Tag Archives: crash out

Friday 20th November 2015 – AHH WELL!

So here I am.

It’s 08:00 in the morning and I crawl (and I do mean crawl) out of bed. I can safely say that I’ve never felt as bad as all of this. Getting down to Caliburn was something of a struggle and I’m sure that I couldn’t see straight as I drove down to Pionsat for my blood test. A surprise awaited me at the reception of the medical centre – on duty was one of the girls who runs the pie hut at FCPSH.

So having dealt with the blood test, I staggered back here and had my breakfast (luckily I’d prepared it before I went off) and then crashed out on the sofa.

I managed a coffee at about midday and then crashed out again, to be awoken by the telephone at 14:30. It was the doctor. “You have a very bad case of anaemia and you need to go to the hospital at once. I’ve prepared a file for you and there’s an ambulance voucher here at the office”

An ambulance voucher is one thing, but finding an ambulance is something else. In the end I ring up Terry and Liz, but they are out, but Rosemary is in and so she comes to the rescue. I have just about enough strength to throw a few things into a bag and then we are off.

At the hospital I check in, but I don’t even have enough time to find a seat before I’m whisked off into an emergency room and stuck on a bed. They couple me up to a vitamin tube and give me a good interrogation – and after about an hour, the blood arrived.

I had one “pochette” of blood in the emergency room and then they took me up to a room where they gave me two others.
“We have to check your blood pressure every 15 minutes during the transfusion process” explained the nurse.
“I’m a very light sleeper” I replied
“Well you are going to be in for a very long night” she answered.
And she was right.

-2

Thursday 19th November 2015 – I DIDN’T …

… do anything today.

Well, that’s not quite true. I was up reasonably early (well, reasonably for these days) and after breakfast I cracked on with the rock music programmes for Radio Anglais. By lunchtime, I’d completed the “Miscellaneous” programme and written all of the notes. Tomorrow, I’ll be doing the live programme, although I’ve no idea yet what concert I’m going to choose.

Another thing that I did do was to telephone the local doctor’s to see about a medical appointment, as I can’t go on much longer like this.

And this is the beauty of living in France, and not in the UK.
Our Hero – “I need to make an appointment to see the doctor sometime soon”.
Receptionist – “is it urgent?”
Our Hero – “not really”
Receptionist – “well, if it’s not urgent can it wait until 15:30?”
Our Hero – “today?”
Receptionist – “yes, today”
As one of my friends in the UK commented, “had you been in the UK, you would have been offered an appointment at 2020, and that wouldn’t have been 8/20 in the evening either”.

And so I duly struggled into Pionsat and the doctor’s surgery, and the first thing that the doctor said to me when she saw me was “are you usually this colour?” Apparently I’m totally white – there’s not a patch of pink or anything in my skin or my fingernails and toenails. I had my blood pressure checked – which is within the norms – and she listened to my heart, which also seemed to be normal – and that’s good news – it means that I’m not a Tory, thank heavens.

But she’s worried about something because tomorrow I have to have a blood test at 09:00 – and so I suppose that I’ll have to spend all night studying. It has to be à jeune – namely “in famine”, so no breakfast tomorrow. How can I survive without a coffee – because that’s forbidden too. But she’s taken my ‘phone number and she’ll ring me as soon as she has the results – and I found that rather ominous too.

I also have to go into Montlucon for an ecographie – a heart examination – but I’ll wait and see what the blood test reveals before I ring up for an appointment. Wednesday afternoon would be a good day for me because it would mean that I could have a lift with Liz.

By the time I returned home I wasn’t in much of a state to do anything and crashed out here for an hour or so. Now I’m going for an early night because of my blood test.

-3

Wednesday 18th November 2015 – I DIDN’T …

… start to take the tiles out of Caliburn today, like I said that I would yesterday.

In fact, we had a beautiful blue sky for most of the day and that can only mean one thing … woodcutting!

So there I was after lunch, with the chop-saw and the excess solar energy and I had another good go at the woodpile. In fact, one of the woodpiles is done now as much as I can with the chop-saw, and I’ve started to attack the second woodpile – the pile with the old chevrons from the barn roof.

Some of the chevrons are quite good so I won’t be cutting them up. I’ll be using them in construction projects whenever I’ll feel up to doing something like that, but others are pretty mangy and so they have gone to the great woodshed in the sky. And there will be more to follow them on the next fine day.

Three large wheelbarrow-loads found their way into the woodshed today and that’s now looking quite healthy in there – about 2/3rds full. And when I finish the remainder, and then rescue my chainsaw and cut down the lengths that are too big for the chop-saw it’ll be bursting at the seams.

While I was doing all of this,I had visitors. The farmer who rents the field behind me came along with his wife, son and herd of cows. He’s pleased with the weather because he can keep his cows out in the fields and there was enough growth in the field behind me for at least 10 days of grazing. In fact, we all had quite a chat.

But as expected, I was totally exhausted after all of that woodcutting and I had to have a 10-minute doze before I could tackle the stairs up to here. When I finally made it up here, I put on a film to watch but crashed out through most of it. The St. Trinians – The Belles Of St. Trinians [DVD] it was, and here’s a thing. I thought that I recognised one of the voices when the schoolgirls were talking, and it turns out that a schoolgirl by the name of Jackie is played by none other than Diana Day, who is Susan, Jimmy’s sister in The Clitheroe Kid

This morning I had a good session on my course and found, to my surprise, that I’ve finished this week’s lectures already. We finished with a quiz that was actually a forensic examination of a skeleton discovered under a barracks floor and to my total astonishment I had 100%, which completely surprised me

So now that that’s all done, it gives me an opportunity to do the rock music programmes for Radio Anglais, and that should keep me out of mischief for the next few days.

-3

Tuesday 17th November 2015 – I’M FEELING A LITTLE …

… bit better today.

With having crashed out yesterday afternoon, it was gone 02:00 (more like 03:00, I reckon) when I went to bed. As for the alarm at 07:30, well, the least said about that the better. 09:30 it was when I crawled up here, and then I had to make some muesli as I’d run out yesterday

I had a good day on my course and astounded my tutor with an observation that I made about an Iron Age encampment in the vicinity of Hadrian’s Wall. But with the late start, it was after midday when I finished.

I crashed out again for an hour or so, but then found from somewhere the energy to go outside.

First thing that I did was to fit Caliburn with new windscreen wipers. The ones that were on it were the originals since 2007, so eight-and-a-half years is some going. They weren’t much good, in fact. but when I was at the Auchan the other day, they were having a sale of windscreen wipers and so I took advantage of it, ready for the winter which isn’t surely far away.

Apart from that, I’ve started to empty Caliburn. There was food in there (tins and stuff), some of which dates from before I went to Canada in August, as well as a pile of washing that Liz did for me. It can’t stay in there for ever so I made some space in the downhill lean-to and most of it is stacked in there. Some other stuff, including the washing, I dragged up here (and I do mean “dragged”).

Tomorrow, I’m going to be brave and carry on with the emptying, including the tiles and the tile cement. I may not be up to much at the moment, but tiling doesn’t take too much effort and with the old electric tile-cutter that I have, that doesn’t take too much electrical energy

-2

Monday 16th November 2015 – WHAT A DAY!

I had a really bad day today. I couldn’t haul myself out of bed for ages and when I did finally haul myself out, I didn’t do very much at all. In fact it was all that I could do to concentrate on my course on Hadrian’s Wall.

By early afternoon though I was well out of it and despite the beautiful day, I crashed out and I remember nothing at all after that. It was totally dark when I awoke and I had no idea of where I was or what time it might have. When I noticed that it was 18:30 I was astonished, and I felt thoroughly dreadful.

So that was that, really. I’ve accomplished nothing today and although I feel a little better, I don’t think that I’ll be doing too much tomorrow either. I’ve been having a bad time just recently and I’m going to have to do something about it.

Although I’m not sure quite what.

-2

Thursday 12th November 2015 – WE HAD AN UNEXPECTED …

… lie-in this morning. Due entirely to the fact that the battery in the mobile phone went flat during the night so the alarm didn’t go off.

Nothing at all to do with my nocturnal ramblings during the night. I was walking up the hill from the traffic lights at Burland crossroads up towards Hurleston Reservoir and Car Transplants. There wasn’t a road up there – just a dirt track between a couple of fields. And in the fields were a couple of guys working away and, quite interestingly, a couple of Alsatian dogs were conveying messages between the men and whoever it was who was in charge of them. At the top of the hill was a car – the type of early 50s American car with a V8 flathead engine and which was leaking oil out of the sump. I suggested that they went up to Car Transplants to see what they could find there, but they needed to sort themselves out because they were insisting that it was a ’57 model but of course it wasn’t. 1952 at the outside, I reckoned, but they insisted.

After breakfast I carried on with my studies but we had a change of plans round about 12:00. Bright sunshine streaming outside and the batteries fully-charged so I grabbed the chopsaw, the workbench, the extension cable, the plastic sheet and the wheelbarrow, and I attacked the woodpile again.

I can’t remember whether it was 5 or 6 huge barrow-loads that I cut but it was also two boxes full of kindling. You can now see the difference that I’ve made, and the woodshed is now looking like it ought to look. There was half a bin-bag full of sawdust too.

One thing that I did do was to cut up four or five window frames. A few years ago I came across a skip loaded up with old house windows and, with permission, I rescued them (you can’t live around here without a van – I don’t care what anyone says). The wood wasn’t up to much but I salvaged quite a few window panes that I’ll be using to make cloches and repairing windows around the barn.

But the wood – all oak – makes good firewood. A couple of 12-inch lengths on that on the fire will keep the place going through the night. I don’t understand the mentality of people who throw away decent firewood like this.

After that, I came up for my lunch (it was now about 17:30 by the time I’d tidied away everything) and instead, I just crashed out on the sofa for a good hour.

But this chopsaw is proving its worth, especially when I have the surplus electricity to power it. We had 34 amps of surplus solar energy again even with running the chopsaw, which at times brought the voltage down to 11.6 volts. But that’s not important because of the intermittent use of the chopsaw. Generating a (very) theoretical solar maximum of 70 amp-hours, it soon builds the batteries back up. It would of course be a totally different matter if the use of the chopsaw was persistent or continuous.

So I’m off to bed. I have a test tomorrow on my course so I need to be at my best. And then we’ll see what the weather is doing.

-2

Monday 9th November 2015 – NOW, HERE’S A THING.

This morning while I was working on the computer, the temperature was such that I ended up opening the roof lights here in the attic. And I don’t recall ever having done that before in November (except when I had the fire burning – and just a reminder – I’ve yet to light the fire up here this autumn).

Yes, this weather is totally crazy and I’ve no idea what is going on with it.

I had a lovely night’s sleep and then came up here for breakfast and carrying on with my work. Studies first, and I’m a module or two behind. So I had to catch up with all of that before I could even start on this week’s sessions. But I am enjoying this course very much.

I had some other computing work to do, and I also made yet another exciting discovery with this 3D program that I mess around with some times.

I didn’t feel like any lunch and so I went straight outside (eventually) to work. I’ve repaired two flat tyres on the power barrow and pumped them all up to pressure – that Black and Decker portable compressor that I bought last summer is certainly doing the business. I started to dismantle the yellow wheelbarrow to fit the new wheel that I bought on Saturday, but the nuts were seized on and they took ages to free off. And I ran out of light while I was doing it, so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

I stayed working to 19:00 tonight, finishing by tidying up some more on the ground floor. And I can definitely see the table top in there now. It won’t be long before I end up with a place to work.

Up here I watched a film and crashed out, and finished off by having my lunchtime butties. I don’t seem to have the same appetite as before. And now I’ll take the stats, do the washing up and then go to bed. That’s me done for today.

-2

Friday 6th November 2015 – THIS WEATHER IS WEIRD

Here I am, it’s the 6th November and I still have the fridge running 24 hours per day and not only that, at 19:00 this evening I was outside in the verandah with a bucket of really warm water having a gorgeous shower.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t with warm water out of the heat exchanger because the weather didn’t permit it. It started off quite well but round about midday we had a rainstorm and then it was clouded over for the rest of the day. The batteries didn’t charge right up and so we didn’t have anything going into the dump load. I ended up boiling 2 litres of water on the gas stove.

And that reminds me – I’m planning to go into Montlucon tomorrow so I ought to disconnect the dump load before I go. I want to see it in operation and make sure that it’s safe before I go off and leave it alone.

But with the rainfall and the lack of excess power I wasn’t able to cut any wood – once more. Instead, I started to tidy up outside somewhat (although it doesn’t look as if there is any difference). Once I’d sorted some of that out, I started on tidying up the ground floor in the house and I’ve made some progress in there. In fact, you can even see the top of the table now in places and you’ll be surprised at the things that I found. I know that I was!

I took the opportunity to empty some stuff out of Caliburn. In fact there’s some food in there still that I bought in August and seeing as it’s mostly tinned stuff, it can stay there for now. But taking some stuff into the barn I found quite by accident the big drill for which I was looking the other day. Isn’t it always like that?

And so I now smell nicely of coconut and my nice clean clothes smell nicely of hint of soap. On that note, having crashed out for a short while just now, I’m having an early night. I deserve it.

-1

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 – I DIDN’T …

… manage to do any wood-cutting today. But there’s a good reason for that – in fact, 6.5mm of it. Yes, for the first time since I’m not sure when, we’ve had a persistent rainfall throughout most of the day.

So I was awake at 07:30 but it was about 08:15 when I finally crawled out of bed. And after breakfast I cracked on with my studies. I’m really getting into this.

I didn’t have lunch today either, but I was downstairs working. Or, at least, trying to work. But with more than 10 weeks away from work I can’t find half of the tools that I need, despite turning the house upside-down a couple of times.

But what I’ve done it to start work on the new Version 4 of the home-made 12-volt immersion heater. And I’ll tell anyone before we even start that this one is not destined to last very long. The plastic box isn’t anything like as strong as I would like it to be, and it’s rather brittle. It shouldn’t be brittle as that will be more likely to crack up under heat. I need a proper water tank or, better still, a copper-sided container of about 25 litres. I must look into this properly.

But at least the holes are drilled into it and the tap and element fitted. It’s now sitting on a dry dusty concrete floor so that I can check if there are any leaks.

But one design change that I’m doing (apart from the obvious one of repositioning the heater element so I’m not falling over the wires) concerns the element. It’s two x 250-watt elements connected by bridge pieces and held together by screws into captive nuts. You need to undo the screws to connect the wires and then screw it back together and this is one of the faults – that you can’t tighten up the screws sufficiently tight to prevent arcing.

What I’ve done is to do away with the bridge pieces so that I have the two elements separate. I’ve put nuts and bolts in through the holes on the elements and what I’ll be doing is to run two sets of wires, not just one, to the immersion heater, and bolting them up rather than screwing them. This will mean that the joints will be tighter thanks to the bolts, and that with two wires then there will be less amperage running down each cable so they won’t heat up as much.

Another advantage of this is that in the summer with all of the excess energy that we receive, I can start a second immersion heater and disconnect one set of wires from one of the elements on the first one and wire them to one element on the other immersion heater. That way I’ll have 50 litres of water and that will warm up quite steadily.

But these aren’t long-term solutions of course. I must have a proper immersion heater with proper joints and a proper element connection. But trying to find anything suitable is well-nigh impossible.

Back up here I sat down to watch a film but went straight to sleep for half an hour. And for tea, I had my lunchtime butties.

Now, I’m off to bed. See you in the morning.

-1

Monday 2nd November 2015 – WOW!

Yes indeed. We’re having one of the windiest days that we’ve ever had since I began keeping records. We’ve had gusts of up to 47kph and all of the wind turbines here have been going round like the clappers. We’ve not quite had record wind energy figures, but we aren’t far off it and it’s still cracking up (although I’ve taken the records now so the rest will be added to tomorrow’s figures).

As for today, I was up fairly early, and after breakfast I spent some time on the computer. This course on Hadrian’s Wall that I’ve started to study is rather different. It’s done on line with embedded videos and that’s going to cause a load of problems with my sad internet speed. But it looks quite interesting.

Not many people realise this but there are two wall systems in the UK. Hadrian’s Wall between Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Carlisle, and the Antonine Wall between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth. Some people think that both walls were built by the same Emperor but the Northern one is definitely by the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius. Hadrian had only got one wall.

I didn’t have lunch today – I went out and started work instead and was rather carried away. We had beautiful sunny weather and with the wind we had a nice pile of electrical energy and with no dump load at the moment, I adopted plan B and fetched the chop saw.

I set up a workbench outside and started to attack the huge stack of wood that’s been building up outside over the past few years. Old branches and tree trunks that I’ve pulled up and cut down in the past as well as the old chevrons from when I replaced the roofs here.

The stack of wood doesn’t look much smaller but I’ve cut up enough to make a huge pile of wood. I’ve filled up the woodshed with some of it, and I’ve filled an IKEA bag to bring up here ready for whenever winter might arrive. But the chop saw idea worked in spades. With plenty of electricity to play with, it was 10 times quicker and 10 times less tiring than doing it with the hand saw. But there are some bits that won’t fit under the chop saw and so I’ll need the chainsaw for that, when Terry has finished with it.

But it does go to show. I once had a friend with whom I shared all of my hopes and aspirations about this place and my aims for the electrical system. I regarded him as being my best ever friend but then I found out that he was going onto a Land Rover forum on the internet and mocking my ideas, he and his friends having a really good laugh about it and a few offensive comments being thrown in for good measure. Of course, no friendship can withstand that, but it’s this kind of thing that is showing that I’m having the last laugh.

When I finished, I came up here to watch a film (I’m reverting to my old habits at long last) but crashed out instead. Once I had woken up, I cooked the pizza that I had forgotten to eat.

Tomorrow if the weather is good I’ll be carrying on with the woodpile. And if not, there are plenty of other things to be getting on with. High time I cracked on.

Wednesday 28th October 2015 – THE ANSWER TO YESTERDAY’S QUESTION IS …

… the bathroom. That’s where I ended up last night on my travels.

And that was partly by accident too, because I had a very severe attack of cramp in the middle of the night and it took me ages to shake it off. And that didn’t work all that well either, because I still have a tense muscle in the upper rear of my right thigh.

But anyway, seeing as I was up, I went to the bathroom.

With nothing urgent that needed doing today, I didn’t exactly rocket out of bed, and then after breakfast I had a leisurely morning doing stuff on the laptop and sorting myself out. And then there was some housekeeping to be done about the records that I keep for Radio Anglais.

But here’s a thing. For the rock music programmes that we do, I keep a playlist of what albums are played during the month, like this one, and then a website where all of them might be seen, with an opportunity for interested listeners to purchase them. I spent days during July and the first part of August to set up this A-store, and now I find that Amazon has taken down all of their A-stores with effect from 31st August, just a few weeks after I finished setting it up.

I shall now have to think again, and make up an A-store of my own. That was all a waste of time and effort, wasn’t it? But one thing that I did learn while I was doing it – and that is that my CD collection is worth a fortune. I have a couple of CDs that would sell on Amazon for over €200 each, and several others that would bring in a pile of dosh too.

After lunch I took the bull by the horns and steam-cleaned the fridge. Plenty of bleach and disinfectant went into it and while I wouldn’t like to eat my dinner off it, it’s still a lot cleaner than it ever has been in recent times, and that’s good news. I also spent some time tidying up on the ground floor, although you wouldn’t notice the difference.

After a brief crashing-out, I made tea and, true to form, Rosemary rang up for a chat and we were on the phone for about an hour. So I finished off tea, which was Rice and lentils with mixed veg and gravy. And now I’m going to do the washing up and have an early night again.

I’ll see if I can make it past the bathroom tonight.

Tuesday 27th October 2015 – TIMBER!!!!!!

I’m not going to be short of wood for the next couple of years, that’s for sure. Not after today, anyway.

I own a parcel of land next to Lieneke’s house and about a year or so ago, a branch snapped off and snagged in trees right above the pathway that she uses to go to her barn. She had a few words with me about moving it, which is no surprise as I wouldn’t like a branch like that poised right above my head.

Anyway, with it being so nice this morning, Terry came round to attend to the branch. We had a good look around the tree and we noticed that there were several other branches that were unsafe. Furthermore, the tree itself was swamped with ivy and there were few leaves on it. It really was in poor condition.

And you’ve no idea how much noise a 50-foot tree makes when it comes crashing to the ground. It certainly shook the neighbourhood. And once it was down (which wasn’t easy) we set to work to cut it into 30cm lengths. While Terry was doing that I was carting it all away with the powered barrow and I now have a huge stack of wood, much of which needs splitting.

It won’t be ready for another year or two as it will have to dry out, but when it is ready it will be astonishing. Not only that, we had a walk around on the plot of land and identified three or four other trees, much smaller, but wood nevertheless, that have almost died out and so they will be coming down next.

I bought a chainsaw from the USA years and years ago and so we had it out. It worked fine but after having been stuck in the tree as it fell over, it’s bent the rail and needs to be repaired. Terry is looking into that and when it’s done, there are piles of things that I can be doing with it.

While we were tidying up we had the threatened rainstorm and so Terry came in to measure up for the plumbing and then went home. I’m not as young as I used to be – in fact I was struggling with the power barrow – and so I came up here and crashed out.

No reason why I should be tired though – after all, I’d had a good sleep last night and I’d been on my travels too. I was driving a taxi quite a distance away and when I reached as far as Sheffield, I realised that I could call up my base on the radio from the hills around there, due to the atmospherics in the air. Up and down the hills through some really depressing scenery, and then suddenly I had the idea to go to another taxi office there where I could call back to my base. I immediately appeared in a taxi office in the cellar of a big building, called back home, and then went up to the ground floor and outside. I remembered that I’d been “transported” into this taxi office and this caused a problem in that I couldn’t remember where my taxi might be, and I had a good prowl around the area, even in the local scrapyard, but that didn’t help and I ended up wandering aimlessly around. And at a certain moment I even had Zero accompanying me on my travels, and I’m no idea what she was doing.

Tonight, I finally had my Sunday night pizza that I forgot yesterday, and now I’m off for another early night and see where I end up.

-1

Friday 16th October 2015 – I WENT TO BED …

… at 22:00 last night. And so I didn’t wake up until 12:00 midday today. And I would probably have still been in bed even now had I remembered to switch off the Canadian telephone last night so the alarm wouldn’t go off at 06:00 Quebec time (12:00 French time).

By the time I’d finished having a shower and a shave and a good soak, Liz was back from work and so I had breakfast followed by a bowl of Liz’s vegan soup, and then Terry brought me home.

The jungle has taken over as you might expect, and so finding the house was an adventure. But that wasn’t really what annoyed me.

You remember that just before I went away to Canada I had that pile of scrap on my yard that needed the head gasket changed. It leaked oil all over the concrete pan that we did last summer, and I had asked the owner of that Hyundai to come along and clean it off while I was away.

Of course, it goes without saying that the amount of time that I had spent oh his car, and how much I had put myself out for him with what I did, he couldn’t be bothered to come along and clean it off. And now my concrete is thoroughly ruined.

I’ll tell you something – and that is the that this is the last time that I am EVER going to put myself out for anyone. No-one else’s car is going to come onto my concrete and if anyone else wants any work doing on a car then they can whistle.

Just one exception for this of course. Liz and Terry have done me a great service in all the years that they’ve been living here and their vehicles are more-than-welcome to come here. And that reminds me – I need to buy an engine crane. I’ve promised myself that for years and I’ve a feeling that one is going to become necessary around here in the immediate future.

The house is freezing. It’s 9°C in the bedroom and just 11.3°C in the attic. And a mouse has managed to enter the attic and so it (the attic, not the mouse) needs a good cleaning and disinfecting. That has really dismayed me.

But the positive side of all of this is that, in contrast to last year, the batteries are fully charged and the fridge, that I had plugged into the overcharge circuit, was running quite nicely. All of this despite the miserable weather that we were having. But I dunno what has gone on here while I was away but something is lurking about in the fridge so I need to clean that. It looks like Quatermass’s Experiment in there.

So I cleaned off the attic a little and sat up here freezing, resisting the temptation to light the fire. Eventually, after chatting to someone on the laptop for ages, I decided to go to bed. Freezing in the bedroom of course, and so decided to slip into bed and undress under the covers as I warmed up.

Despite the cold, it was lovely to be back in my own comfortable bed and I wasn’t awake long enough to undress. I just went right out and that was that.

Thursday 8th October 2015 – THAT WAS ANOTHER …

… sleep of the dead last night. I was watching a film on the laptop but after about 20 minutes I gave it up as a bad job and that was that. I didn’t feel a thing until the morning and I was awake long before the alarm went off.

I’d been on my travels too, and they really were travels. I’d started off back on the buses, doing the regular Friday night run that I used to do for Shearings – up around Central Scotland and that area. Then Cecile and I were living somewhere in Belgium and it was midwinter. We had a day and a half spare and so I suggested that we go off to the Arctic Circle. I had three Cortinas in various conditions (all of them running, after a fashion) and I chose the worst one to do the trip, if I could remember where it was and if the Council hadn’t towed it away. But although it took me about 30 seconds to pack (and I was amazed at how little I needed) it took Cecile almost all of the day and a half to make herself ready.

Finally, I was in Stoke on Trent with someone whom I used to know and we were just stilling around doing very little and talking. And Zero put in an appearance too.

All in all, I’m surprised that my journey through the night hadn’t thoroughly worn me out. And on waking up I noticed that there was no condensation on the roof even though I’d been cooking in here and it had rained during the evening.

There’s no photo of my spec from last night, because while I was putting away everything into Strider I noticed through the trees some movement in the bay away in the distance, so I shot over to see what it was.

I know that there’s a sawdust barge that works the coast around here collecting the waste products from the sawmills to take to Matane and while I wouldn’t recognise a sawdust barge even if I were to trip over one, this one looks as if it could be something to do with that.

I went back on the road, having forgotten about photographing my camp, and instead of going around the coast I ended up in the mountains taking a short cut.

The autumn colours up here really are magnificent. You can understand why it is that I enjoy travelling round the eastern part of Canada at this time of the year. And to live in one of those cabins over there would be superb. If only I could see the sea from there.

I rediscovered the sea at Riviere au Renard and found myself head-on in a howling gale. I parked up and went for a walk around the harbour but the wind blew me back to Strider and so I didn’t get to see too much.

The harbour was however quite full of fishing boats but many of them were up on stocks. The fishing around here these days has been having an enormous struggle since the collapse of the cod industry in 1992

The north coast of the Gaspé Peninsula – the southern shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence – is really beautiful.

The road along here is something comparatively new. It’s all up steep headland and down into deep inlets, and in almost every inlet there’s a small fishing village with a quay and a church, and is usually called St-Something or Anse (Cove) au Something Else.

Every one of them is extremely photogenic but the difficulty that you have is finding a good uninterrupted view of the place.

Prior to the roads being here along the coast, the only access to these small villages was by sea and you’ll remember when we were in Matane the other day we visited the marine museum that was situated in the old quay from where all of the coastal boats used to depart.

And if you know anything about cloud formations (which you will do if you’ve been reading this rubbish for any reasonable length of time) you won’t need me to tell you where the northern shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence might be.

While I was stopped and having my lunch, I noticed this object way out in the gulf. And it was moving too, and so with the telephoto lens I squeezed off a good long-distance shot.

You can’t tell what it is from here, but from the headland at the back it was easy to identify. It’s the superstructure of a large bulk carrier heading down the Gulf of St Lawrence towards the Atlantic. As I said before, it’s hard to understand why so many people were unable to believe that the world was round when you see evidence like this.

Talking of ships, we haven’t had a real ship of the day for a couple of days. And so when I saw this one steaming (or rather dieseling) past the foot of the headland upon which I was standing, I had to take a photo.

She’s too far out for me to be able to identify her name but she’s one of the fleet of Maersk Container Ships and according to the company’s interactive fleet map, 24 hours after I saw this ship, the Maersk Carolina was leaving the Gulf of St Lawrence and the Maersk Palermo was still in the river.

It’s more likely though to be the Maersk Penang that had arrived in Montreal from Antwerp and was now on its way out to Halifax.

From here I went off to find a place to stay. As I said, it’s becoming darker earlier and earlier and I don’t want to be caught out again.

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Wednesday 7th October 2015 – I HAD YET ANOTHER …

… really bad night last night. Only on this occasion there wasn’t any particular reason for it. I was still awake at 02:00 this morning, which is not like me over here, is it? And worse still, I had no idea why that might have been.

I crawled under the shower and then made a coffee but I still didn’t feel much better.

Anyway, to wake myself up, I made myself another mug of coffee and went down to the harbour for a walk around and some fresh air.

And, strangely enough, this would have been quite a good place to have stayed for the night. There was plenty of space here and there were quite a few boats up on stocks. I could have tucked myself in here quite happily in the peace and quiet and been well away.

Still, you live and learn, don’t you?

Having fuelled up Strider, I set off again and after a good drive I pulled up on a rest area to admire the view and drink another coffee.

We’ve all seen this rock before haven’t we? It’s La Roche Percée, the Pierced Rock, and we came by here before. It’s said to be one of the hundreds of places where Jacques Cartier made a landing and erected a cross.

If he really did land at all of the places that are claimed as his landing sites, he would probably be still out there now, but this time it’s probably correct because no-one could invent a description of this particular site without having visited it and there isn’t another place that resembles this in the whole of the St Lawrence estuary.

I was away with the fairies for about an hour up here too in the lovely sunny late-morning, and then I set off again to continue my travels.

We’ve seen the town of Percé before and so I won’t trouble you with another photo of the town itself. The only thing that you need to remember is that half of the buildings are motels and the other half are tourist attractions.

But all of that notwithstanding, we certainly haven’t seen the town and the rock from this angle. And although you can’t see the hole in the rock, this is certainly the most exciting angle to view everything. But itwas quite an effort to take the photo. There’s nowhere to park except at the side of the road and there’s an endless stream of traffic up the hill.

We finally solve the mystery of the railway when we arrive at the town of Gaspé. All of the railway installations have been swept away and there’s a huge tourist information building constructed on the site.

And parked out at the back of it is the train here. We’ve seen dozens of locomotives like this and so I think that it might be one of the GP38 family, but I’ll need to check up on that.

The girl in charge of the tourist information office told me the story of the train, so now I can tell you all.

VIARAIL stopped running the trains to Montreal about 6 years ago and abandoned the line, so she said. It’s now a tourist scenic railway that runs just as far as Percé and back again in the summer months with no connection to the main line at Compbelltown, which should make life interesting if they ever need to replace the loco or send it away for repair.

But that’s not likely to happen as the service didn’t run this year. It seems that important work is needed to be done on the line but the Quebec Government hasn’t done it. “Maybe they’ll do it ready for next year” she said, and I’m not convinced that she believed it either.

The latest update on all of this is that Jean-François Turcotte told me “that was RS-18u 1849; it’s been trucked-out to the active portion of the line and is now used to haul woodchip, cement and windmill parts along with three other RS-18u’s. The carriages for the former l’Amiral tourist train are still in Gaspé, AFAIK.”

And Anthony Bernard Prince said ” A lot of track maintenance work will be carried out on the 3rd section of our railroad between Port-Daniel and Gaspé this year (2021). The majority of the work will be carried out between Chandler and Douglastown. 15,000 ties will be replaced, many crossings will be replaced, and thousands of tons of ballast will be spread.”

The town of Gaspé is a nightmare to negotiate as the whole road system is torn up for repair. I eventually made it to Tim Horton’s but didn’t stay long. Instead, I moved on and I’m now esconced at the site of the old World War II military defences for the bay. It’s a little-known fact that I had the UK fallen to the Germans in World War II, the Royal Navy would have come and set themselves up over here in the Gaspé.

And on the way out of Gaspé on the way to here here I drove past two motels that I hadn’t noticed in 2010. Where were they when I needed them?

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EPIC HALL

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