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Monday 14th September 2015 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT

No sooner had I settled down than we had a rainstorm. And while it might not have been as intense as the other night, a rainstorm it most certainly was. And it went on and on and on until I never thought that it would end. Certainly, for four hours it kept it up because I remember looking at the time when I went out in the middle of the night to check that the stream right by my tent wasn’t going to burst its banks and sweep me away.

And that’s a shame too because for once I was comfortable in here. Now that I’ve rearranged the inside of Strider I can actually reach the bed and I pinched the mattress off it and that made quite a difference. And I must have dozed off during the proceedings because I was on my travels again. We needed to obtain some information from a certain guy and the best way to do this was to find someone to impersonate his secretary. She was a small blond who did her hair in a special way with a long pony tail, so we found a girl who resembled her from a distance and who, with a hairpiece, could pass close enough to fool the security cameras. So when this other girl went to lunch we infiltrated our girl into the building, but while she was in the ladies room checking her hair, the real secretary came in and was astonished to see her doppelganger. Our girl solved the problem by knocking the real secretary into next week with a frying pan and that was that.
But later, I was on the move again in my old van (it might even have been Bill Badger, the Austin A60 van that I had for years) with, of all people, my brother. He needed coal and there was just one place to go in Crewe for bagged coal, so off we went. When we arrived there, I was absolutely whacked and so I sent him in while I had a sleep, but anyway he came out to say that there was no coal (I’d heard this conversation anyway). I asked him if he’d asked if there was anywhere else where he could get it but he said that he hadn’t. But he knew where we could go, so I told him that I wasn’t going to mess up my van by putting loose coal into it. He’d also needed to post a letter (price £0:09) but they only had a stamp for £0:08 in there so the sales lady there sold him that stamp and told him to go to the post office and tell them that he’ll post anther letter with a stamp for £0:01 in it, and the’ll accept that. Such weird things as that happen when I’m on a nocturnal ramble, but even in that kind of state I knew enough that it seemed simpler to me to simply stick the stamp for £0:01 on the outside of the letter with the stamp for £0:08 and save the discussion.

And so while you admire the very basic, very primitive and very very free camp site on the outskirts of Greenville, I woke up to an inch of water inside the tent in the bottom corner, which was rather disconcerting but not surprising given the amount of rain that we had had during the night.

Water will always leak in around the zip and so you always pitch your tent with the entrance pointing downhill and you sleep in the uphill bit and even if it does rain in a little you can stay relatively dry. But I’ll go to Walmart, buy some more of these super-duper heavy duty tent pegs that I bought the other day, and stick the big tarpaulin that Rachel gave me over the top next time that the weather looks threatening.

A quick coffee and I was off down the road into Greenville

Parked up here in the town centre, I had a very nice piece of entertainment.

It had been seaplane fly-in weekend at the weekend here on Moosehead Lake, and there were still two left tied up at the quayside. And as I left Strider in order to admire the view, one of them started up, left his berth, and came right across to where I was standing, right by the paddle-steamer Kathadin, which you all saw in 2013 when I was here because, in the famous words of the legendary Jimmy Ruffin, “I’ve passed this way before”.

And so he (the seaplane, not Jimmy Ruffin) did a few laps of the bay in order to warm up his engine to operating speed, and then shot off down the lake.

After a run of about a quarter of a mile he heaved himself into the air and off he went.

And off I went too, to see about this log cabin.

And I was disappointed too. It seems that prices have increased considerably since I was here and what I want has priced itself out of the market. Not only that, many of the items that were included in the price back then are now optional extras and so what looked two years ago like $20,000 on the site all in and delivered is going to end up being twice that, and twice as much work too.

In fact, I can go as far as to say that my journey for the first month of my stay in North America this year has been a period of 30 disappointments. “But smile!” they say. “Things could be worse!” And so I”m smiling – and you know what that means.

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

Over the road was a hardware store and they are agents for log cabins. Nothing like as de-luxe as what was available back where I’d just been, but then neither was the price, and this looks much more “like it” from that point of view. I’m going to have to give this some further consideration.

Ably assisted by The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav, I left Greenville by the main highway that goes south-east to Millinocket and you can see what a beautiful road this highway is. Very reminiscent of the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Strider, as befits any good ranger, took it in his stride … "ohhh, very good" – ed … and I can see the benefits of having a solid truck with decent all-weather off-road tyres. The Dodges that I used to have wouldn’t have lasted five minutes down here

I had to stop for a minute or two for a gypsy’s, and found myself right by the rapids on the river just here.

This river goes down eventually past Millinocket, and while you’ll see hundreds of timber lorries down the roads here, even as late as the 1930s it’s suggested that they were still floating logs down here to the huge lumber mill down there, even past rapids like this.

If you were with me in 2013, you’ll remember our discovery of the grave of a flotteur de bois that we discovered at the foot of another series of rapids not too far from here.

At Millinocket, I nipped onto the Interstate for half an hour and then took the old road up to Presque Ile

This is another one of those roads that can be classed as one of the most beautiful roads in North America. It’s all up hill and down dale and shows Upper Maine at its beautiful best.

It’s another one of those roads that can only be driven properly on a big old single-cylinder long-stroke motorcycle and a beautiful 600cc side-valve Panther solo would be a pleasure to drive up here. And I deeply regret the one that I missed out on a few years ago.

But that’s not looking too optimistic, is it? That’s right over Presque Ile where I’m going. I don’t fancy camping in that.

And at Presque Ile I had a little success. Walmart did indeed have one of the slimline air beds that I need for the bed that I’m going to need for Strider, and they also had (at just $8:00) a little wooden fold-flat table, the size that you’d have by your chair for your coffee and cake. This is a good size for Strider, to cook on, eat off and use as a desk.

And at the Super Save shop, that has a good vegan range of food, I treated myself to a pot of carrot-flavoured vegan hummus.

It was pitch-black by now, even though it was only 17:00 and suddenly the storm broke. And how it broke too! I wasn’t going to camp in this – not under any circumstances.

And as I left Presque-Ile, the “Budget Traveller” motel appeared in the gloom. $59:95 including breakfast, and I was entitled to a discount on that rate too. I’d had a free night last night and so I wasn’t going to miss out on any of that.

There was a microwave in the room too and so I treated myself to a vegan pizza (I have plenty of my vegan sliced cheese) and that was gorgeous;

But now it’s 20:28 – I’m watching film, but my bad night last night has caught up with me and any second now I’m going to drop ….

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

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Thursday 10th September 2015 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES …

… o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley, as we all know. And none more so that when I’m involved.

I went round today to pick up Plan B – the camper shell that I was having specially built for me, only to find that it wasn’t ready and wouldn’t be for another week. And that is of absolutely no use to me as this time next week I’ll be in Fredericton.

Mind you, I wasn’t that disappointed because first of all, I had suspected something pretty much like this – that it wouldn’t be done. I dunno – I had that kind of funny feeling and I’ve had it ever since. And secondly, I’d been having another thought anyway that maybe I had been too hasty in making a decision.

But as it turned out, the place where I’d been to also spends its time manufacturing aluminium work-type truck caps and that’s much more like it. And not only that, They can go for a taller height (32 inches instead of 29 inches) and you’ve no idea the difference that three inches can make, as the actress once famously said to the Bishop.

Anyway, having made the guy there feel suitably guilty, he’s going to build me on specially for Saturday. At least – he better had or else my long-suffering patience and good humour would disappear on the spot.

And I was in fact lucky that I still had any patience and good humour left. I didn’t have a very good sleep (not being able to fit the bed into the tent didn’t help much – I had to empty the load bed of Strider and that all needed to be under cover) and so I wasn’t in the best of humour to start with. But at least I managed to find the saucepan and the coffee so that I could brew up.

Now yesterday, I told you that there was no railway line to Burlington. In fact, I was being rather economical with the truth.

Further enquiry and exploration revealed that there is indeed a railway line here and if you need any proof, here are a few of the locomotives that are stabled in the goods yard.

There’s certainly a freight service here – a lot of kaolin (china clay) by the looks of it so whether they mine it here and ship it out or whether they mine it elsewhere and bring it in here for any kind of pottery industry I have yet to discover.

However, I have found out that Burlington is the headquarters of Ben and Jerry’s, so seeing all of the liquid kaolin slurry here has put me right off ice-cream.

The passenger rail service has long gone (although there’s talk of restarting it some time) and the abandoned railway here in front of me as I type is the old line to Alburgh, that lost its passenger service as long ago as 1948, so I was told.

South of the town on an industrial estate is a small headland that overlooks Lake Champlain, and so this is where I went for lunch.

It was quite impressive up here and while the weather might not have been the best, it was still a quite pleasant day for idly sitting around for an hour or so and doing not very much.

And then I went off for my disappointing visit.

But as I said, it isn’t all doom and gloom. Round the corner was a charity shop and I bought a rug, almost exactly the right size for Strider’s floor, for just $5:00. And the Walmart down the road came up with a cheap doormat and one or two other bits and pieces. If ever I do get something organised, it will be the prettiest place in the universe.

On the way back, as it was getting dark, I drove past the High School sports stadium just as two teams were taking the field. Thinking it might be something interesting like a football or a gridiron game, I went for a look but it was in fact a girls hockey match between Burlington High School Seahorses and Champlain Valley High School Redhawks.

Well, it wasn’t a “hockey match” – but a “field hockey” match. In North America, if you say “hockey” you mean ice hockey, whereas in Europe when you say “hockey” you mean the stuff played on grass (or in this case, astroturf) and “ice hockey” is the minority sport.

It was quite apparent from the warm-up that the Redhawks were the most disciplined and better-organised team, and they even had the team “hypnotism” session that you often see at the end of a yoga session.

And that was how the match went. The first 15 minutes were spent entirely in the Seahorses semi-circle and I did at one point think that the only time that the ball would end up at the other end would be after the teams had changed ends at half-time. One-way traffic was not the word.

Nevertheless, the Seahorses’ goal led a charmed life and how the score ended up just 2-0 for the Redhawks instead of the cricket score that I was expecting remains one of those little mysteries.

What didn’t help matters, from the Seahorses point of view, was that the only times that they threatened on the attack was down the right wing, with a combined attack of the n°17, playing right midfield and who in my mind was the most impressive Seahorse on the field, and the girl playing right-wing whose number I didn’t notice. When they were working together they usually managed to produce something threatening and interesting, even if the rest of the girls couldn’t quite manage to get on the end of the ball. But in one of the weirdest coaching decisions that I’ve seen for quite a while (and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen a few in our time at various sports) the Seahorses coach substituted the n°17 after about 40 minutes (there were two 30-minute halves) and the Seahorses attack, such as it was, melted away after that.

As for the Redhawks, they were by far the better team. Quicker, fitter (a couple of times, a Seahorse or two were caught upfield out of position and out of breath), more organised, more disciplined and more powerful. And the best player on the best team was the Redhawks right-back – a little slip of a girl wearing n°17. She was playing sweeper on the right, right on the edge of the Redhawks half-circle, but I’ve never seen anything so small move so quickly. She could run all the way up to the half-way line to intercept a loose ball and play it forward before her opponent, who had 30 yards on her, had even made up her mind what to do.

It’s not my sport of course, field hockey, even though I had a girlfriend (Rohina) who played on the school 1st XI back in those days, but I can recognise a good team and a good player and good tactics whenever I see them.

All in all, a most enjoyable night in quite a large partisan crowd – helped of course by the fact that for the first 20 minutes at least I had some convivial company – a guy from a neighbouring town who had dropped by with his wife and daughter. In fact, he was most interested in life in Europe, energy conservation, all that kind of thing, and we had a really good talk until his daughter started to become cold and wanted to go.

And no photos of the match, unfortunately. As you know, in the USA, cameras are not permitted at many places where children are present. Personally, I’m surprised that they don’t wrap them in Bourhkas myself.

And back here the camp site has been invaded by Roadtrek campers. It seems that they are having some kind of convention here, singing around the campfire and stuff like that (but I’ve no idea what the occupants will be doing of course). That’s going to be another night when I won’t have any sleep.

And talking of campers, look at this. Is this not the epitome of laziness?

For those on pitches that don’t have water taps (and private sewage hook-ups) the public conveniences are in no case more than 50 metres away. But this here is someone who has a wheeled water container so he can drag it along like one does with a shopping trolley, but tows it behind his car – for all of a maximum if 50 metres.

You can’t make up anything like this, which is why I chose to prohotgraph it. But it sums up North America completely (yes, I have noticed that the vehicle has an Ontario number plate).

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Thursday 27th August 2015 – WHAT A STORM!

Totally terrific. Lightning, thunder and the most astonishing rain that fell in just 10 minutes. And the worst thing about that is that I had left Strider’s drivers-side window open and so at least on the way home I washed my underwear.

I had a disturbed night, with something of a record of having to leave my bed – and I blame this half-litre of thirst-quenching drink that I had had with my tea. And I also slept through the alarm clocks too and it was 08:30 when I finally rose from my stinking pit

I’ve said … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that there was an old Canadian Pacific railway line that came up to Centreville from Woodstock and I’ve been following its path in a desultory kind of fashion.

There’s a road near here called Avondale Station Road and I’ve had a wander down there on a couple of occasions looking for the station site without success.

But having tracked down the route using aerial photographs I’m pretty convinced that this is the track bed of the railway, although the station site is well-overgrown – to such en extent that it’s not clear on which side of the road it would have been.

From here I headed off to Woodstock again and ended up having to go on a marathon detour almost to the USA border due to roadworks. And I met my bus from the other night too while I was on my travels around.

I ended up at Walmart looking for clothes and some guy in a wheelchair thought that it was fun to get in my way whenever I was trying to pick something up. Eventually I managed to reach something, and he made a remark like “Why didn’t you ask me to move?”
“Because I used to be married – I’m used to people being difficult”.

But I did have another piece of good luck in Walmart. A small lightweight 1/4 – 3/8 drive socket set at $9:00. This toolkit is building up slowly.

At Tim Horrton’s we were once again surrounded by Miltonists. About 10 staff on duty, one of whom was at the drive-in, another of whom was at the counter, a third was making wraps and as for the rest, “they also serve who stand and wait”.

After my coffee I went round to see Zoe’s shop and for a chat to see how she was doing. She could be doing better of course, but it’s hard to tell a 21 year-old about your 40-odd years of sometimes-bitter experience. They would much rather make their own mistakes. And then round to Sharp’s to see if they would take the scrap metal that we have (they will).

I went back to Centreville along the road on the eastern side of the Saint John River.

It’s not a road that I travel very often and so I don’t know all of the good views, but here’s a stunning viewpoint from a few miles south of Hartland. We can see the Saint John River of course, and in the background we have the wind farm up on Mars Hill in Maine, USA (my plot of land is to the right of the hill).

In the centre of the photo is the bridge that took Trans-Canada Highway version 2 (or is it 3?) over the river, but in front of this you’ll be able to make out the world’s longest covered bridge at Hartland.

My way back to Rachel’s took me over the river and back via Lakeville where there’s a car body repair shop. He always has some interesting stuff there but as he’s one of the best body repairers in the region his output is far too good to be suitable for these pages.

But there are always exceptions to this, such as this absolutely wonderful Mack Thermodyne B61 of the early 1950s.

It’s been stood for ages but he’s managed to make it go, however the water pump has failed. He says that it’s up to the owner to source one, and he wishes him good luck. The plan, I imagine, is that once it’s running he’ll restore it, and I’ll love to see it when it’s finished.

Hannah was supposed to be ringing me up to give her a hand to mow the lawn but she never did, and so I popped by to see how she was doing. But she had done it all on her own without my help and now she and her friend Journee were making a beer-pong table for her party tomorrow night. I went on to the shop and waited for closing time.

And this was when the storm hit.

Later in the evening Darren and I loaded up Strider with a huge fridge and a big stove. On my way round to Great Satan I’ll be heaving them out at Sharp’s.

Monday 17th August 2015 – LAST NIGHT …

… could have been a night just as good as the previous one, and that’s exactly how it was heading. And then it all came to a sudden halt at 01:30, for Bane of Britain here had forgotten to switch off his European alarms.

If I had had a quid for every time that I’ve done that while I’ve been in North America I would be dictating this to half a dozen secretaries draped all over my knee and thereabouts. You would think that I would have learnt by now, wouldn’t you?

To make matters worse, I was away with the fairies somewhere at the time, and by the time I’d composed myself afterwards, it had all gone.

I was still up before the alarm at 06:00 (I’m doing my best to keep to some kind of semblance of time) and after breakfast cracked on with a few things.

And here I am, on the bus heading towards the railway station. First stop is Namur and the Walmart, which comes up with a cap at $5:00, a big bottle of water, and 150 sheets of A4 paper at just $0:10 in the back to school bargain sale and you can’t say fairer than that. A useful thing to have around seeing as how I’ve forgotten my graph paper.

Back on the metro to Berri-UQAM and the long long walk to the coach station to buy my ticket for Florenceville tomorrow. $114 – arrgghh – and that’s with the senior citizens discount too. Heaven alone knows what it might have been at full price. But with 10.5 hours on the bus (changing at Riviere du Loup) it’s not really all that bad, I suppose. But 22:30 I leave, 09:00 on Wednesday I arrive – I am not looking forward to this, but since they ripped up all of the trains there isn’t much of an alternative.

So I had a really good chat to Rachel on the phone, giving her enough advance warning so that she can flee the country, and then a wander through all of the galleries – or, at least, as many as I could find. It’s cooler in there than outside.

That cheap technology shop near the railway station had nothing of interest although I did start to notice in one or two places that Government energy stickers are slowly starting to appear in the shops. A sign of the times, hey?

And look at this! This is not a new Ford Transit but a replacement for the Ford F-series panel vans. And if you are wondering why many of the very useful white-van-man features of the previous Ford Transit have mysteriously (and surprisingly) disappeared from the new version on sale in Europe, then look no further.

They don’t have white-van-man in North America. His equivalent over here drives a 4×4 pick-up and that’s where you will find the interesting bits and pieces. White vans here are just used for furniture removals and parcel deliveries and a little bit of urban maintenance and so are a completely different breed.

So if any North American has had a hand in designing the new Transit, that will explain why, as far as facilities go, the new Transit is essentially a backward step. I’m convinced that Transits of the model such as Caliburn
actually had a white-van-man on the design committee and it’s sad that Ford Europe doesn’t have the muscle to have pushed forward their observations to whoever was on this global design panel.

Abandoning another good rant for now I head off down the rue St Catherine where there’s a big new shopping mall type of place on the right as you go down the hill. All clean and bright, with a Subway sandwich place down in the basement. Ahh! Lunch!

And for the first time ever, since I’ve been visiting a Subway, when I asked the Serving Wench for my 12-inch with just crudites (yes, if it’s crudities you want, then I’m your man) she did not ask me if I wanted cheese with it. I made a comment about it, to which the aforementioned replied "well, I’ve been working here for quite a few years now so I’m used to it"

They had a fountain here too so I took a photo of it seeing as how pretty it looked, and as soon as I had started to leave, it erupted, so I came back for another photo.

Back outside and down the street they had the giant chessboards out again and so I watched 3 or 4 games in the company of a woman, and we were exchanging comments about the games. One game was ultra-defensive and everyone lost interest after a while, including the two players who abandoned the match.

Another one was however quite exciting. It was a younger girl against an older man and was played in what you might call something of an aggressive spirit, swinging like a pendulum from one way to the next as they traded piece for piece. She made a couple of moves that had mystified me, but then suddenly she caught his king in a trap against her pawns. By this time he just had his king and a knight and she a bishop (or fou as they are called in French, so I discovered) and a king, and they both had four pawns each.

What helped my concentration was that there was an ice-cream parlour right next door, and I can thoroughly recommend the coconut milk sorbet.

Further down the road in St Catherine Est I came across a bookshop selling second-hand books and CDs and so that’s me spent up yet again for another year.

The Chapel of Notre dame de Lourdes was erected to the glory of Mary so we are told (but just WHAT is the Glory of Mary?) thanks to the generposity of the local people.

However that generosity does not extend to giving out help to those who ask for it. There’s a big sign outside saying that it is forbidden to solicit alms either outside or inside the Chapel.

Just what kind of Christians are these?

My reverie was interrupted by the rather bizarre noise of something different coming down the street. Luckily I had my camera to hand to photograph it.

I couldn’t get close enough to this to see what it was, which was a shame, but it looked very much like a three-wheeled batmobile to me. It bore something of a close resemblance to The White Swan that we saw on the Saguenay Ferry in 2011.

I had my falafel for tea as well. I walked right up the bank to the rue Sherbrooke and then rue St Denis to where I had had my tea one night in 2014.

Just up the road from here is this magnificent building, the address of which is 3725 rue St Denis, and one day I’ll find out much more about it. It has to be something quite important or have an interesting history.

The metro from Sherbrooke brings me all the way round to the metro DuCollege, and then back on the bus. And I ended up being guide to a couple of French tourists from Picardy on the same bus who were trying to find their hotel.

I had a shower, for by this time I was steaming and then to bed for my last night for a while in Montreal.

Thursday 4th September 2014 – OLD HABITS DIE HARD

Indeed they do? I’m at it again, even in the USA.

This is where I spent last night – on a motorway service area on Interstate 87 up at the top end of New York State. This is what it looked like at about half an hour after dawn because I was up early. I’d had something of a restless night.

But you can see why I was happy to stay here. The surroundings were beautiful and the smell of pine essence was overpowering. There wasn’t too much noise either, which makes a change for a motorway rest area.

I wasn’t alone on here by any means. There were plenty of cars about, as you can see on this trailer. Most of the overnight residents on here were Canadians heading south – I hardly noticed a lorry from the USA. It’s something about which I’ve often wondered – where do lorries from the USA park up overnight because you don’t see them parked up in every lay-by as you do in Europe.

Mind you, you don’t see many lay-bys either in North America, something about which I’ve often commented.

I found a Home Depot (eventually) and I’ve bought a couple of things that I needed. I had to go to a second one though for an angle grinder (passing by a Walmart on the way where I left half of my shopping and had to go back for it).

It was quite exciting in this second Home Depot. According to the Home depot computer, there should have been 6 there but there were none on display. Eventually I found someone who confirmed that they had some but he couldn’t find them either. Eventually he located them up on the top shelf, so he fetched a ladder, climbed up and passed one down to me. Then he started to descend the ladder. “Aren’t you going to get the others down then?” I asked. “Either customers will walk away empty-handed or else you’ll be climbing back up that ladder again”

One of the things that I’ve been moaning about too is the price that I’m having to pay these days for hiring vehicles. The idea of buying one to keep in North America has often gone through my head but finding the right kind of vehicle has always been an obstacle.

I wouldn’t have any problems here though. There must be a thousand vehicles here, many of which are Ford Ranger 4×4 pickups and prices start from about $4800 which is reasonable.

They are all bulk-buys from Government institutions, such as the Police as you can see, and the owner reckons that he has about 100 new vehicles every week. Anyway, I have a card from him and I shall be giving the matter some serious thought.

From here I’ve been on Highway 9 heading east towards the Maine coast but I’m not making very much progress with things that there are to see.

This is the view from Hogback Mountain in Vermont. This particular spot is called the Hundred Mile View, so-called because you can see for 100 miles from here.

It’s probably true as well, becaus that mountain right over there in the distance looks rather like the big mountain at the back of Millinocket in Maine, although I bet that it probably isn’t.

This area was quite an important ski area at one time but rising insurance premiums and falling snow levels … "DECREASING SNOW FALL" – ed … due to global warming have caused its abandonment.

This is a 1933 Pontiac saloon parked up in New Hampshire and it’s for sale for … errr … $19500, a price that stopped me in my tracks. I stopped to take a couple of photos and the owner came out for a chat. He’s totally rebuilt it from the ground up – one of many that he’s done because he’s 76 and been doing this for 60 years

It’s not for me though, because it’s been rebuilt to modern standards with a “350 V8” engine, a modern auto box, hydraulic disc brakes and all that kind of thing. There’s probably very little that is the original vehicle which is a shame if you ask me, but that’s how vintage vehicle “restoration” is carried out in North America.

From here I came across a camp site just as the sun was setting, so I’ve stopped here for the night on a pitch with a beautiful view across the lake. It’s a lovely place to spend the night, as you will soon find out.

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Tuesday 1st October 2013 – I’VE BEEN TRAVELLING BACKWARDS TODAY

And that might explain this awfully stiff neck that I have – unless I didn’t swallow the Viagra quickly enough last night.

First stop was back to Fort William Henry to watch an artillery demonstration – a real period cannon firing a real cannon ball. Certainly impressive, definitely noisy, and quite successful. Much more successful than Colonel Munro’s artillery that were badly constructed and kep blowing up – there’s a lovely piece of a 32-pound cannon, that they found well-embedded in the soil, on display here at the fort.

And I learnt something new today too, and that was why no cannon was ever raised more than 5° from the horizontal even though that meant a huge loss of range. The answer was that in general it meant very little in loss of range but much more accuracy, which is a strange thing to say. With a high elevation, you need pinpoint accuracy because when the ball lands, it buries itself in the soil. With a low elevation, it skimmed across the surface like a flat stone across the lake, and this could increase the range and also increase the likelihood of hitting something.

From here I went off to look for Fort Edward, the fort that controlled the frontier around here and to which the survivors of Fort William Henry were fleeing when they were butchered by the Iroquois. I drove past it yesterday, simply for the reason that it isn’t signposted at all from the main road, being on private land. The guy here at Fort William Henry gave me a few pointers and off I went.

And here is the site, in someone’s back garden, although the fort was very much bigger than this of course. It was totally destroyed by the Americans during the Revolutionary War to stop the British from fortifying it, and yet when some of these house-owners were digging down underneath their houses to make cellars, they were churning out all kinds of artefacts, many of which are in a little museum in the town (although, of course, many were simply sold on eBay).

There have been a few archaeological digs and searches on a few of the properties and all kinds of things have been unearthed, all of which is quite exciting. Not as exciting as what was to happen next, though, for we are about to have another Red Bay or Albion experience.

Expressing quite an interest in this kind of thing and, I suppose, being quite knowledgeable, I was engaged in quite a chat with the local museum curator, and after a while he beckoned me into the back room. “Good job I’m wearing my chastity belt” I mused.

However, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it but I’ve been encountering a lot of dredging along the Hudson just now, and the dredgers were here a short while ago and they encountered something solid just off the banks of the river where the fort was. It turned out that they had hooked a couple of squared-off timbers that have in all probability been part of the fort and were thrown into the river by the retreating Americans. The dark peaty silt on the bottom of the river has preserved them.

Anyway, I’m apparently the first layman to lay my hands upon them, which is something of an honour, I suppose.

One of the things that we discuss every now and again is the dramatic change in language over a period of time, and here’s a classic example of this. This describes “one of the most thrilling events in the annals of the American Revolution”, and so today you would be gripping the edges of your seats in eager anticipation.

But back using the contemporary language of the end of the 18th Century your heart would be fluttering as you read the tragic story of young Jane McCrea. She was 17 (according to one account, and as old as 24 in another, and varying ages in between according to more accounts) and she was travelling in the country to visit her fiancé (and so 17 would be a good bet if you ask me) when she was seized by two native Americans working as scouts for the British soldiers.

These Native Americans couldn’t decide amongst themselves which one had captured her first and so was entitled to … errr … do the honours, you might say, and so in an age-old tribal custon, they decided to cut her in two so that each one could have a half.

I can imagine that if such an event were to happen today, poor Jane McCrea would be less than thrilled by the outcome of events.

Fort Ann was the last place to visit today. Known as Fort Schuyler when it was a Dutch possession, there have been 5 forts here at Fort Ann although today not a single vestige remains of any of them.
It is however a strategic place on the route of the Champlain Canal, because, rarely, all three routes of the canal pass within 100 yards of each other here. The first route, known in the vernacular as “Clinton’s Ditch” … "Ditch with a “D” – we aren’t talking about Monica Lewinski" – ed … was modernised and rerouted in the 1850s when new technology permitted wider boats and deeper locks, and the old canal at Fort Ann, just to the right of these locks, was converted into a dry dock for repairs.

On the 1850s canal, new technology meant that they could experiment with “combined locks”, where two locks were immediately adjacent to each other and shared a common central gate. This is combined lock 16 and 17 and the central gate is just behind where the staircase is, the recess for the first gate being seen in the immediate foreground.

From here I stopped at Walmart to do a final food shop for my journey. There I encountered a woman with a face like a wet weekend in Weymouth. “Do you know”, I said, “you look exactly how I feel”.
She burst into laughter, said “well, at least that comment made me smile” and shuffled off down another aisle. Ahh well.

-4

Thursday 26th April 2012 – THIS PHOTO …

… had me tickled pink, as it clearly had several other people too. Because there really were some people who believed that the rocket really was being carried on the trailer of this lorry.

I went out for an early morning constitutional, like you do, and noticed the rocket on display on a plinth across the motorway. And so I waited until a convenient lorry drove past.

I had meant to go for a closer inspection after breakfast but somehow, Brain of Britain forgot.

I was up and about early – and by “early” I mean 04:00. So that gave me plenty of time to catch up on my notes and photos of yesterday and even some from 2011 too. Can’t take a shower too early.

And yes, we’re back in a Quebec motel. The C and F on the taps doesn’t stand for chaud and froid like you might think. It means “Cold” and “Freezing”.

But the towels were something else completely. So luxurious! I had no end of trouble trying to close my suitcase when I left. Makes a change from some motels where I’ve stayed, where they actually stole the towels from the guests (and YES – I have had this!).

Shopping was next. And never having been to Laval before, I had done my research. It didn’t take long to find the Canadian Tire, Walmart and Home Depot, located quite close together down the road.

And a Dollar Store! They had packets of seeds on sale at three for $1:00 – including some sweet corn! I was tempted by that kind of offer – after all, growing crops at my altitude is challenging – but seeds destined for the short Canadian growing season sound just the job to me.

Finding a bank was something else, though. No trace of a Scotia Bank (where my UK bank has an arrangement) in the vicinity so we had to resort to the telephone directory and the Lady Who Lives In The Satnav.

I’d seen a supermarket – an IGA – on the side of the motorway last night driving down here, and I’d made a mental note. But seeing it was one thing – finding my way to it was something else completely.

All of that took me until lunchtime, would you believe. And those raisin buns that I had bought in the Dollar Store were delicious. Went down a treat

This afternoon saw me at my storage box at Jarry. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I rent a storage box in one of these self-store units. Just 1m³ but I keep my bed, my camping stuff and my fittings for the Dodge in there.

I spent most of the afternoon fitting out the Dodge and then hitting Highway 40 east.

Straight into the rush hour.

If that wasn’t enough to be going on with, the temperature suddenly plummeted 10°C as I sat and watched, and we were greeted with the most tremendous downpour. Nothing that I had ever seen in the Auvergne came anywhere close to what we were having just then.

And with the traffic having sat stationary for about half an hour we were joined by a pile of fire engines, ambulances and police cars. That prolonged our stay.

We eventually moved off, four lanes compressed into one – in the rush hour – due to a major fire on the hard shoulder. And it was black as pitch, torrential rain and freezing cold.

I slipped off the motorway, wondering if it would be quicker to advance by going via Repentigny, but a Motel welcoming sign greeted me with rooms reduced to a special price “for tonight only”.

copulatum expensium, as we Pompeiians say. I needed cheering up.

So here at the Motel des Pinions Rouges at Bout-de-l’Ile it gave me an opportunity to charge up the Ryobi batteries that I had bought in Home Depot, and to cook myself a meal in the slow cooker.

I’ll organise myself better tomorrow.

Tuesday 6th September 2011 – I WENT OFF …

… for a little drive today as I had a few things to do.

But on my way out towards Florenceville I caught a good view of Centreville in the rear mirror and so I couldn’t resist the opportunity to take a photograph of the town. I don’t recall taking a photograph of the town from here before so I need to put that right.

In Florenceville my lawyer was unavailable but I was able to open a bank account at the bank next door. Mind you, it took them long enough and a couple of good kicks to the computer in order to do it, but there it is.

I now have 200 dollars in a Canadian bank account, and I’ll be adding to that here and there as I go around.

I took the old road down alongside the Saint John River down to Hartland and there’s a really good spec along there to stop and take a photo of the covered bridge there.

It’s the world’s longest covered bridge at 391 metres long and, much to everyone’s surprise, it wasn’t covered when it was built. The covering was actually added about 20 years later, but not many people know that.

There used to be a railway line, maintained by the Canadian Pacific, that ran up along the Saint John River.

From what I understand, which may or may not be the case, that the CPR was looking for a way out of its obligations out here beyond Montreal and in the Spring of 1987, the weather came to the aid of the company where the spring ice-flow took half of the bridge down just outside Woodstock.

That was the best excuse that the company could wish for, and the line was abandoned immediately.

At the Planning Office in Woodstock, I was out of luck. It had been closed for Labour Day and was not due to re-open until Wednesday.

I wasn’t the only person to be taken by surprise by that. A local came in with some business to do, and he was quite upset. He had a good go at Public Servants and suggested that we change our jobs. How could I disagree?

However, it wasn’t a completely wasted journey down here. Parked up here is a Chevrolet 1300 pick-up. No idea about it really but I imagine that it’s from the 1960s. But that’s just a pure guess.

It’s had a makeover and is being used as a mobile advertising display, and that’s not a bad idea. It’s certainly attracted my attention, and probably the attention of many others too.

In the Health Food shop that has just opened, they didn’t have any vegan cheese but the girl there set me right about the whole kind of different things. There’s nothing much exciting going on around here but the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival starts on the 13th and she thinks that there might be camping in one of the forest parks about 20 mins from Fredericton. That should be useful.

She was telling me about all these places to go to in Woodstock “its near here and just by there” and she noticed the puzzled look on my face.
“How long have you been in Woodstock?” she asked
“Ohhh, about 15 minutes”, I replied.

I do know that there’s a swimming pool here and so I went for a swim – and a good wash and shower – but its surely no surprise to you to learn that it’s closed for maintenance. It closed down the day I arrived and it opens up the day after I leave.

You couldn’t make it up.

But that girl was right about the vegan cheese in the Atlantic Superstore. And while I was waiting in the queue at a shop I noticed a magazine that told me that Canada’s biggest worry is the grief “given to us by our best friends across the border”. Why is this a surprise? I’ve been saying this for years

If I do come to live in Canada, I’ll be okay for work here. I could have a job on the techie counter at Walmart’s Woodstock branch because I knew more about the products on sale than the girl on the counter. It was me who had to insert the additional memory card into someone’s Blackberry and then program it – and I’d never even seen a Blackberry before.

I bought a 8GB micro-SD card for my Samsung mobile phone and wasn’t that an excellent idea? I now have an MP3 player for far cheaper than I would ever have imagined anywhere else.

also were having a DVD sale – piles of DVDs on sale for $5 – I bought 4 – 1 box contained 25 John Wayne films, another had 20 spaghetti westerns, a third had 9 commando B-features the fourth had 8 B-movie westerns. I’m set up for the long boring nights now.

But it’s a surprise to see who is starring or otherwise appearing in some of these films. There’s Klaus Kinski, father of Natasha of course, Lee van Kleef, Robert Mitchum, Van Johnson, Michael Rennie, Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, Lloyd Bridges, Chuck Connors, Cesar Romero, Jose Torres, Eddy Chandler, Walter Brennan, Jack Elam, Ricky Nelson, Slim Pickens, Burt Lancaster, John Ireland (is he father of Jill?) to mention just a dozen all of whom went on to greater things.

And that is of course before we mention John Wayne himself.

On the way back to my little plot of land I have a bizarre encounter with two young boys riding bicycles towards me on the wrong side of the road.

That wasn’t all that I encountered either.

Away in the distance was a rainbow. There had been a storm somewhere and the wind had blown the residue towards me, and the sun had caught it full-on. I hope that the photo comes out as well as it looked in reality because it really was a nice thing to see.

I’d come up the back way from Woodstock, missing out Centreville, and just before I joined the road that goes down to the USA border I came across the Presque Ile stream and a lovely girder bridge that was also worth a photo.

We have different issues about whether or not this image will come out. I can’t believe how late it was and the light was going already. I hope that this photo comes out properly too.

Wednesday 31st August 2011 – HERE I AM…

… standing outside my hotel down on the end of the runway at Paris Charles de Gaulle, waiting for the shuttle bus to take me to the airport.

You can see how close we are to the airport here. Mind you – it’s a good 15 minutes on the bus as the terminal is on the other side of the runway.

The airport was as usual a thoroughly stressful experience and our plane was actually parked away from the airport on the concrete pan. We had to be bussed out there.

And it was like flying Transatlantic Ryanair with Ait Transat. We were crammed in like sardines and we were late taking off – there being a problem with a chemical toilet on board. In fact the most comfortable 5 minutes that I had on the ‘plane was when I had 5 minutes on the Elsan.

We flew over some areas that I recognised, including the Manic 5 dam, and you can see the Trans Labrador Highway quite clearly down below. It was good to be back in familiar territory.

We were again parked up miles from the terminal at Pierre Trudeau Airport and had to be bussed to the terminal. And much to my surprise, the passage through Immigration was painless – I was “interrogated” by a girl who looked as if she was about 12. Shows you how old I am, doesn’t it?

And look at my car! It’s a Dodge Grand Caravan that I’ve chosen especially for this journey, because the seats fold flat into the floor and that makes a nice big space to make up a bed.

I’m staying here for a while and I need to watch my budget, and hiring a vehicle like this is cheaper than staying in motels. I’ve rented a tiny storage unit too, so what I buy can be stored here for use on a subsequent occasion.

I found a Walmart where I found a camping stove and some food supplies. I couldn’t make IKEA though – stuck in road works and rush hour traffic, it was impossible to move. And so I made my way across town to my motel and I’ll go th IKEA tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

We’ve talked about the Newfoundland railway before and every so often I’d been encountering relics that looked very, very railway-like.

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

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

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

Outside the museum was a fur trapper selling rabbits that he had trapped.

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

A little further on I can actually get in touch with the railway line.

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

So now I know.

So now it’s an early night in my guest house at Corner Brook.

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

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

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

-1

Friday 9th October 2010 – TODAY WE CROSSED THE RUBI … ERRR ….. ST LAWRENCE

This morning quite early, we said goodbye to our host of the previous evening. And as you can see, Strawberry Moose was particularly sad to depart.

And what a nice motel that was – there was even a microwave oven in the room and that made me wish that I had some proper food on board. In fact, I’ll stock up with a few bits and pieces next time I pass by one of these supermarkets just in case I find another microwave in a motel room.

Tracy, where the motel might be found, is a small port on the south bank of the St Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec and you may remember that I had a good wander around there last night.

Next item of interest is this gorgeous bow-girder bridge, the Pont Laviolette that spans the St Lawrence on the outskirts of Trois Rivieres, which is on the other (north) bank of the river.

I had a good drive around to see if I could have a closer and better view of the bridge, but no such luck. However, I’ll be coming back this way and I’ll spend some time then to have a really good look around.

And while we are on the subject of bridges, what do you think about this one?

This is the legendary Pont de Quebec, built at the turn of the 2Oth Century to carry the road and the railway across the St Lawrence to the city of Quebec. It’s been the subject of two major construction failures and cost more lives than the Tay Bridge disaster did, although it was never immortalised by William McGonagall.

You can read more about the Pont de Quebec on this page.

There’s no doubt about it though, the southern shore of the St Lawrence around by the city of Quebec is absolutely beautiful at this time of the year as the leaves are falling (and it’s funny that the further north-east I travel the more the trees have lost their leaves – it’s quite remarkable).

I chose this spot to stop and eat my butty, with the St Lawrence over my left shoulder and the city of Quebec across the river.

It was something of a late lunch because I went to the Walmart just up the road to buy another SD card – they had Kodak ones on special offer – 4GB for $10 but they had sold out. And in line with my resolution of this morning, I bought a tim opener, a mixing spoon and a microwave bowl to go with the pile of pasta in tomato sauce (4 for $5) and tins of beans (99 cents each) that I bought in a food supermarket across the road in case I find another motel with a microwave.

I have to be prepared.

After my lunch I crossed over into Quebec and had a drive around. Old Quebec is really beautiful but I didn’t stop as I’m running to a tight schedule. I hope I’ll be able to fit a day into my return journey to go for a wander round. It’s just like a late medaieval European city in places and has somehow managed to escape the developer’s bulldozer.

After that I headed north-east along the north shore of the St Lawrence and this is really where the beautiful part of Canada begins.

After maybe 15 miles you abruptly leave civilisation and go right into the mountains. It is just so spectacular, as you can see in this pic taken from halfway up Cap Tourmente. The St Lawrence is down there in the valley and Quebec is on the skyline.

>And this is what it is like – all up hill and down dale all the way along the coast, with the St Lawrence never more than a mile or two away.

Here, at the top of Cap Tourmente, you can see what I’ll be encountering. The mountains, the undulating road, the deciduous trees shedding their leaves, and the possibility of encountering a moose, if the one sitting beside me wasn’t enough to be going on with.

Tonight I’m staying in St Simeon which is a ferry port across to Riviere du Loup on the southern shore where I crossed over last time I was up here. This is the view of the ferry terminal from my motel bedroom.

And what I don’t understand is that last time I struggled to find a motel and had to drive another 25 miles until I found one quite by chance.

Just now, I’ve passed 6 at Malbaie, a small town about 15 miles west of here and there’s 5 motels that I can see from my window just here. I really must have been asleep that evening.

But even now I’m not lucky. It’s quite expensive here and there is nothing – no coffee machine (although I’ve sorted that out) and no microwave either. And even worse, there’s nowhere around in the town where I can find a meal.

I’m really not having much luck, am I?

Tomorrow I’ll be driving the 4 hours up to Baie Comeau, going by the famous ferry at Tadoussac, which you will have seen from the last time I was here, and then it’s into the interior. 400-odd miles of dirt track through the interior of Quebec and then 600 or so miles through Labrador and out to the Atlantic Ocean.

Now that’s what I call the wilderness!

-2

Thursday 8th October 2010 – A BIG RED BOX …

… has now appeared in the back of Casey (in case you are wondering, Casey is the name of the PT Cruiser – with a registration number of BBKC 458 it could hardly have been anything else now, could it?) and the big red box is full.

For having been to a Lowe’s yesterday afternoon and the huge Home Depot and Walmart that were right on the US-Canadian border at Covington (they must have heard me coming), I now have

100 drywall pattresses (cost $22 the lot)
25 wall-mounted pattresses
20 white sockets – the standard colour
10 ivory sockets
10 red sockets (regular readers of these pages know that I’m heavily into colour-coding for different usages)
all of the fascia plates (they say that they are unbreakable – obviously they haven’t had me in there for a while)
about 50 3-pin plugs
a few extension leads and all kinds of other exciting American electrical stuff
one partridge
one pear tree

The reason for this of course is that when I do 12-volt DC electrical circuits running off solar panels and wind turbines in Europe I need to use plugs and sockets and the like that cannot be mistaken for anything else and which can handle high amperages.

There are no American fittings in Europe so no-one will mistake them, and as American current is 110 volts instead of 230 volts and so more susceptible to voltage drop, they use thicker cable to compensate – and the thicker cable will handle higher amperages.

So now I have a full stock on hand and I shall be shipping that back to Europe in due course and so when I get back I can get on with what I’m supposed to be doing – ie earning money to compensate for what I’m spending over here.

You’ve no idea how rampant inflation has been over here since I last visited. Petrol in the States for example costs $2.80 a gallon in most places, and as there are only 16 fluid ounces in an American pint instead of 20 in a European pint, an American gallon is just about 3.65 litres. And $2.80 a gallon is a far cry from 2005 when I was paying $1.45 and an even farther cry from 2001 when I was paying $1.10.

Cheapest motel I’ve found so far has been $45 – last night, stranded in the wilderness miles from civilisation I paid a whopping $69, and that motel was nothing to write home about at all. It just happened to be the first one that I came across after looking for half an hour.

Gone are the days from 2002 when I paid $25 per night and in 2005 when I was stopping in a respectable chain of modern motels at $33 per night.

With millions of Americans out of work and rampant inflation such as I am noticing, no wonder there are thousands of people being turned out onto the streets. The States is nothing like the Shoppers’ Paradise it used to be.

But in Walmart I also bit the bullet and bought a new digital dictaphone. The Olympus that Rhys recommended wasn’t carried and they had a whole selection of different ones. not one of which did everything that I needed.

In the end I bought a Sony at $39 which does not have a direct connection to a computer (which is strange and disappointing – I’ll have to rig up a cable through the headphone and mike sockets and see what I can do about getting some speech recognition software) but it does have a “pause” facility (which puts the “record” on standby for an hour), 2gb of memory, a unidirectional microphone facility as well as the more normal omnidirectional mike – so if you switch it into unidirectional, it just picks up whatever is going directly into the mike and none of the background noise, a noise reduction facility that cuts out high-frequency interference.

All in all considering that there wasn’t much choice, I’m well-impressed with it and it’s doing the business.

Many years ago, driving through Canada, I saw what I was convinced was a Sprite Musketeer caravan althougb I didn’t stop to photograph it and I rather wish that I had.

But here on the side of the road in northern New York State about 8 miles from the Canadian border I come across a very sad Sprite Musketeer caravan that originally came from a company down in Oswego down the road according to the sticker on the chassis.

So there we are. They were definitely imported officially into North America.

A few miles further on, I’m caught in a police road block. There’s a prison not too far from here and one of the convicts, by the name of McCann, has made a bid for freedom.

The police have a quick glance inside Casey to see if he’s hiding under the seat or in the boot, but once they have satisfied themselves that he’s not in here, I can carry on with what I was doing.

I’m now in Canada, approaching the suburbs of Montreal, and this looks interesting.

It’s the old ALCO railway works, apparently, now transformed into Exporail, a railway mseum and it’s chock-full of railway engines and other relics. I’ve no time to look at it today, but this will be high on my list for the return journey.

I’m on the southern shore of the St Lawrence River here and there across on the far shore is the city on Montreal.

I’m staying over here because there’s much less traffic and much less congestion. I don’t have the time to be caught up in the traffic today. Every hour that I waste on the road at the moment brings the snows of Labrador that much closer.

I can still stop and take photos though if I’m quick. This is a huge ethanol plant on the edge of Montreal and the steam that’s pumping up from there is really impressive. It gives you an idea of the heat that the plant is generating.

Ethanol is becoming much more important as a renewable energy source and is slowly being added to petrol in an attempt to reduce the amount of fossil fuels that we consume. There will be more and more of these plants sprining up in the future.

But never mind new technology for the moment – here’s a bit of old technology to be going on with. On the outskirts of Sorel-Tracy I encounter a nuclear power station.

It’s something that has taken me completely by surprise because Canada, and Quebec in particular, must be up there amongst the top three countries in the world for producing hydro-electric power and so I would have thought that a nuclear power station, particularly one situated in between two major urban centres, would have been the last thing that they needed.

But then Sorel-Tracy has a huge mineral-refining plant and so it must need all of the power. It must need all of the minerals too and there are some big ships in the docks being unloaded, as well as one or two awaiting their turn outside.

But I’ve found an impressive motel here – $60 Canadian it has to be said, but it has all mod cons including a microwave so tea has cost me less than $2 – a couple of tins from the supermarket next door.

If I’m spending all this money on motels I’m going to have to economise on the eating – no restaurants for me – and I can see me buying a $30 microwave for where a motel doesn’t have one if these prices keep up.

Of course, many of you know that the eastern part of Quebec, from roughly the centre of Montreal, is French-speaking and here in my shower room the taps are marked with C and F.
“Chaud and Froid” I hear you say.
“Rubbish” I retort. “It’s cold and freezing“.

-5

Wednesday 7th October 2010 – THE ONE THING THAT I’VE …

… learnt about Americans, especially in upstate New York is that they provide more entertainment for the tourists than Disney ever did

I’d stopped at this hydro-electric generator to look at the waterfall over the barrier and I have to say that I have never ever seen so many fishermen there. That astonished me because the speed that the water was coming over was incredible and I didn’t expect any fish to be hanging around there at all.

I talked to a couple of the fishermen to ask what they were fishing for. Salmon is the answer, but neither of them had caught anything that day (and it was now early evening). But just then this guy was dragged off downriver with something – and whatever it was must have been impressive) on the end of his line.

He was there for quite a while struggling with this fish (I assumed it was a fish and not a submarine or something) and after a while he was clearly getting the upper hand. But the fish put up one hell of a fight and it was by no means certain.

By now there were few people fishing and the crowd of spectators in the background were all transfixed on this little scene. Someone produced a fishing net and joined in the fun and as the fish started to tire, the fisherman began to reel it in.

It still wasn’t all over as the guy with the net needed a few grabs – the first time he missed it completely, to the accompaniment of loud guffaws from the crowd – but eventually he managed to get it into his net.

It’s quite a big fish too. Someone reckons that it was 30 pounds and someone else said about 25. But of course they both could be right. It might have been 30 pounds at the start and during the struggle it could have burnt off pounds of flesh that would have cut it down to size a little.

And so there’s one proud fisherman on his way back home. His wife can put the chicken back in the freezer and it’s fresh fish with the chips tonight.

But the funny thing about it all was that the fish had the last laugh. As the fisherman was taking the hook out of its mouth the fish bit him.

And serve him right!

Now I’m sure that you are all wondering where it took place. And as a matter of fact, so am I. And that’s because today we have had a calamity. My old hand-held tape dictaphone that I have had since 1993 and which has accompanied me on my travels everywhere has finally given up the ghost. I think that the drive belt has snapped.

I’m having to use the digital one that I bought to replace it and which I don’t like at all as it’s nothing like as spontaneous as the old one. I dunno what I’ll have to do now but I bet it won’t be cheap

After last night’s excitement, I’m pleased to report that I had a really good night’s sleep and I was ready for anything (except the dictaphone) this morning.

Even sweeping off a huge pile of leaves off the bonnet and roof of Casey (autumn is definitely here and no mistake) didn’t cause me any problems, and I was on the road pretty quickly.

While I was on my travels last night looking for food, I’d seen a sign for “Bear Creek”.

Carry on Cowboy is definitely one of the top three Carry On films ever made and the scene where Big Heap alias Charles Hawtrey dashes into the saloon and shouts “Gold Strike at Bear Creek” still has me in stitches even now.

Of course, that was a long time ago but no harm in going to see if there is anyone here.

Pultneyville is an interesting little town down along the shore of Lake Ontario.

First settled at the end of the 18th Century, it was the scene of a confrontation between local militia and a small British naval force in 1814. It was also a quite important port on the lake and even had its own railway line, but the opening of the Erie Canal led to its decline. Now, it’s mainly a seasonal resort town.

After spending an hour or so watching the antics at the dam, I took another deviation down to Cape Vincent.

Lake Ontario narrows spectacularly here and we are at the entrance to the St Lawrence Seaway. There’s obviously a need for the narrow to be illuminated and thus we have Tibbetts Point Lighthouse.

There have been several here since Captain Tibbetts donated the land for the lighthouse. This version dates from 1854 and, rarely, still has its original Fresnel lens.

Now how about this? After the SDI yesterday (was it yesterday?) I’ve now found myself a P6 Rover. And it’s a TC as well which means that it will most likely be a 2000 or a 2.2, not a V8 3.5-litre. Now how about that in the USA?

It’s been ages since I’ve seen an old car (SD1s excluded of course) and I was certainly not expecting o see a P6 anywhere like around here.

That’s Canada that, just over there. You can see how close I am to it here.

That’s the Thousand Islands Bridge going over the St Lawrence Seaway. It was built in 1937 and finished 10 weeks ahead of schedule, which goes to show that it wasn’t a Local Government project, and modernised in 1959.

It’s actually a series of bridges, not just one, that bridge the St Lawrence by using the islands as stepping stones. Its total length, including access roads, is about eight and a half miles.

And now it’s getting dark, and I’ve found a motel and a Walmart. I spent ages in Walmart copying my next batch of photos onto CD. It said “it will be done in minutes” – and fair enough, a hundred minutes is minutes so no dispute there.

I also found a Lowe’s where I stocked up on electrical items – plugs and sockets and the like,including some colour-coded ones which will be useful.

And now I’m just a stone’s throw from the Canadian border and I’ll be there tomorrow.

-5

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: walmart

Monday 14th September 2015 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT

Thursday 10th September 2015 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES …

Thursday 27th August 2015 – WHAT A STORM!

Monday 17th August 2015 – LAST NIGHT …

Thursday 4th September 2014 – OLD HABITS DIE HARD

Tuesday 1st October 2013 – I’VE BEEN TRAVELLING BACKWARDS TODAY

Thursday 26th April 2012 – THIS PHOTO …

Tuesday 6th September 2011 – I WENT OFF …

Wednesday 31st August 2011 – HERE I AM…

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

Friday 9th October 2010 – TODAY WE CROSSED THE RUBI … ERRR ….. ST LAWRENCE

Thursday 8th October 2010 – A BIG RED BOX …

Wednesday 7th October 2010 – THE ONE THING THAT I’VE …

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