… what I had eaten last night, but I had an appalling night where I didn’t sleep a wink due to the most violent indigestion. I can now tell you all about my digestive tract such as where it is and how long it takes for something to work its way through it, because I could feel it on its travels for every inch of the way.
And so feeling like death warmed up, I eventually hit the road and headed east
After a brief drive I ended up in the town of Matane and went for a good prowl around the harbour.
I was very impressed, and also very lucky to see this ship in the harbour. She’s the Camilla Desgagnés, a heavy-icebreaking cargo ship and she has several claims to fame. Perhaps the most important is that, depending upon which book you read or who you talk to, she was either the first or the second modern commercial ship to navigate the North-West Passage and holds the rather unique honour of being the only “eastern” supply ship to service and provision communities on the “western” side of the Passage.
Secondly, she’s an unlucky ship and has suffered a couple of major incidents. In 1993, she was abandoned in mid-Atlantic after her engines failed, right in the path of an approaching hurricane. Furthermore, a couple of years later, she was abandoned once more after her engines caught fire
Also in the harbour, and I was very tempted to go over and see about negotiating my way on board her, was the CTMA Voyageur.
She’s the ship that provides the supply and provisioning service to the Iles de la Madeleine, off the coast of Prince Edward Island, and there’s room on board for a few motor vehicles. However, she was all loaded up and they were just shunting a couple of trailers on, ready to depart. And not only that, it’s a good way out to the Madeleines and I didn’t know when I would be likely to be able to make my way back.
Also in the harbour moored next to the CTMA Voyageur was the Camille Marcoux. However, we all know about her because we have sailed upon her a couple of times – once in November 2010 and again in September 2014. She’s the ship that runs the ferry route between Matane and Godbout on the northern shore of the St Lawrence.
Our trip in 2010 was quite noteworthy, as I’m sure you remember, because we had tickets for the ferry to Baie Comeau from here but Bane of Britain somehow contrived to park himself in the wrong ferry queue.
I was feeling a little better by now and so I went for a coffee and something to eat at Tim Horton’s and to use the internet there. I managed to pick up my order without throwing it all over the floor this time, and I was there for about three hours because I was really finding it difficult to move.
Matane is effectively the gateway over to the southern shore of the Gaspé Peninsula and there is a pass through the Appalachian Mountains at the headwaters of the Matane and Matapedia Rivers.
Out of Matane, you follow Highway 195 up along the valley of the Matane River and the scenery here is really beautiful even if the light is quite depressing for photography purposes. You could take hundreds of photos of the scenery here and still not do the area any justice.
The higher up into the mountains we go, the more impressive the scenery becomes.
And it’s not just the natural scenery either but the man-made scenery too because we encounter several covered bridges across the river. The longest covered bridge in the world is in Hartland, New Brunswick, but Quebec has very much more than its fair share of them, as far as pure numbers are concerned. And those that are left (because hundreds have disappeared) are very-well maintained.
At the headwaters of the River Matane we start to climb up and over the watershed into the drainage basin of the Matapedia River.
This road is another thoroughly impressive road with some really impressive scenery, and it bounces you up and down everywhere as you climb steeply into the Appalachians. And then, just as steeply, it drops you down into the valley of the Matapedia River, where we rejoin Highway 132 at Amqui.
And it was along here that I decided that I couldn’t go on any more. Around the bend, a motel appeared offering rooms with cuisinettes for just $49:95 plus taxes. Furnished like something out of the 1950s, nevertheless I’ve stayed in far worse places than this for far more money too.
I booked myself in, found my room, went inside and, still feeling like death warmed up and with it only being 16:45, I promptly crashed out and that was that.
