At this campsite we have what are called “Quebec showers”, and regular readers of this rubbish will know exactly what they are. For the new readers, of which there are many these days, this is when the “C” and “F” on the taps does not mean chaud and froidas you might expect, but “cold” and “freezing”. Still, at 07:15 in the morning that woke me up, I’ll tell you that.
Yes, 07:15! I had a lie-in today, one of the reasons for this being that as I am now so close to the Quebec border my phone is picking up a signal again and it has reset the time to Quebec, rather than Maritime time. The second reason being that I had another bad night’s sleep. A pile of campers decided to have a party that went on until I don’t know what time last night and also due to the fact that I’m right by the edge of the road here so every item of traffic passing by makes a noise that wakes me up.
Of course, it can’t be that bad because for much of the night I was away on my travels – another reason for a good lie-in. Some town where I was had picked a fight with two or three car-loads of strangers from another town, and had given them a “right good panning”, as the saying goes. The townspeople were delighted but like most successes of this nature it was quite ephemeral, as the injured parties returned to the town with not just the rest of their townsfolk but the townsfolk of a couple of other towns too, and the result was an orgy of some violence and it was all quite uncomfortable.
From here, I went off for an interview. I had at one time written the script for a film in just two days. The third day, we rehearsed it all and on the fourth day, we filmed it, and this was the track record that appealed to whoever it was who was holding the interview. I wasn’t actually going for the interview – I was running through it in my mind and was making a mental list of everything that I needed to take with me. One part of me was saying that I surely wouldn’t forget everything, but the second part of me, that clearly knew me much better than the other one, was saying that I really ought to be writing this down as I’m certain to forget something important.
But once that was out of the way and I’d had quite a leisurely morning (after all, I am on holiday) I went off on my travels to check on something that I had caught a glimpse of yesterday
And I was right! It is indeed a Morris 1000 convertible. Here in the USA too! This is really quite extraordinary!
It really does make you wonder – here in the 1960s Britain was selling cars all over the world, including to North America (and we’ve seen several examples of British cars of this era on our travels – a Cortina Mk II and a Mini to name but two of them) and yet 20 years later the British couldn’t even sell one in their home country.
In this period Ford UK disappeared. So did Hillman and its offspring, so did Austin and Morris and their offspring. Gone, the lot of them. Rover struggled on for another 10 years selling obsolete copies of Asian cars and Jaguar and Land Rover were being bailed out by foreigners.
Where did it all go wrong?
That wasn’t all that was on offer here at Alburgh either.
We had a couple of other vehicles too. A saloon from the 1920s – the beige one – and inside the garage was a drop-top from an earlier period.
There was no-one around to ask permission to photograph them (you have to do this kind of thing these days) otherwise I would have found out much more about them
No such issues around the corner at Rouse’s Point, New York. Here, the owner was out mowing his lawn and so I went over for a chat – and ended up with the good old traditional American hospitality.
It’s nice to know that, despite all of my moaning, there’s still plenty of the good old American hospitality left although these days, you do have to look for it.
This is a 1949 Hudson that he rescued in 1988 and one of these days he’ll get around to restoring it.
It’s one of the last of the Hudsons, so he says. The company folded because it ra the same product line for 8 years and people who wanted an up-to date vehicle had to look elsewhere. And so despite my earlier ranting, it’s not just the UK that lacks vision and imagination and suffers from complacency.
That wasn’t all that he had either. What we have in this photo is a 1941 Buick 8 saloon as well as an absolutely gorgeous 1946 Buick 8 Hearse – the hearse being fitted with a “Flexible” body, and you can actually see the welds where the body has been customised.
I’d take that one home in a heartbeat too given half a chance. It was beautiful
He had lots of other stuff too but it wasn’t convenient to go to see them. he’d had a notice served on him by the town council to either remove the vehicles or to erect a fence, and a fence was what he was going to erect.
At least he was given the option. I lost count of the threatening letters and the other stuff that I received from Crewe Borough Council over my vehicles. And he said that it’s given him the impulse to do something, and once the fence is up, he’s going to build a great big shed to put them in and, who knows, he might even start work on them.
In between Rouses Point and Alburgh I had stopped at the picnic place at the foot of the big bridge over the Richelieu River between Vermont and New York State.
I’d been here once before, and I certainly don’t remember seeing the fort over there. It’s actually Fort Montgomery and dates from the period of the Border troubles between the USA and Canada in the 1830s and 1840s.
Ironically, by the time that it had been built, the disputes had been settled and so it never saw action and was part-dismantled in the 1930s to provide the stones for the footings of a bridge.
It’s for sale too, if you want to buy it and the island upon which it sits. Surprisingly, it’s not a Government Historic Site but private property, and it’s yours for just $2,950,000. Cheap at half the price.
One thing that I have been noticing though, and here’s a fine example of that, is that at many New York-Vermont state lines, there’s a large open area. It’s almost as if they are expecting Vermont to secede from the Union and so they have prepared the border control immigration points.
Of course, Vermont did used to be a republic (as did Texas) before selling itself out completely to the USA. I’d be intrigued to see what would happen if Vermont were to secede – what action would the USA take?
From Rouses Point I continued my leisurely ramble around Lake Champlain and, sure enough, I came across what I was expecting to find.
A ferry! The first of the holiday for Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly, and also the first for Strider. Strider will have to start getting used to our maritime perambulations
It’s always a bad idea to take me to see a ferry. After all, whenever I do see a ferry, it always makes me cross and today was no exception.
There are three or four ferry crossings across lake Champlain, and this is the second that I’ve taken. Believe me – I’ll be researching into the others in due course and we’ll be doing the business without fail.
I still can’t believe that they don’t have coffee machines on board though. What a waste of a business opportunity.
There were a couple of women here, in a Quebec car, but talking the Francais de Paris. They were trying to take a photo of themselves and so I went over to them to ask if they wanted me to take one of them.
“No thank you” they said, “but isn’t your French good!”. Well, and so it should be after almost 23 years of living there. I would have been disappointed with anything else.
Back on the Vermont side of the lake, I stopped to take a good photo and ended up chatting to a couple who had a house right here – with one of the best views in the entire State, I reckoned.
We ended up discussing building a fieldstone house, something he was quite keen to do as he had a very stony piece of land upstate somewhere. I wished him luck, because although it’s not difficult, it’s quite a complicated procedure.
And on that note, I came home for an early evening.
