It’s Monday today – time I was heading for the hills.
Consequently I went round to the tyre depot to say goodbye to everyone, and then I set off northwards.
The first bit of excitement today occurs at St Basile.
It looks as if that pickup has pushed that trailer into the tyre place here at St Basile to have a tyre fitted or something, and as it’s drawn away from the depot, a wheel has come off and gone hurtling across the yard.
They are going to be there for a little while while they sort all of that out.
On the outskirts of Edmundston is a big Ford garage, and there on the front they had a Ranger 4×4, black, 2000, extended cab.
It was a bit tatty, painted over rust and that kind of thing with a few new bits recently fitted, like a drivers side rear spring hanger rear mount. Sold as seen, they wanted $5900 which is flaming extortionate if you ask me.
Nevertheless I approached a salesman and he came over with the keys. And as you might expect, the Ranger had a flat battery and so he couldn’t start it up. And so he went to fetch the battery pack and it wouldn’t start with that.
His response to all of that was “il ne start pas” (he really did say that!), baissé’d his bras’es and wandered away from the scene.
So what is all of this for a garage? Cars on the forecourt at that kind of price and not only can they not start them up to show to an interested customer, they couldn’t even be bothered to make an effort. It’s a fine advertisement for a garage, that it.
When I came by here in 2011 I somehow managed to miss out on visiting the town of Degelis, up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains just over the Quebec border.
I needed to put that right, and so here I am, even if I don’t have a great deal of time to be diverted from my mission. This is the view of the town from the hill towards the north end of the town.
“Dégelis” in old French means that it never freezezs, and this is a reference to the volume and force of the local water which creates too much friction for the river to freeze over.
And when you see a street called “chemin du barrage”, you know that there’s going to be a dam and hydro-electric turbine somewhere in the vicinity.
The road down to there follows the track of the old Temiscouata Railway that we encountered at Cabano in 2011, and this takes me after a couple of miles to the barrage and turbine. It’s a nice place to go for a wander, and also to eat my butty.
I drove through Cabano and out the other side and went to visit Fort Ingall, something else that I didn’t manage to see in 2011.
This is a reconstruction of a fort, built in 1839, after excavations in the 1960s had revealed its exact layout. Back in those days, the USA claimed all of the land up as far as the lake here and the British were having none of that – hence the area was quite heavily garrisoned.
You can see the attraction of fortifying this particular area. Not only is this the site of the main portage between the St Lawrence and the Saint John watersheddings, the view down the lake from the roof of the watchtower is stunning.
Any group of people fortifying this spot not only would control the portage, but would control the water traffic travelling up and down the lake and thus cut off all of the communications and trade between Lower Canada and the Maritime Provinces.
After much binding in the marsh, my road takes me back to the Trans-Canada Highway over the Appalachians.
When you look at all of these lorries coming along here from Halifax and Saint John, it really does make you think about the people in charge of the Témiscouata Railway who couldn’t make the railway line pay back in the 1980s.
Put the loads of just a quarter of these lorries onto the rails, powered by the electricity created by the hydro plants along the line, and not only would you have a thriving railway line, you would also have a great deal less pollution and environmental scarring of the landscape.
And the way that oil prices are going and all of the electricity that Canada can create, Canada will come to regret slashing its rail network to shreds.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the yard of Les Oakes in Cheadle, Staffordshire. I always thought of that place being unique in the world,and so I was astonished to find the same place here in Quebec.
It’s another old guy who travels the country looking for “exhibits” to collect and restore, just like Les Oakes, and he took the trouble to show me around.
I was speechless (which doesn’t happen all that often, does it?) and I made a note of the address so that I can come back here again to scavenge stuff for my property.
Oooohhhhhh!!! Look what I have found!!!
At one time, the entire railway network of North America was built on wooden trestle bridges and viaducts but little by little, they have been replaced. You will have to look long and hard to find one that survived.
And here we are, in the Appalachians on an old dirt-track road and the trackbed of the old Temiscouata Railway passes overhead on a trestle bridge. This has cheered me up considerably.
My route to the river is going over some impressive roads, thanks to The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav.
But it’s not just the roads that are impressive, it’s the weather, and in particular, the cloud formations. This is one of the most stunning cloud formations that I’ve ever seen, Spanish Plumes not excluded.
And you’ll notice that the light is now slowly starting to go. I need to put my foot down.
At last I encounter the St Lawrence River – right down there between the towns of Riviere du Loup and Trois Pistoles, as taken from a ridge just outside the town of St Paul de la Croix.
Once I hit the shore, I’ll be looking for a place to stay the night and then head to Montreal. This will be my last night of sleeping in the Dodge as tomorrow night I’ll be in a motel so that I can properly wash all of my crockery and cutlery before I file them away in my storage locker until next time.
I can’t wait to come back.
