Saturday 4th October 2014 – A LONG DAY

We wawoke with the dawn all stiff and cold, with the weathe rhaving broken and it was now pouring down with rain. But, quite surprisingly, we hadn’t felt a thing through the night and slept the sleep of the dead.

The cafe place was however open and so we went for breakfast, the whole point of sleeping on the car park. And the cafe did us proud too for which we were both grateful.

A 5-minute drive from there took us to Weare, New Hampshire, and this was where the engine needed to be. We arrived just as they were opening up at 08:00, which was what we had intended. Half an hour saw the engine off the back of the truck and another half an hour saw it stripped right down (it’s nice to watch professionals work and the key to all of this is that they have their workshop spotlessly cleean and all of their tools right to hand and isn’t that a lesson to me?)

It turns out that a big-end shell had seized onto the crankshaft and in a high-performance racing engine at 8600 rpm, a broken con rod was inevitable. The broken rod had thrown itself around the lower part of the block and the sump and damaged just about everything that there was to damage.

While Darren was paying his respects to the engine, I was taken out for a walk by the owner’s father. he has a collection of vehicles from the early 1950s and he spent a delightful hour or so showing me around his vehicles. I really was in my element there and I was having a really good time, even if Darren wasn’t.

We stopped back at the cafe for lunch on our way back and then in the driving rain headed for home. A stop for tea at Dysarts just outside Bangor and then another refuelling at Oakfield. A relatively-painless crossing of the border saw us back here at 22:00 (don’t forget there’s a time difference of an hour between Eastern Time and Maritime Time) and that’s one more project accomplished before I leave.

Friday 3rd October 2014 – WE WENT TO NEW HAMPSHIRE THIS AFTERNOON

Darren had to go down there this afternoon after work to take the engine of his pulling truck back to the makers so that they could have a look at it.

However, he had suffered a slight welding flash last night and that makes driving uncomfortable in the sunlight, especially as there’s a 200-mile stretch between Houlton and Portland in Maine where the road is full south-east and the bright setting sun is in your face for the entire distance. Consequently, a second driver was required for that leg, and I was the only one not doing anything.

I’d had a bad night too, so I ran a few errands here and there, and then crashed out in a layby for an hour or so. I may as well use the free time profitably.

We were held up at the border by the US Border Patrol, as anyone reading these notes might have prophesied. Apparently the engine is classed as “commercial goods” as “it can be used to generate income”, hence an import tax was required. What income it could generate with two con-rods sticking through the sump became a matter of quite some considerable discussion.

Apparently anglers who cross the border with fishing rods, and golfers with golf clubs, and anyone with a car or van might now be liable to a US import tax now – all these items are capable of generating income. And what about a man who crosses the border with a woman? There is an enormous number of street corners in the USA after all and so the income-generating potential is enormous.

But the USA customs officials were intransigent and that was that. But whatever is going on in the USA? It’s almost as if they don’t want people to come to their country to spend … gulp … a good deal of money … … in their country.

We fuelled up at Oakfield and then I took the wheel for the 200-mile dash down the highway. A big Chevy C5500 with a V8 6.6-litre Duramax diesel engine. It’s the biggest thing that I’ve driven since I had a tour bus, and all the way through the rush hours of Bangor, Augusta and Portland too. And I managed it without hitting anything and killing anyone too.

Once it was dark, Darren retook the wheel and we drove a little further on to a shopping mall just off the highway where he met a few of his friends for a chat, and then we continued on along the old highways, passing many of the places that I drove through on my way here, right into the depths of darkest New Hampshire. We stopped in the car park of a small cafe-restaurant place, Darren on the front seats and me in the back, and I went out like a light and that was that.

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Thursday 2nd October 2014 – IT WAS FREEZING THIS MORNING.

And I’m not joking either. It might be a slight exaggeration though, for it was 2°C outside when I set out. And there was a huge hanging cloud everywhere that meant that you couldn’t see a thing.

Up on the hill at the end of the road, you can see what was going on. It seems that Centreville is suffering the wrath of the Gods today and is swathed in this huge hanging cloud while the rest of the region is bathed in glorious sunshine.

I don’t know what we have all done to deserve that, but here it is and here’s the proof.

I set out to continue my exploration of the area and managed to find my way onto the old railway bridge that I featured yesterday.

It’s evidently seen much better days than this and it’s not the strongest bridge over which I have walked in my time. But at least it’s still here and not been swept away. And it was a beautiful day in the sunshine out of the hanging cloud.

I mentioned … "a few times now" – ed … that there was a railway line that followed the Saint John River between the coast and Edmundston in the north, and it crossed the river just outside Woodstock.

I went for a prowl around in the area and found the old bridge. Much to my surprise, most of that is still here too. One span is missing but nevertheless, the main part of the bridge is still standing and that looks quite impressive even if it is in worse condition than the one at Centreville.

There are the remains of an old rural railway station near here and the goods yard has been transformed into a commercial vehicle scrap yard. I had a slow drive past to see what I could see, and attracted the attention of a couple of the employees who took a decided interest in what I was up to.

I had my lunch on the car park that is by the “lake” in the River Meduxnekeag (I hope that I’ve spelled that correctly) in the beautiful sunshine, and then read a book and had a play on the guitar for a while. I didn’t feel much like going anywhere else seeing how nice the day was and how good was my little spec here.

And why not? I’m on holiday and I should be relaxing. It’s what holidays are for.

And autumn is definitely here. No wonder they call it “fall” in North America because I’ve never seen leaves fall so quickly from the trees as I did today. And you will be surprised at the noise that they make too. I would never have believed it.

Wednesday 1st October 2014 – NOT FOR NOTHING …

… is this area known as the French Fry Capital Of The World. And not for nothing does it have the world’s largest food processing plant. It’s the potato harvesting time and you can’t move on the roads without squidging a potato that has fallen off the back of an overleaded potato lorry.

And with the weather having been dry for the last while or so there are clouds of dust all over the horizon where the potato rippers are out harvesting this years crop. All this automation is a far cry from when I used to go spud-bashing as a kid.

You never know – the McCain Frozen Chips that you eat next yar light be the very ones that you are seeing here being ripped out

After that, I’ve been hunting down old railway lines.

As we mentioned the other day, there was formerly a railway line that ran along the banks of the Saint Jonh River, and a branch left the main line at Woodstock to come up to Centreville. In fact, the tractor-pulling track in Centreville is situated on the former site of the railway goods yard.

I set out today to see if there were any vestiges of the old line still remaining, and here on the edge of town I found, not darkness, but an old bridge that very likely carried the line over the river that runs through the town.

It looks as if it’s in the correct place and going in the correct direction so it’s a fairly safe bet.

Further along the road is the town of Lakeville and on the back road that runs (eventually) to the Saint John River is where the old track bed crosses the road.

And knowing nothing at all about anything related to this railway line, this is the site that looks to me like the most logical site to have built the railway station.

As I have said before, only in the UK has everything that there is to be known about all railway lines in the country been recorded and documented. In all other countries of the world, the old abandoned railway lines have simply been forgotten.

And as I have also said before … "and you will say again" – ed … Canada ruthlessly out-Beechinged Beeching when it came to savaging the country’s rail network. There’s practically nothing left of it, and passenger transport is definitely a thing of the past.

This afternoon I spent sitting in a Ford Ranger 4×4 pickup. 2011 (so it is probably one of the very last to be made), white, one owner, main-agent maintained, 49,000 kms on the clock and looking as if it’s just come out of the factory. It was love at first sight, I’ll tell you that, but the price tag of a mere $16950 means that the love will remain unrequited.

But it was a magnificent vehicle, a credit to its previous owner, and probably worth every penny of its sale tag.

It was at the Ford main agent in Woodstock and I ended up having a long chat with the owner. They do have Rangers in fairly often but very few make it onto the forecourt. Most of them are sent straight away to the auctions at Moncton. Anyway, he now knows what I’m looking for and, more in hope that expectation, he has my phone number.

I crashed out this afternoon at the side of the road – I had another really bad night last night and was still awake at 05:00 – and then came back here for tea. Now I’m off for an early night.

And October already.

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Tuesday 30th September 2014 – I’VE BEEN SHOPPING TODAY

I was planning just to chill out a little today but then Rachel asked me what I was doing. And so, a few minutes later, I was on my way to the bank. But a bank with a difference, to whit, a bank in the USA. Darren is of course quite often on his travels to tractor-pulling events in the USA and so needs USA cash for expenses, but then his prize money (because he almost always wins something) is paid in cheques likewise. Consequently, it makes sense to have a USA bank account.

I was once again nailed at the border by a very unfriendly USA border guard and I’m beginning to hate that country with an undisguised passion. I’m absolutely convinced that they must comb the ranks of the USA civil service for the most unpleasant and arrogant officers that they can find and then dress them up in border guard uniforms and stand them at the frontier. As you know, it’s long been my contention that the USA doesn’t have any enemies at all except those that it has created for itself, and this is where the border guards have contributed enormously.

And don’t forget that I’m white and English-speaking too. Whatever must it be like to be a brown-skinned foreigner?

And this reminds me. In all of the years that I have been crossing the border in and out of the USA at all kinds of different border posts I haven’t seen any USA border control person other than a white-skinned one.

So abandoning yet another good rant for the time being, off I went to the bank at Mars Hill to pay in a couple of cheques.

Over the road from the bank at Mars Hill is an IGA supermarket and Rachel had given me shopping list of things that she needed; so I duly obliged.

And that’s not the best of it either. If you remember from a few weeks ago I found an IGA supermarket in Quebec that sold some ice cream made with almond milk.

Here in this one, there was ice cream made with coconut milk. Four different types too, and who could resist the chocolate version, even though the temperature was a mere 7°C? And delicious it was too. I thoroughly enjoyed that.

Make no mistake – I’ll be back there again.

Having done the chores, I then went off on my own little adventures around the shops. The most exciting find was in Presque Ile where in the Graves supermarket next to Mardens, I discovered not only a pile of vegetarian and vegan food products but about 6 different types of hummus. Yes, despite all of the USA-bashing that goes on all over the place … "as if…" – ed … it’s specialist-diet ranges are light years ahead of whatever mainland Europe can offer and it’s the place to be for products such as this. France, take note.

There’s a new chain of shops opened up in the area too, called The Tractor Supply Company or something like that. It’s mainly for farmers (as indeed you might expect with a name like that) and Darren recommended that I go for a nosey around in there.

He was right too.

As you know, I’ve been buying a few odds and ends of sockets and that sort of thing while I’ve been over here, and in here they had a , well, agricultural-quality reversible ratchet that had a half-inch socket end on one side and a three-eights socket end on the other. And all for $9:99 too. Being designed for farmers, it’s huge and well-nigh indestructible, just the thing for me. It’ll go nicely with my 25-inch power bar.

So that was everything that I did today (apart from the obligatory refuelling of course) and then it was time to confront the border guards again.

Just for a change, there was a human being at the border control on the Canadian side and after what can be best described as “a brief exchange of pleasantries”, I was on my way.

If only every border crossing person could be as friendly as this, it would be a very agreeable way of spending the time, going back and too across the border, instead of having to quite literally run the gauntlet of the nasty and aggressive people whom one usually finds in places like this. They must really have some unfortunate control issues with their spouses at home that they have to vent their spleen and demonstrate their authority to the poor and wretched passers-by who have come to invest a little money to prop up their crumbling economy.

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Monday 29th September 2014 – I HAD A QUIET DAY TODAY.

It was an early start, however, because Darren and Rachel had things to do, places to go and people to see prior to setting off to work and of course they would want to make sure that the house was properly locked up before leaving.

That’s not a problem to me. I went off in search of a car wash as the Dodge was rather dirty.

I didn’t think to take a photo of it before I washed it, but this is what it was like at Paradise River in Labrador after 500kms of dirt road. There was another 1400kms to travel after this photo so that you can work out for yourselves how the Dodge ended up.

That little search took me to Perth Andover where for just $3:00 I gave the Dodge the works and it looks a little more respectable now.

From there, I found a little spot by the Saint John River to write up my notes and do some work on the laptop before finding a convenient Tim Horton’s by the Trans Canada Highway to upload everything.

On the way back to Centreville I went for an explore down a couple of old sectors of “Trans Canada 1”, the first go at the Trans-Canada Highway before the road was widened and realigned.

There was a church there in Lahue Road, an old cut-off sector, that caught my eye and so I went for a prowl around the cemetery. It seemed that everyone in there was called Pierce. That’s hardly surprising – these areas were opened up after the resolution of the border issues with the USA in 1847 and it would be quite common for just one pioneer family to open up the first farmstead and as the sons came of age and married, the surrounding forest would be cut down and the area of farming land would expand to provide work and produce for the new families.

What had caught my eye however were the foundations of an old bridge. There was a railway line up the Saint John valley I remember reading somewhere that it came to grief when the railway bridge was swept away by a huge ice floe.

Of course, I have no evidence to suggest that this might have been it, but I can always make further enquiries at a later date.

And I almost bought a vehicle to day, and I bitterly regret that I didn’t because apart from one small thing, it would have been perfect for me. When I tell you what it costs me to hire a vehicle every time that I come over, you would die of shock, as I regularly do. In the 5 years that I’ve been coming here I could have bought several new ones.

But a local garage owner, whom I know, phoned me to tell me of a vehicle that he had just taken in part exchange. It’s a 2008 GMC Canyon extended-cab pickup, 4-wheel drive with off-road pack, underguards and side fenders and all of this kind of thing, and a 6-foot pickup bed. It would have been mine for something like $6,000 or so, and so I immediately dashed round.

But there’s an issue with these vehicles. A straight-6 engine wouldn’t fit in the wheelbase so they had to chop off a cylinder to make a straight-5, and this causes the oil pump to be off-centre. Consequently, there’s not enough oil reaching one of the end cylinders and so they are notorious for burning out a valve after about 160,000 kms and this manifests itself in a chronic misfire that costs thousands of dollars to fix (it’s a waste of time rebuilding a standard cylinder head and even a bigger waste of time buying a second-hand head).

So Darren started it up and, sure enough, it has a misfire and 167,000 kms on the clock.

You’ve no idea how disappointed I am because this would have been exactly the vehicle that would have done me for all around Labrador and places like this, and with a pop-up camper on the pick-up bed it would have been perfect. Apart from the misfire it was in perfect condition and a credit to its previous owner.

Still, if it’s a suspect vehicle, it’s a suspect vehicle and that is that.

Sunday 28th September 2014 – A DAY OFF (WELL, ALMOST)

Sunday is of course a day of rest. And so we had something like a day of rest. No-one surfaced until about 10:30 which was just as well because I had had a really bad night – at 04:00 I was still awake and I don’t know why.

After a leisurely breakfast Darren and I went up to the tyre shop with the intention of changing a tyre on a tractor but the farmer hadn’t left us the wheel and so we had to rule that out, so we came home and spent the rest of the afternoon loading up the engine out of Darren’s pulling truck onto the flatbed of his lorry. I didn’t mention, did I, that at the tractor pull at Millinocket last weekend, the pulling truck threw a con-rod out through the sump and it’s made something of a mess of the sump and block. It’s going to have to go back to the makers this weekend in New Hampshire for them to have a look at it and see where it all went wrong.

Some time during the procedure I had an attack of cramp and it’s probably the worst that I’ve had so far. It didn’t ease up as quickly as it normally does and even several hours later I was having difficulty moving about.

After tea, Rachel and I had a very long chat and then I went for an early night to recover from the difficult night that I had had on Saturday night.

Saturday 27th September 2014 – BACK IN NEW BRUNSWICK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday 26th September 2014 – AND WHAT A WAY TO START THE DAY

Indeed!

I’ve found out just now that the ferry that I had intended to take was, from Baie Comeau to Matane, no longer running. It seems that they are doing some work at the quayside to accommodate this new super-ferry that they have ordered, and that is that until the spring.

All traffic has been diverted to Godbout down the Gulf and so that’s my next step – to drive all the way down there. Stopping off to take a good look at the Alcoa aluminium plant on the way.

I was at Godbout for 10:00 where I was told that the next ferry would be at 14:00. And this is our ship, the Camille Marcoux, coming in about 15 minutes late to take us to Matane.

And it’s a good job that I had the patience to wait in the queue until the Camille Marcoux arrived and not go off a-wandering, because there were only 5 spare spaces for unbooked vehicles and they had to use a shoehorn to fit those in – and I was third. Otherwise I would have had to wait with the 20-odd vehicles left behind for the 18:00 ferry, and then there would be no guarantee that I would cross even then.

The cars were so close together that it was not possible to walk between them in certain places – it was like a labyrinth or a maze. The Dodge was parked hard-up against a wall and I remember that in order to leave the vehicle, I had to open the door as far as I could, which was like 12 inches, reach out and open the sliding door behind, squeeze out into the space where the rear door was, close the front door and squeeze my way past the front of the Dodge, closing the sliding door behind me.

And getting back into the Dodge ended up being something of a performance as well. It wasn’t helped by the plate of chips that I had had in the restaurant. But at least I’m in the Dodge now. And on the ferry too, and that was the important thing.

From here, I drove straight over the mountains to Campbelltown and then to St Leonards. And despite how beautiful everything is here, I didn’t stop to take any photos because I was in a rush. I can do this journey again when I have more time.

But it’s not strictly true that I didn’t take any photos. Some photos cry out to be taken, such as this one here at St Florence. Just here on the edge of the town it’s clearly not just Peel’s “View Hulloa” that would awaken the dead.

I stopped at the side of a church in some town in order to make some tea – mixed bean salad with macaroni and tomato sauce. Half-expecting to be moved on but no-one bothered me.

From here I headed off and stopped for a coffee at Tim Hortons in some other town along the road. And here we had an incident that brought a smile to my face. The road over from Campbelltown to St Leonards is the limit of Acadia, and the serving wench, not knowing whether I was an anglophone or a francophone, spoke to me in bot languages.

"Which do you prefer?" I asked her
"It doesn’t matter," she replied. "I’m perfectly bilingual"
"Well, I’m perfectly trilingual" I responded
"Really?" whe asked incredulously.

"Yes indeed" I retorted. "I’m equally at home speaking English, French and b******t".

Once the hilarity had subsided and I had finished my tasks, I set off down the hill to the Trans-Canada Highway at the bottom of the valley and headed off to find a parking place for the night.

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Thursday 25th September 2014 – A NATIONAL DISGRACE

I settled down last night in a comfortable little spot in an old abandoned sand quarry on the shore of the lake, but I wasn’t there for long. An hour or so after I had gone to sleep we had a torrential downpour that awoke me, and of course a sodden sand quarry is no place to be in a vehicle like a Dodge.

I promptly removed myself and set up camp on the car park at the back of the mall – the only covered mall in the whome of Labrador, apparently.

It seems that this car park is however the hang-out for the local youths and so there was some noise going on for a while, but once they all went home to mummy, that was that. I don’t remember a thing, except for the occasional squalls of rain

I was awake before the alarm too, 06:20, having had a really good night’s sleep, and then I went off to find an internet connection.

But it has struck me while I’m here at this shopping mall that places like Tim Horton’s are a huge environmental disaster. There’s a queue of about 50 vehicles at the drive-in (and not just cars and vans – there’s a couple of lorries in this one), engines all idling away pumping who knows what into the atmosphere, and then everyone receives a throwaway fibre cup that ends up in landfill or the local stream or on the side of the road.

Big fan that I am, especially as they now offer free wi-fi to all their customers and I am an eager subscriber (it’s how all of this rubbish gets onto the net when I’m on the road), I always take a reusable thermal mug with me when I go in.

What there needs to be is a couple of severe environmental taxes on issuing a throwaway packaging and for using the drive-in.

After the coffee, I went to the grocery shop to buy a few food supplies for the next leg of the journey and wandered off around the city to take a few selected photos. We’ll start the day as we mean to go on and to make up for all of the photos that I took but were lost were lost last time that I was here.

And then after that it was time to hit the road.

Crossing into the Province of Quebec I paid a visit to Fermont. This is a company town owned by Arcelor Mittal and services the astonishing iron-ore mine at Mont Wright.

The showpiece of Fermont, well, for me at any rate, is the world’s biggest dumper. To give you an idea of the size, my mouth is level with the centre hub of the wheel, and the tyres are 37:00×57 and there aren’t too many any tyres bigger than that.

This is just a small part of the iron ore mine at Mont Wright. Its size renders one speechless, and if it can render me speechless then it really must be something, as any of my friends will tell you.

But as far as I am aware, there is nothing like this mine anywhere else on earth. Its scale is staggering and its proportions are breathtaking. The heap of mine tailings stretches for mile upon mile upon mile.

The Trans-Labrador Highway becomes quite simply Highway 389 once we have passed the border between Quebec and Labrador, and this is what you can expect from the highway. And in places it’s far, far worse than this.

And to prove that a lack of skill and ability in Maths will never ever hold you back in the Quebec Government, we are told on the Quebec Tourist Information Service’s daily road reports that one can travel the 67kms between Mont Wright and Fire Lake in 1 hour at an average speed of 50kph.

Talking of Fire Lake, the old iron mine that was mothballed years ago has been resurrected and now working full-tilt.

So much so that out here at Fire Lake in the wilderness miles from anywhere we have a connection with the Cartier Railway that runs between Mont Wright and Port Cartier and not only that, there’s a marshalling yard here for the freight trains taking away the ore and this was certainly not here in 2010.

There is no sadder place anywhere on earth than in an abandoned cemetery, except an abandoned cemetery in a ghost town. And here at Gagnon we have a real ghost town complete with the aforesaid.

Being a mining community, it was abandoned when the ore at Gagnon Mine gave out (sometime in the late 1980s) and many of these graves relate to comparatively young people as you might expect, being a mining community. There are people whose date of birth is later than mine so they would all have family and friends, but I do wonder how many of these still have visitors and whether the Catholic Church sends a priest up here every so often to say mass over the departed souls.

Or are these people abandoned too?

I made the effort to hunt down the old mine workings and eventually, after much binding in the marsh and scraping the underside of the Dodge (missing the sump by millimetres) I found them.

The mine is just a huge scar in the land that is now filled with water and is nothing but a huge lake now. But I was horrified to find that the mine tailings are piled up everywhere all over the place and absolutely no effort has been made to clean up and restore the land.

This is a shocking indictment of the Canadian Government’s laissez-faire attitude towards the rape of the countryside and there is an environmental catastrophe up here. But because it’s out of the public view and no-one ever comes up here except intrepid … "and modest" – ed … adventurers such as Yours Truly, it’s quite okay.

I am ashamed to report this, and the Canadian Government should be thoroughly ashamed of itself for having allowed it. The abandonment of the victims of man’s greed and the desolation of the countryside just goes to show to what depths humans will sink. That hole must be hundreds of feet deep.

On a brighter note, they were clearing away the edge of the road when I was up here in 2010
to improve the visibility and to give the local fauna a sporting chance of motorists seeing them before crashing into them, but they seem not to have kept up the work.

It’s all deciduous trees that have thus grown back and the autumn colours here are stunning. It really is the most beautiful place on earth and autumn really is the most beautiful time to see it, especially when the sun is out.

From here though, it was a thrash (such as one can do around here) down the highway to Baie Comeau and a motel for the night. It’s a week since I’ve had a shower and even I’m starting to notice it. Tomorrow I’ll be crossing the St Lawrence to the southern shore, New Brunswick and civilisation.

And as I go, I’ll leave you with this photo that I took along the route, and let you make up your own caption for it.

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Wednesday 24th September 2014 – THE GREAT DECEPTION

Yes, I’m going to be talking rubbish … "well, there’s a novelty!" – ed … in a minute.

But before I do that, let me show you my nice and comfy little spec on the harbour at Goose Bay this morning.

Last night, I finished off my notes, made a good tea and then went to bed. Thoroughly painless until the alarm went off at about 06:50. I didn’t feel a thing.

And even though the temperature had dropped to zero by the time I awoke, with ice on the puddles outside and ice even on the inside of the windscreen, that didn’t inconvenience me for a minute. It was the sleep of the dead last night.

By 07:04 I’m on the road. I need to warm up the car, defrost the ice and charge up the laptop so I’m not going to hang about until all of that has been done. I’ve fuelled up half from the fuel can too, saving half of it for later. It has to be emptied before it can go back into storage anyway and it has served its purpose, easing my mind around these enormously long stretches of fuel-less highways. For the next few sections of the highway, it’s a more-realistic 300 kilometres.

While the car is warming and the laptop is charging, I go for a drive around Happy Valley to see what there is to see.

We find a grass lawn – yes, real grass growing here. It’s not quite the High Arctic here. And we also find an old early-1950s car. However have they managed to protect this from the elements?

The queue for Tim Horton’s is enormous. The longest one yet. I upset everyone by driving in through the out door as Idon’t want the drive-in services, and the queue inside is just as long. I have a little smile thinking to myself about what might happen if I were to imitate Charles Hawtrey in Carry on Cowboy and shout “Gold Strike at Bear Creek”. But not only would the customers immediately shoot off like lightning, so would the personnel and so I would be no better off. Old Frontier traditions die hard in Labrador.

and coffee at Tim Horton’s was first money (apart from fuel) that I have spent since Deer Lake and how many years ago was that?

But how times have changed here over the last four years.It’s like the M6 down here too this morning. There are 5 or 6 vehicles in front of meand one or two behind. And we are in the flaming sub-arctic. This place isn’t anything like what it was four years ago at all. In those days you were lucky to see one car per hour.

Now, this is how I always pictured Labrador to be. Log cabins by the side of rapids in fast-flowing rivers, and I’m glad to see that at least there is some of it left.

No dog sleds though. I’m told that the last working dog team in the region was retired in 1994. Everyone has snowmobiles these days, but where do you find fuel for them in the wilderness? And you can’t eat them if your supplies run out.

This is Gull Island, or as it is known by the local First Nation Innu community, Tshiashkueish. And I can’t even pronounce that with my own teeth in.

I’ve arrived during the Innu celebration gathering, which is taking place from 22-26 September and once more I’m disappointed by everyone arriving in 4×4 pickups rather than dogsleds. Whatever happened to native traditions? But still, it shouldn’t be overlooked that it’s these tribal gatherings are what is keeping the Nation together and I’m glad about that. These days, it seems that the emphasis is on supressing minority customs and traditions.

But I’m having a huge disappointment on this road. When I came by here in 2010 I struggled for hours and hours over some of the worst roads in the world. Not today, though. With the exception of 30 kms in the middle, the entire highway has been re-aligned and surfaced with asphalt as you can see. There’s a bit of the old road over which I desperately struggled, and you can see what it looks like today.

A length that took me five hours to drive, I’ve just done it in 50 minutes at … well, 80kph is the official speed limit here but the road is so much better than that.

Of course, I’m the first to realise that I don’t have to live here and drive it every day, so who am I to complain? But the solitude for which I’m craving has gone for ever here. Now, it’s like any black-top highway anywhere else in the world and the adventure has gone.

Anther advantage of the road is that prices have now normalised. Fuel at Goose Bay was just 140.1 per litre – only 6 or 7 cents higher than in the urbanised areas of Canada. That’s something for the locals to cheer.

This is the current ohm of some local type of sub-arctic bird. It’s done well to build its nest up there.

But it needs to be careful. It would be shocking if it were to fall out of its nest – quite revolting in fact.

And this is the only hint of wildlife that I saw. I was chatting to a couple of maintenance men here and they were telling me that the new road and all of the traffic has driven away everything that I saw when I came over here.

But this is good to see. About 70 kms from Labrador City I come across someone with a similar lifestyle to mine.

Here we have an Air 403 wind turbine going round like I wish that mine would, and solar panels. And he’s had to shin up a ladder to clear the snow away from them.

So bully to him. I’m glad to see that he’s doing it and making it work. We need more people like this.

THis is the town of Wabush in Labrador. And this could be mistaken for any suburb in any town that you might care to mention. Not a dog sled in sight

But make the most of this photo because in 5 years time it will be nothing like this. It’s a mining town and talking to the local security guards there, they tell me that the mine is exhausted and a new mining project in the vicinity has been cancelled.

People are being laid off and many have already left the community to seek work elsewhere. If nothing is done about the new mining project, then this place will be a ghost town.

And on that depressing note, I went to find somewhere to lay my weary head. I’ve driven 520 kilometres and not even broken sweat. Ohh, how times have changed.

Tuesday 23rd September 2014 – I SPENT LAST NIGHT …

… sleeping in an esker.

I mean, I don’t mean sleeping IN an esker like that arctic explorer and fellow former Nantwich-dweller Jack Hornby and his companion James Critchell Bullock back 90-odd years ago.

They actually burrowed in like rabbits and built themselves a cave. I actually spent the night sleeping in an old quarry that has been formed where a load of sand had been removed from an esker.

And an esker? It’s like a sandbank but has been deposited by a glacier rather than a river or a sea and the whole of northern Labrador is covered in them. This one is about 10 miles north of Lodge Bay.

And I was up even as dawn was breaking, and on my way. It was quite cold and damp and so I needed to warm up the Dodge before I could do much. A good drive for half an hour would sort that out

A sign of the times is how the raffic is on the roads around here. Back in 2010 you could drive for hours and not see another vehicle. Here on Iceberg Alley at the moment, at just 07:20 it’s like the M6. There’s a car coming towards me and there’s a car coming behind me too

At the end of Iceberg Alley is a small town called St Lewis and as I have said before
it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth, and this is where I’ve come for breakfast.

But they were quite right about the storm worsening today. I’ve tried to open the door to go out and take a photo but I physically can’t open the door against the wind. I had to turn the Dodge around. And the coffee that I made went down well too. I needed that.

Fuel is also 152.9 cents per litre at Port Hope Simpson so I fuel up again. Not that I desperately need it but as I have said before, you should never pass up a reasonable opportunity to fill up your tank when you are out here

The reason is that it this sign that you are up against in areas like this. And if I’m going to look at Paradise River, something that I overlooked to do in 2010, then I’ll need an extra 100 kms of fuel at least for all of that

So this is Paradise River. It’s another place that could qualify for one of the most beautiful places on earth.

I can see how it got its name but as for the village itself, there’s no focal point or hint of any urban node – It’s a linear village and just stretches along the road on the shore of the river with a house here, a house there.

It was once a very much larger village but 1918 flu epidemic swept away a good proportion of the inhabitants and others have slowly drifted away. That’s quite evident by empty lots and abandoned property and state of one or two of the houses. Then again, people living in Paradise River would have an 80km round trip to the shops and to get fuel. How isolated is that for a village?

There’s an area right by the junction where the road to Cartwright leaves the Labrador Coastal Drive that I’ve had my eye on ever since 2010. It would make a perfect motel, shop, cafe and fuel station.

However, it’s been usurped by the Newfoundland and Labrador Tourist Board as the principal tourist rest area for the trail. It weems that people have indeed been reading my notes but lack the capital to invest in the plot.

Now I’m heading right into the mountains. And the weather is fluctuating like no-one’s business. We’re having bright sunlight, then clouds, then torrential rain, and then back in the sunlight and it’s changing faster than it ever does in the Auvergne.

And if you want to kno the meaning of “intrepid”, have a look at this photo. These are two motorcyclists and they’ve come all the way round from Goose Bay, and probably from further round too.

A motorcycle doesn’t have the range to do this leg of the trail and these motorcyclists are stopping to fuel up their bikes out of cans. This is certainly adventurous.

This is sample shot of the road where I stopped on one occasion and look how much this road has deteriorated compared to how it was in 2010. And this is far from being the worst part of it either.

It was never ever like this 4 years ago and I’ve no idea what might be in their heads letting the road deteriorate like this in just 4 years. It doesn’t say much for the long-term future of the road if it’s ended up like this.

This is my lunch stop for this afternoon and isn’t it beautiful? The river doesn’t seem to be carrying a nameplate so I don’t know what it is, but the bridge is dated 2008 if that’s of any use. I could quite happily settle down here in this spot.

And just look at the poor Dodge. It’s looking as if it could do with a really good wash but it isn’t going to have one for a while yet.

This is the Valard Construction camp and there are enough mobile homes here to house a thousand people.

It seems that the Muskrat Falls at Goose Bay are to have a hydro-electric dam. The power is going to come this way on pylons and there will be side roads built to service the pylons. The power is togo all the way through to Forteau and then under the sea to Newfoundland and then under the sea again to Cape Breton and then Maine.

Its primary purpose is to provide electricity to the Province, earn revenue by exporting the surplus to Nova Scotia and the USA, and freeing themselves from Quebec Hydro’s oppressive grip.

And there’s talk of asphalting the whole length of this highway – in fact an asphalt plant has already been built.

Standing in the middle of the road, acting as if he owned it, which he probably did, is our old friend Mr Moose.

He stood there as if challenging me to a contest but he was no match for Strawberry Moose and so he slowly lumbered out of the way to leave me with a clear path to drive all of the way down to Goose Bay. That was very good of him

I didn’t stop in Goose Bay but went right through to North West River, the farthest northern point of the Province that it is feasible to reach by road.

This is a beautiful place to visit, especially in the setting sun. And it really did look this good too.

So now that I’ve accomplished this task, another one that I didn’t do in 2010, I retraced my steps to the docks at Goose Bay and I’ll settle down here for the night. This will do me

Monday 22nd September 2014 – STRANDED AGAIN

I was out like a light last night, long before it went dark even. I must have been tired last night.

And I was awake long before it was light too. This was an excellent place to choose for the night and I was impressed with this. I shall add this to my list of potential specs.

I was rather hoping that the weather would change today, and indeed it has. It’s changed for the worse. The fog is still here but the rain is now coming down like rain that I have never seen. It started at about 02:00 this morning.

Not only that, we have our howling gale back, and that is that.

This makes me decide that I don’t have much future in Labrador right now. If it’s raining like this here, what’s it doing in the interior up on the plateau? I know that snow has been forecast for today and tomorrow up there and if it’s coming down anything like this, we’ll all know about it.

I decide to make my way to the ferry and see about retracing my steps, but after a very long wait, I’m given more bad news. All ferries are cancelled until this hurricane blows itself out. Out there in the Strait it’s gusting at 120mph. Even the ferries to the mainland at Cape Breton Island have stopped running.

Braving the dreadful rain I pushed on up the road and across the border into Labrador.

The Labrador Tourist Information Board is a little more hopeful though. Snow is forecast for today and tomorrow in the mountains over to Goose Bay but there will be a dramatic improvement in the weather starting on Wednesday with temperatures reaching 16°C.

Giving the matter some considerable thought, I decide to head north this afternoon. I can travel part of the way up the road and stop for the night. If I have a reasonable start I should catch the road over the mountains on Tuesday afternoon when it’s been cleared but if there’s snow still lying about, I’ll just hole up and wait for the thaw.

I can’t think of another solution, but I do have a great amount of faith in the Labrador Highways Department.

But amongst the improvements along the highway since 2010, more of which anon, travellers on the Trans Labrador can now avail themselves, free of charge, of a satellite telephone to keep in touch with someone in case of emergency. Definitely a sign of the times and of progress. So armed with a satellite telephone, I head north.

First thing that I notice are signs telling me “rough road next 7kms”. Obviously the person who thought of this one has never ever been further north than the gate across the highway at Red Bay. This is nothing compared to what I’m going to encounter further along the road.

This is the harbour at L’Anse Au Loups, a photo of which I didn’t take in 2010 when I was on my mega-voyage around the Trans-Labrador Highway
.

At least there’s one good thing about coming round here taking photos in this kind of weather is that you don’t have to worry about where the sun is. You can stand anywhere and you aren’t bothered about the sun streaming into the lens at all.

I saw some kind of monument at the side of the road in 2010 and I didn’t have time to go to check it as I was rushing for my ferry.

Today though, I did have time for a look around.

It is in fact a war memorial and the plaque on there says something along the lines of “at the going down of the sun etc etc we will remember them” – the old Kipling line. However it seems that they haven’t been remembered because this is an overgrown, neglected and forgotten war memorial that hasn’t seen an ounce of attention since I don’t know when.

And on my way to see the memorial I was thoroughly drenched and soaked to the skin just walking the 50 yards there and back, even wearing a proper heavy-duty rain jacket. The weather here is grotesque.

This was what they must have been building in 2010 when I came here to the County Cat Pond and noticed them carrying out all of these road works.

I’m not quite sure why as there was nothing that appeared to be wrong to me about the picturesque little road around the shores of the Pinware River that I can see about 200 feet below me. It wasn’t a difficult stretch of road by any means and I enjoyed driving it.

I really don’t see the point of this construction at all. It really makes me wonder what on earth is going on because, beautiful and well-maintained though the surface of the road might be, it’s all up and down and watching a lorry struggle up here with an enormous amount of difficulty can’t have impressed the driver.

I arrived at the Whaling Centre at Red Bay just after 17:00. It has two days when it closes at 17:00 and you can guess what one of them is can’t you? And there’s no UNESCO delegation here today to help me out.

And outside here now the wind is howling. This is a wicked wind that I’m in. That forecasted 120mph wind might not have been an underestimation. What I find totally astonishing is that with this howling wind here blowing like dervishes, we still have all of this fog. It hasn’t moved an inch. Normally, the fog is the first to be blown away in the wind

The road however is completely different from how I remember it. Parts of the road are much wider and the surface vastly improved. They seem to be digging up the old road that we know and love and replacing it with the one along which I’m driving.

Talking to one of the road workers here while I was waiting at a stop sign, he tells me that they have been widening this road this summer ready to tarmac the surface. That’s good news for the locals and the tourists although it won’t do much for the environment, bringing so many people here

However, the road isn’t so good in certain places at the moment, is it? It’ll be interesting to see what it will be like this time next year.

Fuel at Lodge Bay is just 152.9 per litre. That’s not unreasonable for round here and while I’m not exactly desperate for fuel, fuel stations are few and far apart on the Trans Labrador Highway and you should never miss out on an opportunity to fill up the tank.

Now, night is falling and I’ll need to find somewhere to park up ready for the morning.

Sunday 21st September 2014 – WHAT I SAW ON THE LABRADOR COAST

Not very impressive, is it? In fact, I feel rather cheated after going to all of this trouble to get here in the first place.

However, rolling Newfoundland fogs are a well-known phenomenon in the Gulf of St Lawrence as anyone who remembers my visit to that island in the Gulf of St Lawrence in May 2012 might well remember. And there have been enough marine accidents in the Gulf due to the rolling fog to underline the point, so it’s not really that unexpected.

I had a wild night last night anyway, here hemmed in between a couple of vehicles on the quayside in the shadow of the Apollo. It was as if the wind was trying to tear the roof of the Dodge.

I was up too at about 05:50 thanks to the alarm, due to the fact that the shipping company offices open at 06:00. The 08:00 sailing has been cancelled as expected but we had to report back at 09:00 for further news.

At 09:00 we were informed that there would be an unscheduled sailing at 10:30 so we all made our way to the docks where, using a rather large shoehorn, all of the waiting vehicles were squeezed on and off we went.

But the poor Apollo is looking rather worse for wear these days, a lot worse than she did in 2010. A good refit would do her the world of good, or perhaps there’s another redundant cross-channel ferry somewhere that needs a new home. The Apollo could then go to a nice retirement home in the sunshine somewhere in the Aegean, the usual abode of old and tired Ro-Ro ferries.

Despite the miserable weather, I made it down to Old Fort, or Vieux Fort as the authorities insist on calling it. This is the far end of Highway 138, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we reached the other end of the road
in May 2012.

There’s just this gap of a couple of hundred miles in the road that will never be completed in the lifetime of anyone reading this rubbish.

Old Fort was discovered in 1504, officially that is, by Breton whalers who had some kind of whaling plant here similar to the one that we visited in Red Bay in 2010

But I say “officially” because there’s considerable evidence to suggest that places such as this were well-known long before they were officially “discovered”. The whalers and trappers who worked out of these places kept the locations of their enterprises secret so that the competition wouldn’t move in, but with Cabot’s voyage of “discovery” in 1497 (and it’s certain that Cabot knew what he was going to find), there was an impetus for the Breton and Basque whalers and the like to formally “discover” the locations of their enterprises in order to forestall the English.

And with that, I had a slow meander back to the harbour at Brador Bay which will be my location for tonight I reckon. I’m hoping that the weather might improve tomorrow because if we are still having the fog and the rain, I’ll have to postpone my voyage around the Trans-Labrador Highway until next year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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EPIC HALL

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