… was even nicer.

On my way back home this evening I went down into town for tomorrow’s bread and while i was there i noticed that they were selling loose potatoes by the pound. So even though I have plenty of oven chips left, I succumbed and bought a pound of spuds. Here in this room I have a microwave and an oven, and so I had a vegan burger, some more Heinz beans, and some baked potatoes done in the oven and finished off in the microwave.

Add to that the ice cream stuff and fruit salad and we had yet another tea fit for a King.

I’d had a reasonable night’s sleep last night with the odd trip down the corridor, and I was wide awake by 05:50. I’d been on my travels too, a long complicated ramble that had taken me to all kinds of places and all trace of which had disappeared completely the moment I awoke.

Being awake like that gave me plenty of time to get on with stuff before breakfast, which once more consisted of vegan granola, orange juice, coffee and a blueberry bagel with strawberry jam.

And then I could carry on with some more stuff up until lunch time, having the odd doze here and there (something that I’m finding to be rather depressing these days).

At lunchtime I made my butty and then cleared off into the sunshine.

Just down the road from here is the place that I have come here to Shediac visit.

This is Parlee Provincial Park at Pointe du Chene, just down the road from where I’m staying. It’s a typical Canadian Provincial Park in that it costs an arm and a leg to come here to visit for a day, but in news that will surprise almost every regular reader of this rubbish, my motel room includes a free pass to the park, and I intend to take full advantage.


The claim to fame of Parlee Park is that it is said to have the most beautiful beach in New Brunswick. It’s certainly the most popular beach in the Province, with 400,000 visitors every year. On one day, it registered as many as 16,000 visitors.

This year of course it will be having 400,001 visitors because I’ve come here, and this is where I intend to stay for a while.


There weren’t 16,000 visitors on the beach here today and that’s not really a surprise because although it was a really beautiful day, there was a cold wind a-blowing.

I started off by lying on a blanket on the sand but it was rather too windy for that and so I grabbed the folding chair out of Strider and settled down with my butties and a couple of really good books. As the legendary Marechal MacMahon once famously said, “J’y suis, j’y reste“.


One of the things for which the beach is famous is the temperature of the water. It’s said to have the warmest water in Canada, and although some people might be willing to test it, it wasn’t for me.

And that wasn’t just because of the wind either. I’d heard that there was a water pollution warning in existence at the moment, having been posted in August, and I bet that that did wonders for the tourist trade this year


As the evening approached and the temperature cooled down I headed off for a walk around the park to see what I could see.

There’s plenty of evidence of the former commercial nature of the area around the park, and here from the steps of the restaurant (which is on stilts) there’s a good view over what looks suspiciously like a canal to me.

We even have what looks like a kind of lighthouse here – presumably to guide vessels along the canal.


There are quite a lot of facilities here, which is hardly a surprise when you consider how much you have to pay to come here for a day.

But it has more facilities than you might imagine too. If you carefully read the publicity that the Park authorities put out, you’ll find that “The popularity of Parlee Beach since the 1800s has created a cottaging area for the city of Moncton” – a statement that will have most British people, or those knowing a good deal of British slang, rolling in the aisles.

I wonder if the Parlee Beach authorities really mean it like that.

So having read that, I buggered off back to civilisation via the petrol station and the supermarket.

After tea I was thoroughly exhausted and went for an early night. But I managed about half an hour before I was wide awake again, and then I found it difficult to go back to sleep.

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