…disturbed night last night – hardly surprising seeing as I knew that I needed to be up early.
But that didn’t stop me from going on my travels during the night, such as they were.
I was playing in a rock group and to be honest we weren’t much good – but what worked for us was that we were backing a Bruce Forsyth-kind of character who knew how to entertain the crowds and keep them in suspense as long as possible – hiding in the wings until the climax of the musical accompaniment and then sending on the cleaner or someone like that.
But by 05:30 I had made a conscious decision to rouse myself, pack, and eat my breakfast. Especially the last bit, seeing as it was included. Toast, cornflakes (with my own soya milk) orange juice and, eventually, once I had figured out the machine, coffee.
And much to my surprise I had a phone call. WhatsApp clearly works because Ingrid phoned me for a brief chat and it was nice to hear her voice.
It was only 15 minutes to the ferry terminal and I was second in the queue. So I was soon paid up and down on the quayside.
Apollo came in and, poor thing, she’s looking even sadder an older than she did last time that I was aboard.
47 years old she is now. Surely she can’t go on much longer. But there are no plans to replace her and with the Sir Robert Bond having been sold for scrap, she has to keep going regardless now.
There is, apparently, a type of fish called an “Arctic Char” but I’m imagining a kind of fish dressed in a fur coat that comes round to clean your cabin.
You can still see the signs on the ship written in Finnish and Estonian in the passenger compartment.
This shows you how long it is since Apollo has had a full refit. Even the power sockets are old European 230-volt.
The high winds meant that it was quite a rough crossing – the roughest that I have ever experienced on the Straits of Belle Isle – with the odd crash and bang as we collided with an iceberg or a walrus.
But that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. But there was one guy who was leaning over the rail.
“The trouble with you” I said “is that you have a weak stomach”.
“Rubbish” he retorted. “I’m throwing it as far as everyone else”.
And there’s a young girl on board who is the spitting image of an 11 year old Ginny Weasley starting Hogwarts. I had to look twice to make sure. She and her family were off to “Labby”, which is Labrador City apparently.
I was actually second off the boast when we arrived, which is something of a record.
I made a prominent note of that
But the weather was foul when we arrived. High gusting winds, a typical Labrador mist and it was doing its best to rain down upon us but somehow holding off for the moment.
Not as bad as 2014 but not far off.
As you know, I’ve been to Blanc Sablon on many occasions, but for some reason I’ve never taken any photos of the town.
Last year I’d made out a list of things to do next time I was here, and photographing the place was high on the list.
And so I parked up Strider and went for a little stroll around the town
The area was given its name by Jacques Cartier when he came here on one of his voyages of discovery in the 1530s.
No-one is certain though as to whether it refers to the “Blanc Sablon” which is near his home port of St Malo (just across the bay from where I live) or whether it really dos refer to the white sands that are found here.
And the bay here is another possible site for the elusive “Vinland” of the Norse voyagers.
Regular readersof this rubbis will recall that the area is quite controversial too.
It’s actually in the Province of Quebec but an isoltaed part that is cut off from the rest of the Province, and is known by locals as “the Forgotten Coast”.
They claim that because it’s English-speaking here and so isolated, they are (deliberately) starved of resources, and there is a movement afoot to secede from Quebec and join up with Labrador.
We have to have the obligatory photograph to say that we have arrived, don’t we?
I joined the queue, because it seems to be an obligatory thing these days to take your photograph here, rather like the place that we visited in Monument Valley in 2002.
Strider is of course very photogenic as you might expect. Strawberry Moose would have gone out too but the weather was atrocious and you wouldn’t put a dog out in this, never mind a moose.
Another thing on my “to do” list was to sort out the confusion over the churches in Forteau. And so I went in search of the aforementioned.
There were two that I discovered, and this is the Forteau United Church. I did not, however, discover the Forteau City Church. That must be somewhere else completely.
I must make further enquiries.
Before they started to build the coastal road network in the 1950s, access between the villages was by coastal path.
Nothing had changed here for 200 years since the early settlers and merchants had arrived in the 1740s.
This is the coastal path between Forteau and l’Anse au Clair – the next town to the south. It’s closed these days though because of erosion and landslips.
Way over there in the distance across Forteau Bay (thanks to the telephoto lens and a little digital enhancement) is the lighthouse at Point Amour.
We were there, as you may remember, on our travels in October 2010 when we went to inspect the shipwrecks.
There are the remains of two Royal Navy ships out there – the HMS Lily which ran aground in the 1870s and the HMS Raleigh which ran aground in the early 1920s.
Quite a lot of other ships have come to grief there two, including two in one day in 1941.
Forteau actualy consists today of two separate villages in the past.
Here is the site of Buckle’s Point. It’s on the South Side of the river and it’s where the Channel Islanders under de Quetteville settled.
Today though, the modern village has settled a little further round the bay to the south.
The English settled on the north side of the river andtheir settlement was rather imaginatively called “English Point”.
Today, though, it’s more like the suburbs of Forteau because all of the commercial activity takes place on the south side of the river
Very few people actually stop here and the area is quite often overlooked, just as I am doing right now.
We’ve talked … “at great length” – ed … about the Muskrat Falls and the distribution system that takes the generated current under the Strait of Belle Isle.
When I was looking into it, I noticed that Valard – the company that is doing all of the work – had applied for planning permission to build a quay at the site of their subterranean cable in order to offload their own materials.
And so I went in search of the aforementioned – and although I was locked out of the site, with a little judicious manipulation I was able tohave a butcher’s.
But it doesn’t look big enough to be an alternative landing stage for Apollo if Quebec bans the company from the port at Blanc Sablon.
The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador has a history of grand projects that somehow never seem to come to fruition even though a great deal of money is thrown at them
.Here at Capstan Island a great deal of noise was made about a farm and greenhouses that had been installed on the edge of townand it was even listed as a tourism site where people could come to visit.
Today though, it would be a waste of time to visit because it’s all closed down and abandoned. Part of it has collapsed and all of the roofs have gone.
And as a visitor venue – it’s “closed to visits”.
So much for that then;
When I came here in 2010 I told you that a section of the road that followed the Pinware River was one of the most beautiful that I had driven.
In 2014 however, I noticed that they had by-passed the road with a modern highway over the mountains and that this section had been abandoned.
And so I decided that I would do my best to follow the road round today and see how it was doing and to show you what you have missed.
“This Highway is no longer maintained by the Department of Transport. You drive this road at your own risk” said a notice.
And they were right too. Part of the road has been washed out and it was something of a struggle to findmy way around the obstructions.
But this is why I bought Strider, and quite right too. He made short work of this stretch of highway as long as we took it easy.
And it was well-worth it too.
After the recent rainstorms the Pinware River was in spate and the famous rapids were really impressive today.
The noise was deafening and so I took a little video of it from closer in. When I find a decent internet connection I’ll upload it.
I mentioned the new road just now.
Once I rejoined the main road I took a photo of the new route up over the top of the hills.
I remember watching a large artic struggle up there in first gear back in 2014 and remember wondering what was going through the minds of the planners when they re-routed heavy vehicles up there.
This mountain pass isquite significant because once we pass through it and out the other side, we are at the coast.
Red Bay and its famous 16th-Century Basque whaling station is just the other side.
But for some reason this path always reminds me of somewhere in Scotland and I can’t remember where it is.
First thing to do at Red Bay is of course to go and check to see how the MV Bernieris getting on.
She was delivering coal here one November in the 1930s when she broke free from her moorings during a storm and was driven across the bay onto the rocks of Saddle Island.
And here she sits today, looking sadder and sadder as more and more weather takes its toll.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Red Bay has an exciting claim to fame.
A student was researching the history of Basque whaling in North America when she came across a whole pile of legal documents from the 16th Century relating to a dispute between a whaling captain and his financial backer over the loss of a couple of whaling ships.
The losses were described in such detail that she reckoned that it would be possible to identify the site of the whaling station from aerial photography.
Accordingly, she pored over thousands of photographs and maps, until she came across one covering Red Bay – and then the light went on.
She came over here to do fieldwork and found, in the spot where she reckoned one of the buildings to be, some red roofing tiles of a type unknown in North America but quite common in 16th Century Northern Spain.
She even rediscovered the cemetery where several sailors and other workers had been buried.
But the best was yet to come;
The story told how one of the ships had been gripped by a sudden storm in November, driven across the bay and wrecked on Saddle Island;
This sounded so much like the story of the Bernier that she went and looked where the Bernierhad come to rest. And sure enough – the Bernier was sitting on top of a 16th Century Basque whaling vessel.
All in all, several Basque ships were lost in the Bay and most have been identified.
Furthermore, they even discovered a Basque rowing boat that had sunk at the shore and because of the cold peaty water that was still in a surprisingly good condition.
That has been recovered and is on display in the museum here.
The road north from Red Bay is in my opinion one of the worst sections of the Trans-Labrador Highway – and that’s saying something.
It wasn’t opened until 1992 – prior to that, access was only by ship – and it looked at one time as if the road had never ever been maintained since the day that it was built.
But it won’t be like that for much longer because they are making headway with the road improvements that they had started in 2014 are well advanced.
And so our drive north is punctuated by sights such as these.
Diggers and graders, and lorry-loads of gravel being brought to the site.
And compactors too. We mustn’t forget tham. When I was on the Trans-Labrador Highway in 2010 I saw a grand total of two. There were two compactors working on this little stretch of highway.
But it’s not all like that. There are sections of the Labrador Coastal Drive that bring back many happy memories. So much so that on two occasions I had Strider going sideways.
He’s rear-wheel drive and relatively lightly-loaded and so the rear end hops around everywhere. So hit a bump or a pothole at the wrong angle and off you go, and you have to struggle to regain control.
I bet that the driver of the car coming towards me on one occasion had to stop and change his underwear;
But just look at this!
This is why they are carrying out all of the groundwork here. The aim is to asphalt all of the highway from Red Bay to Goose Bay. Such are the “benefits” that the Muskrat Falls and the power of Valard Construction have brought to the Coasts of Labrador.
And before anyone says anything, I do realise that i’m a tourist looking at things from my own perspective. I don’t have to live here in the depths of winter.
After acouple of mileswe have the double-tracked asphalt and I can set the cruise control accordingly.
But we can also see that they are realigning the road. Where the road runs through a cutting, it’s often impassible in winter because the snow drifts in and packs tight. It becomes a real engineering job to move it.
Going over the top means that the snow will be loose and blowy, and thus easier to move with a snowplough.
We don’t stay on the asphalt for long though. We’re soon back in the gravel.
And I’m soon driving over Lodge Bay too. I’ve been past here several times as you know but for some reason or other i’ve never ever stopped to take a photograph of the place.
Not that there’s too much to see of course, because it’s only a small place. In fact, had it not been on the direct route of the Labrador Coastal Drive, it’s likely that it too would have fallen victim to the Province’s resettlement programme.
But this is what you are faced with around here. In severe weather they simply close the road and that’s that.
If you are a traveller and are confronted with the closed gate, you simply park up, build yourself an igloo and go off hunting seal until the Spring.
After all, if you are the kind of person who is in a hurry, you shouldn’t be out around here in Labrador anyway. It’s not for the type of person who has a timetable or an agenda.
Another place that was high on my list of places to visit was Mary’s Harbour.
I’d been here before in 2010 but had been sidetracked by the fact that I had forgotten the change of time zone just up the road so I had lost half an hour.
Not a good plan when you have a ferry to catch and plenty of other things to do, so I couldn’t hang around too much.
Mary’s Harbour is another one of these “resettlement points” but its history goes back much farther than Joey Smallwood.
Outside just off the coast is the island of Battle Harbour and at one time this was the most important place on the whole of the Labrador coast.
However, almost 90 years ago, like most places in Canada, Battle Harbour was the victim of fire, and almost everything on the island was destroyed.
Seeing which way the wind was likely to blow in the future (which comes as quite a surprise to most people) it was decided to abandon the island and settle somewhere else, but on the mainland close by.
Mary’s Harbour seemed like the ideal place to be, seeing as it was close by, had a deep natural harbour that stretched a good way inland and was thus sheltered from the bad weather.
And over the course of time, the inhabitants of many other coastal communities have been resettled here, often quite controversially.
But then, this is not the place to discuss the Resettlement Policy. We’ll be doing enough of that when we arrive in North West River.
Abandoning a good rant before we even start, I make tracks northwards. I’m heading for Port Hope Simpson where I hope to be able to find a bed for the night.
And sure enough, I do. Campbell’s Place is home to home-made bread, home made jams from local ingredients and,like everywhere else in the town, home to the slowest internet connection on the planet.
But there’s a single room at what passes these days for a resonable price, and the bed seems quite comfortable too. First thing is to plug in the slow cooker while I have a shower and wash my undies.
Tea is pasta, mushrooms and vegetable soup, and aren’t I glad that I spent this $14:00 on the slow cooker? Yes, i’ve just seen the prices of the takeaway food.
No internet worth talking about of course, and so I can crack on with the … good grief! … 127 photographs that I took today.
And then a lie down while I listen to the Navy Lark on the radio – and promptly fall asleep. It’s been a long day today.
and I’ve just written a new record of 3027 words too – so there!
