took me past the Presque Isle stream. We saw that a few days ago at the other end of Centreville near the USA border, and here is where it flows into the Saint John River just a couple of miles below the town of Florenceville.

It’s quite a surprise not to see an kind of settlement around the confluence of a couple of rivers.

After all of the goodbyes and so on, I left Centreville at 21:30 to break the back of the journey to Montreal, but I didn’t make much ground. The nearer I came to Edmundston, the more my eyes started to close, and when I reached the big Irvings truckstop on the Quebec border I called it a night.

Thursday 22nd September 2011 – I HAVE A MEETING …

… with someone in Fredericton this afternoon so I need to have a drive down there this morning and I can’t hang about to take photos along the road.

It doesn’t stop me observing things though, and I’ve just seen a lorry heading north along the Trans Canada Highway with some freight containers with the word “TROPICAL” written on them. And that reminds me – when I was in Saint John the other day I saw a ship in the harbour there unloading a pile of “TROPICAL” containers. Maybe they are the same.

Having had my meeting, I can go for a good wander around the city and see the bits of the city that I haven’t managed to see so far.

And there are plenty of things to see here. It must have been a wealthy place in the past.

This is St Paul’s United Church, and that sounds too much like a church for the local football club if you ask me. However it refers to the 1925 merger between the Methodist, Congregational and Presbyterian congregations who now all worship here.

The building itself dates from 1886 and has one of the most impressive spires that I have ever seen.

According to the sign at the side of this property, this is the York House Parking, so one assumes that this building is York House.

There is a plaque telling us that it was formerly the site of the New Brunswick Baptist Seminary from 1836 to 1872, the first Institute of Higher Education to admit males and females on an equal footing.

And if a beautiful building like this is so anonymous and the only plaque relates to a previous building, then that previous building must really have been something.

I hadn’t managed to take a decent photo of the Governor’s Palace in Fredericton when I’d been here before, and as I went past it this evening it was all floodlit and looked absolutely splendid, so this was clearly the moment.

It was built in 1823 for the Governor of new Brunswick and after 1893 became the headquarters of the New Brunswick Mounties

From here I headed up the Trans Canada Highway and made it as far as Kings Landing when I was obliged to pull over for a kip.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Category Archives: trans canada highway

Wednesday 12th October 2022 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

Wednesday 18th September 2019 – HATS OFF …

Tuesday 5th September 2017 – TIRED?

Monday 4th September 2017 – I’M NOT QUITE SURE …

Friday 23rd September 2016 – I WAS OFF …

Thursday 24th September 2015 – I MUST BE GETTING OLD

Tuesday 22nd September 2015 – HERE IN THE NICE AND QUIET …

Tuesday 15th September – I WAS RIGHT …

Monday 6th October 2014 – IT’S A GOOD JOB …

Saturday 27th September 2014 – BACK IN NEW BRUNSWICK

Saturday 20th September 2014 – IN WHICH OUR HERO FINDS HIMSELF STRANDED

Monday 15th September 2014 – ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Sunday 14th September 2014 – BACK IN CENTREVILLE

Friday 23rd September 2011 – I DON’T REMEMBER …

Thursday 22nd September 2011 – I HAVE A MEETING …

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