I took the back road into Fredericton to go for a look around today, and I came across this company. I couldn’t resists the idea of going into them and seeing if they would make one for me to my own specifications.

I need one made with a couple of rows of beads, rather like an abacus. And when I was asked why, I replied that, having had the kind of life that I had, I can only count on my own support.

But there was nothing happening in the town so I head back northwards towards Centreville

I took the old road out of the city and a few miles after the turning to Mactaquac I encountered this beautiful suspension bridge.

I couldn’t see a date on the bridge so I couldn’t see whether it was built before the valley was flooded when the dam was built in the 1960s. But looking at the clearance underneath the bridge you would only just paddle your own canoe underneath it today.

The day was really beautiful today and the views along the Saint John River were stunning. I took dozens of photos of the route and it’s really hard just to pick out one as an example.

I’m about 5kms from Kings Landing just here when I crested the brow of a hill and and this view presented to me. It looks absolutely magnificent in the sunshine but it does make you wonder what it must have been like before they flooded the valley.

This is the largest employer in the area, the AV Nackawik mill. And that must be the biggest pile of sawdust the world has ever seen.

The mill was built in 1967 to provide employment for the people who had been displaced from the valley due to the building of the dam. But in 2004 the company that owned it closed the mill in circumstance that can only be described as “controversial”. It reopened under different ownership 18 months later.

Nackawik is home to the world’s largest axe – the Giant Axe of Nackawik – and so seeing that we were here, Strawberry Moose and I went for a look at it.

The handle is 15 metres long and the axe was built in 1991. It’s purely symbolic and is said to represent the importance of the forestry industry to the area. And that’s just as well that it’s symbolic as I wouldn’t have liked to have met the lumberjack who was able to wield that in a forest.

There’s a time capsule embedded in the stump, but I’ve no idea what might be in it.

His Nibs and I had a quiet uneventful drive up the eastern bank of the Saint John River as far as Woodstock, which is over there on the far bank, swathed in the sunlight.

The bridge that you can see in the foreground is the old railway bridge. The station building remains but it’s lost in the trees to the right of the bridge. It’s a shame that there’s never going to be another locomotive running up and down that track

In Woodstock I went to the machinery place to see if he had and second-hand brushcutters but there was nothing doing. But what he did have was a selection of D-i-Y machines such as drills and the like powered by small petrol engines. I’ve never seen that before.

And back at Rachel’s, she didn’t feel like cooking so I made a mega-vegan-curry for everyone. And, surprisingly, everyone survived.

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