Tag Archives: strawberry moose

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

Thursday 18th September 2014 – WHICH FINISHES WITH OUR HERO ALL AT SEA

I was wide awake at about 06:30 this morning, having had another one of the best night’s sleeps that I’ve had for a while. However, leaving my stinking pit was quite another story and it was probably a good hour or so later that I heaved myself out, to make myself a coffee and to finish off the notes from yesterday.

Now that my notes are up-to-date and having taken a couple of photos of my overnight spec, the harbour at St Lawrence and this is another good find with which I am very impressed, I can head for the hills. Or rather, the coast, for my days in the mountains are over for the moment.

Further down ther road there’s a sign here for Dingwall, so Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly decide to go down there to see if Ross County is playing.

In fact the team doesn’t seem to be at home but here’s the view from the end of the road and it’s magnificent as usual. Just like most places along the coast here at the nothern end of Cape Breton Island.

I find the Coastal Loop a little later, and this takes me to White Point.

There’s a camper just gone past me down there that’s from the same company as the one with which I was playing leap-frog along the Trans Canada Highway on Monday. It isn’t the same one though, because when I arrived at the bottom of the hill I had quite a lengthy chat with the couple. They were from the UK and they’ve been on a long exploratory voyage on trains planes and campers all over Canada and were on their way back from Newfoundland.

And the weather, out of the wind, is absolutely gorgeous. The sun is beating down and there’s a perfect blue sky. What more could any man desire? Apart from Jenny Agutter and Kate Bush of course, to sooth my fevered brow.

That’s the view from Lakies Head whoever Lakie was when he was at home, if he ever was. And at this scenic turn-off (why don’t they ever have scenic turn-ons? It’s much more appropriate) there was a Park Ranger standing behind a sign saying “chat to me”. And so I did. As if I ever need any invitation …

And just a few hundred yards further on from here I was overwhelmed by the smell of damp seaweed. I haven’t smelt it quite as strong as I have just here so I don’t know what’s going on about that.

At Ingonish Harbour, not the harbour at Ingonish, that’s somewhere completely different, we’re back at the mouth of the Aspy Fault, the faultline that links up with the Great Glen in Scotland.

Here’s probably the best view of the fault line, the cleft between the mountains that stretches right into the interior of Cape Breton Island and maybe even far beyond. It’s quite astonishing that this fault line stretches all the way to Scotland and that these two land masses might even have been connected in the dawn of time.

Many years ago I read an ancient travel book which described inter alia someone’s nightmare drive over the desperate road over Cape Smoky. While it’s certainly exciting, I wouldn’t say that it was terrifying, but these days, the road around the Cape is hacked out of the cliff face.

Here, where the modern road is about to swing round to the left to descend one of the steepest parts of the trail, a section that has been hacked out of the cliff, we can see what may well have been the old road straight ahead continuing to climb into the mountains.

The descent on the new road is stiff, as I said, and if this is climbing away from here, then the descent on the other side must have been phenomenal, at least twice as steep as the modern road. It’s hardly surprising therefore that people became so worked up whenever the road over Cape Smoky was mentioned

If you want to see what the modern descent is like, we can travel maybe half a mile to a pull-in and if we peer through the haze that’s rolling in off the sea, you might be able to see it.

It just goes down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down, all the way to sea level right down there.

From the bottom of the hill I’m caught in a whole series of road works all the way to Sydney. One after the other and it takes hours to arrive in the town. At the shipping company offices I do the necessary and then go for a wander around to stock up with supplies.

But here’s a sad legacy of the railway here at the port. Many years ago there was a rail ferry over to Newfoundland from here but the entire railway system in Newfoundland was demolished in this ruthless Canadian Government anti-rail programme – there’s not an inch of Government track left in the province – and the rilway network here is abandoned too.

Here’s a very sad-looking former railway station at North Sydney and the rails from beyond here down to the port have been lifted.

So now I’ve had a leisurely evening and I’m taking my place in the queue at the port for the next stage of my journey.

-2

Wednesday 10th September 2014 – DAY ONE OF THE HARVEST JAZZ AND BLUES FESTIVAL …

… so I need to organise myself properly. Quite an impossible task, for many have tried and all have failed.

To start with, here’s a photo of my pitch at the Mactaquac Provincial Park. I’m sheltered by bushes and trees on two sides, which means of course that the wind is coming from the other two sides, as you might expect.

And it was cold during the night. Really cold. I went to bed fully-clothed, and that was uncomfortable when I had a bad attack of cramp at about 04:00.

And it was even colder at 07:00 when I was up and about. I almost went to look for a jumper but a hot coffee followed by an even-hotter shower did the business.

Strawberry Moose had some visitors too – presumably collecting maintenance payments from last year, I shouldn’t be surprised.

Having read the news recently, His Nibs is quite keen to play his part in diversifying the species – in fact, any species that he can. It’s why he’s so insistent upon coming here with me.

Mind you, if his friends don’t learn to move off the road quicker than they do at the moment, they might need all of the help that he can give them in that respect.

I had quite a few things to do this morning, and then I went off for lunch at the boat-launching ramp across the Saint John River from Fredericton. The view from here across to the city is quite phenomenal, especially in the magnificent weather that we were having at the time.

And having dealt with that, I went off for an explore around until the early evening when the Festival is supposed to get under way.

But there’s something that isn’t quite right here this year. The headline act, Blues Traveler, aren’t opening at the Playhouse Theatre, as most of the other headlining bands have donein the recent past. The Hoodoo House isn’t erected yet and won’t be opening tonight, and the Barracks Square tent isn’t open either. Furthermore, it’s been turned 90° so that it’s only half the size and instead of being on the hardstanding, it’s on the grass lawn. That will be interesting if we have a heavy downpour of rain at any time.

First band up on stage were the Wood Brothers in the Blues Tent. Apart from a bassist, Chris Wood, who spent a great deal of his time dancing with his instrument, I’m not quite sure what to say about them.

I made a note that they were more folk-country-rock than blues but that wasn’t necessarily the case. They chopped and changed styles and like most people who try to be something to everyone, they ended up being nothing to anyone – or at least, to me. Technically they were excellent, there’s no doubt about that, but their diversity didn’t appeal to me.

At the Mojo Tent I missed Gypsophilia – they were walking offstage as I arrived.

Next up was a group called Thus Owls, or something like that. They consisted of a guitarist, a drummer, and a woman playing keyboards and “things”, singing and using her voice for sound effects.

I wasn’t sure what to make of them. They were something like a Sigur Ros but singing in English, not Icelandic, and I’m not sure exactly where they were supposed to fit in at the festival because whatever they were, it was neither blues nor jazz, and this experimental avant-garde chamber music isn’t really for me. I’m not able to comment on the technical ability as it isn’t easy to understand what it is that they were really trying to do.

Back at the Blues Tent, we had Matty Andersen and the Mellotones, a name sounding like something out of the Blues Brothers. He’s from New Brunswick and his claim to fame is that he won the International Blues Challenge in Memphis in 2010.

He wasn’t alone either. He had four brass musicians (they were also playing horns and the like too), three guitarists including himself, a bassist, a keyboard player and a drummer, and probably a partridge in a pear tree too somewhere.

Mark Knopfler said something about not giving “a damn about any trumpet-playing band. It ain’t what they call rock and roll” and I’m afraid that I have to agree. His performance, which I have to say was quite competent by anyone’s standards, didn’t need half of these musicians on the stage. It’s just, in my opinion, unnecessary clutter and it tends to distract from the music.

Godd though it may have been, it wasn’t my cup of tea. I put my camera away and prepared to leave for the Mojo Tent.

It was at this moment that we had one of these priceless occasions that happens only once in a lifetime. As I was standing by the door putting the Nikon away, a “Security” guard came running over.
“I saw that!” he shouted accusingly, pointing to my camera bag (generally speaking, DSLRs are forbidden at the Festival)).
“Did you see this?” I said, thrusting my Media Pass under his nose.
One rather red-faced security guard beat a hasty retreat.

On the way back to the Mojo Tent, I was harassed by yet another beggar (there are a few of these about) and while he was busy trying to cadge half a dollar, his mobile phone rang. And it was a much-better smartphone than I could ever afford. And so I told him what I thought about it all, in no uncertain terms.

This is the kind of thing that annoys me intensely.

Final act onstage for tonight was Bahamas, not bananas – at the Mojo Tent.

They consisted of a singer-guitarist, another guitarist, a drummer, a backing vocalist and – shock, horror – not a bassist in sight. What a sacrilege! I can’t think why any blues or jazz band would ever want to play without a bassist, and how it would even be possible. That is just the kind of thing that would have me on the back foot before we even start.

I didn’t make a single note or comment about the group’s music so they clearly made no impression at all on me. I’ll have to give them a rather neutral mark.

As a Media representative (Radio Anglais does have some benefits after all) I’m allowed to photograph the first three numbers and then I can stay and watch the rest of the act. But I ended up leaving and going back home for an early night.

I have to say that on Day One, I’ve seen nothing that has grabbed my attention. In fact, to be honest, I’ve been rather disappointed with the music that I’ve seen so far. I hope that things pick up considerably for Day Two.

Tuesday 9th September 2014 – I’VE LEFT CENTREVILLE …

… and I’m now at my other spiritual home, the campsite at the country park at Mactaquac, near Fredericton.

It wasn’t quite as cold this morning – a balmy 9°C would you believe – when I set off to the tyre depot to pay my respects to everyone there, and I ended up for an hour or so doing some photocopy-editing of a photo in an old historic book that someone has found. It shows all of the kids who went to a local primary school in 1935 – including Wallace McCain, he who had his chips just a few years ago – and someone has succeeded in identifying them all.

Consequently we were doing a “cut and paste” on the photocopier so that all of the kids would be labelled with their identity.

From there I went to the Bank at Florenceville to do some stuff down there and then set off for Woodstock. And by the time I got to Woodstock I was half a mill … "you said that last year – and the year before" – ed. I did a little food shopping and at Canadian Tires I bought a small hydraulic bottle jack. There’s a good reason for this in that the jacks in these hire cars are sill jacks, and totally useless on uneven ground. And of course, I might be going to Labrador as you know.

But then again, I might not. It’s snowing in Alberta already and there are people snowed in at their homes and so on – early September and WE complain about our weather! I want to see what the long-range forecast is before I commit myself.

On the motorway down to Fredericton, I was right about something of which I had caught a glimpse earlier. You may recall, from all of our previous visits to Canada, that they have these road trains – an articulated tractor unit towing not one but two small trailers – a lead trailer and a pup trailer (although when they have to reverse, the drivers often call the pup trailer something like “the mother of a pup.

But I was convinced that I’d seen not one but two Day and Ross lorries, each towing two full-sized trailers on the motorway around Montreal and so I had the camera poised as I flashed along the Trans-Canada Highway.

Sure enough, I was not wrong about that. The lorry here in this photo on the other carriageway is pulling two full-sized trailers. I’ve seen plenty of lead-and-pup combinations in my time, but never this.

And doesn’t Strawberry Moose take a superb photo, especially when we have a closing speed of what must be not far short of 250kph. Well done, Strawberry!

At Fredericton, they hadn’t done my press pass info so I had to hang around for a while so I went up to Home Depot for a nosy around. There was nothing interesting there but I did meet Danny, the store assistant who comes from Croatia and with whom I’ve had several good chats before. And at Value Village, I bought a few more CDs and a book on Quebec and the Maritime Provinces.

Finally, I picked up my press pass and my parking permit and now I’m here. I’ve had tea and I’m going to have an early night, I reckon.

-1

Thursday 27th March 2014 – IT WAS ANOTHER DAY …

… when I wasn’t alone in the garden. For two days now in succession, just as the evening starts to draw on, some of Strawberry Moose‘s girl friends come to join us.

I have to keep on reminding His Nibs that the word is “stag” – spelt S-T-A-G. The second letter is not an “H”.

During the night I was at a boarding school somewhere in the north of the UK. All the kids were piling onto a bus to go somewhere.
“They will all be sold into slavery” I said to Michael the former Pionsat goalkeeper who had to give up about three yers ago when he broke his shoulder (and I’ve no idea what he was doing here). “It’s the white slave trade”.
“No it isn’t” replied Michael. “It’s a proven fact that driving around like this helps people relax and it will prepare the kids for their exams”.
“Ohh no” I replied. “I’m far too cynical for that. It’s the white slave trade”.

So after another early start and a good three hours on the web site, I went outside and after a really good day in the garden I’ve cleared and prepared another two raised beds. That’s 9 done out of the 12, and then there’s the mega-cloche and then the fruit bed to clear. And if I find the time, I want to dig another bed.

But one of the raised beds has disintegrated – or, rather, the boarding around the edge has. And there are a few others that look rather shaky. But I remembered that I have piles of those thin lightweight red bricks lying around. Now I know what to do with them.

-3

Wednesday 26th March 2014 – IT’S AMAZING …

… how much you can accomplish when you have a prompt start and no interruptions (and also, you don’t fall asleep at lunchtime).

This morning though, it was hard to leave my warm and comfortable bed because it was anything but here in my little room. And I had been busy during the night. I’d been up on the Yorkshire Moors watching two Reliant Scilitars (they were really 1970s Jensen Interceptors but never mind) come into this parking area to turn round. One of them had no numberplate and my friend said something along the lines of “just typical – they spend all of their money on buying a fancy car and so have nothing left over to buy the number plates”.

We were then in a garage – a motor trade workshop I mean – and an old friend of mine was running it and he was repairing cars like these Reliants. There had been a problem though and the sliding door to the premises had come of its runners and he, helped by some school friends of mine (whom I’m certain he never met) was trying to fix it. They could fix the bottom runner in its track but every time they lifted it up to fit the top runner in its track, the door fell inwards on top of them all.

But anyway, a couple of hours on the website and then promptly outside. And I worked hard all day today too, and with just the usual lunch break.

Here’s another one of the raised beds completed, with a row of carrots and a row of parsnips. The parsnips are some that I bought in Canada in 2012 and designed, like most Canadian plants, for short growing seasons. They might do well here.

As for the carrots, I had 4 viable varieties, another that expired last year, and a 6th that expired in 2012. But anyway, I mixed a few seeds of each lot in with a handful of moist sand, and sowed them all.

The sand serves three purposes, namely –
1) it gives bulk to the mix of seeds and so makes sowing easier and quicker
2) I can see where I’ve sowed
3) with the soil being clay, there are lots of air pockets and so the seeds are sometimes trapped in them and don’t have enoug water to germinate. The damp sand clings to the seeds and helps them to germinate regardless of the heavy clay soil.

There are also a few radish seeds mixed in with each row. The radish germinate in about 10 days so I can see from their leaves where the rows of seeds are.

But if that wasn’t enough, I cracked straight on and by knocking off time I’d finished a second raised bed. The courgettes will be going in there.

So two raised beds in a day! That’s good news and means that I won’t be disappointed if I take a day off some time.

But I had company today while I was working in the garden. There were two deer in the field down the hill.

It’s *that* time of year again, isn’t it? So I imagine that it was Strawberry Moose that they had come to see, not me.

But they were nice anyway. Much nicer than the usual company.

I’m trying a new tactic this year. With my soil being wet clayey claggy mess, every time I pull up a weed, I pull up half the soil with it. I’m fed up of seeing my soil disappear and so I’ve resurrected a little old water butt that I’ve had for years, bought in the UK.

I’ve put about 20 litres of water in it and I’m throwing the weeds into it. and at the end of the night I bash the weeds around a little with a spade.

The aim is to soak all of the soil off the weeds and when the raised beds need watering, I’ll draw the water off here, which will be nice and wet and muddy, and I’ll pour it onto the bed, which will wet them of course but also add back the soil. And if any of the weeds rot and decay, the wet decayed plant matter will aslo be added back.

Whatever remains of this rotted mixture will end up in the compost.

-4

Monday 3rd March 2014 – LAST NIGHT’S HOTEL …

… was called the Hotel de la Paix at Oloron Ste Marie, and a good choice it was too.

But I wasn’t alone in my room last night. Frankie Howerd, who as you know is my favourite comedian, came in with the script for his new “Carry On” film, all 391 pages of it, and so much of the night was taken up with reading it.

And I can still remember quite a lot of the script too this morning. I’ll have to sit and write it all down before I forget it. I could be on to something here.

And so with raging toothache yet again, I loaded up Caliburn and sat down to check the route for the next stage of my journey.

But something was clearly not correct as it made no sense at all, and after puzzling over the map for a good 20 minutes I realised that somehow in plotting my route I had turned over two pages of the map at once and I had driven myself up an impasse, as it were.

Consequently I decided to follow the Lady Who Lives In The Satnav for the route today and she took me via Tarbes and Pau and then right across the foothills of the Pyrenees – having me stuck behind a caravanette on a narrow series of lanes for a good 60 km.

Loads of interesting things to see but I wasn’t in any mood to stop and look – this toothache ws driving me mad. I felt like finding a dentist and having allof my teeth taken out – something like back in the 1970s when Malcolm Allison had been appoined team coach at Crystal Palace Football Club. He went to the dentist to have his teeth taken out, and they fitted seats instead.

I finally met up with my route but The Lady etc etc had found me a route that seemed to be much shorter than mine so I followed that and ended up in Spain again.

She brought me to a town called Vielha and it’s a strange situation here because all the rivers flow north into France and we have the headwaters of the River Garonne here. The International boundary is not a watershed as you might think.

And as an aside, here I was stopped for a spot-check by a Spanish Police road patrol.

The Lady Who etc etc had designs on sending me up the Valle de Aran, so it seemed. That’s a huge ski area with loads of faciiities, and the road up there goes through passes at well over 2000 metres. Ahh well – in for a penny, in for a pound.

But it wasn’t to be. About 15kms up the road and well into the snow, we encountered a sign “closed to all vehicles not equipped with chains” – and even local 4×4 drivers were chaining up for the route. They know the area so much better than I do and they’ve been driving in snow for a lot longer than I have, so if they are chaining up, what chance do I have with Caliburn?

The Lady Who Lives etc etc was rather annoyed about me retracing my steps but discretion is the better part of valour.

We carried on south through the enormous Tunnel de Vielha – this road would have been so much fun to drive 30 years ago before the tunnel had been built, I reckon – and this brought me out on the southern side of the Pyrenees and, would you believe, into the sun.

She took me off the main road and we climbed up and up and up to the aptly-named Col de Perves, where Strawberry Moose stopped for a photo opportunity as you might expect. With a name like that, he just had to.

A few flakes of snow fell onto the camera lens, but nothing much to worry about. There was hardly a trace of snow on the ground anywhere around here.

Not so over there, though.

That was where I actually should have been – climbing up out of the Valle de Aran and over the top to the town of Sort which is just on the other side of those mountains over there. This was turning into something of an enormous detour.

And if you thought that the climb up the Col de Perves was exciting, the descent was even more so.

The town of Perves is situated just below the summit and there is a track from there that leads straight downhill – clearly back before the days of the motor-car the peasants were a hardy lot – but for modern vehicles there’s a road something like this – and several good kilometres of it too. Where I’m standing is about half-way down but it’s the first good photo opportunity where there is some kind of parking.

By now though the weather has considerably brightened up and I was really enjoying the day, had it not been for this raging toothache that was putting the dampers on just about everything.

And we hadn’t finished with the mountains yet either.

We ended up climbing up a mountain pass or two via a road that was barely wide enough to take Caliburn and that was exciting when we met a couple of vehicles coming the other way. But once we arrived in Sort (about two hours after the time I should have been here) the rest of the journey was comparatively straightforward. A couple of mountain passes to be sure, but we are on N-roads, the equivelent of A-roads in the UK and I arrived at my ultimate destination, the little country of Andorra, without further ado.

But this toothache is driving me berserk and I went straight to bed, where I promptly crashed out, and that was that.

-3

Sunday 2nd March 2014 – I CAN’T LEAVE …

… Hendaye without showing you a photo of the beach here.

It stretches for over three kilometres, and even in the dismal weather that we were having this morning, it looked quite impressive. It really is a shame that the weather has conspired to defeat me on this little journey. Hendaye has always been a place high on my list to visit, and I can’t believe that the weather has let me down.

The town might not be up to too much but the seafront is certainly from another time – the Belle Epoque of the period from 1890 to 1929 (minus the war of course) as you can tell from some of the magnificent buildings here.

It costs a king’s ransom to rent a flat there as you might expect but, surprisingly, the restaurant is quite “democratic” in its prices and the vegetable risotto that I had the first night here was excellent, in both quality and price.

This is ice-station Zebra where I stayed for a couple of nights.

They had fixed the hot water by this morning but not the heating, but I’m not complaining. All hotels are under repair during the close season – it’s part of the fun of travelling at this time of year – and they made me a handsome reduction on the price as well as including the (copious) breakfast free of charge to make up for the inconvenience. Chapeau to the Hotel Bellevue!

Diesel is about 10 cents a litre cheaper in Spain and so Caliburn, Strawberry Moose
and I crossed the border and fuelled up.

From there we followed the border for quite a way – but on the Spanish side.

Neither Caliburn nor Strawberry Moose have been to Spain before and so here’s a photo of Caliburn to prove that he was here. Strawberry Moose will be having a better photo-opportunity in due course.

Watch this space.

But there’s all kinds of interesting things to see at the roadside. Here in a pub car park (or what passes as a pub in Spain) there was a steam locomotive.

Built by the Lokomotivbau Karl Marx in Babelsberg (East Germany, of course), this is build number 16005 of 1950 and is probably one of the 4000-odd narrow-gauge steam locomotives built for the East German narrow-gauge railway network.

What it’s doing here is a mystery but one thing is certain in that it won’t be going anywhere else. It’s in a dreadful state.

We climbed back into France over the Col d’Ispeguy, all 672 metres of it. This was the scene of a battle between the French and the Spanish in June 1794 and it’s clearly a sensitive military area as even today there are the remains of a great number of military defences guarding the Pass.

These though are likely to be something to do with World War II. Spain was neutral during the War but Hitler had asked Franco for permission to send an army across Spain to besiege Gibraltar. This was a logical step, as it would have closed the Mediterranean to British forces and led to the collapse of the British position in North Africa.

Franco refused and, apparently, gave Hitler such a verbal mauling that Hitler emerged shaken from the intervie and declared that he would rather go to have all of his teeth pulled at the dentist that have another discussion with Franco. Franco would be well-aware of the importance of Gibraltar, convinced that the Germans would invade Spain in order to capture the Rock, and doubless ordered these fortifications to be built.

Hitler’s failure to force the issue with Franco was the first nail in the Nazi coffin, in my opinion.

But as I have said before, the power of vehicle advertising is teemendous. Here I was sitting at the top of the Col d’Ispeguy quietly eating my butty and admiring the view into France when there was a knock on the window of Caliburn. As a result I ended up doing a site visit for a French guy in the area.

It will come to nothing as he’s at the bottom of a steep-sided valley and won’t have the sun for more than 4 or 5 hours per day in summer, but nevertheless, it just shows …

Next part of the route was to take me from Ahaxe to Tardets on a road that is something of a roller-coaster of half a dozen mountain passes of well over 1000 metres – up there somewhere.

However on turning off onto the lane there was a large gate, all padlocked off, with “road closed” all over it. Not that I’m surpised. It’s been raining for much of the day and it’s quite cold so snow up there is an odds-on certainty. And it’s not as if it’s a main road – or even a minor road, come to that.

I ended up having to come by the Col d’Osquich, Mauléon, Cheraute (where I was lucky enough to catch an exciting football match) and Barcus, and now I’m cosily esconced in a hotel opposite the railway station at Oloron Sainte-Marie where I’ll be spending the night.

It’s nice and warm here and the shower works. Just what the doctor ordered.

-3

Wednesday 26th February 2014 – THIS IS WHERE …

… Caliburn, Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly stopped for lunch this afternoon.

I’m at Le Cap Ferret, which is on the French South-Western Atlantic coast not too far from Bordeaux. There is an errand and some Pionsat-based research to be undertaken in this neck of the woods and when I woke up this morning at Brive-La-Gaillarde to another round of miserable driving rain and the only spot of clear weather on the whole of today’s map of France seemed to be around here, I thought “sod this for a game of soldiers” and I’ve gone West.

“Not before time” I hear you say, but anyway, as Marshall MacMahon once famously said, “here I am and here I’ll stay”

One reason for coming here is that there is a big lighthouse on the Cape and as many long-term readers of this rubbish will recall, I have quite a thing about lighthouses.

But this one wasn’t what I was expecting to see for rather than being isolated on some kind of sandspit somewhere, it’s right in the middle of a built-up area. Access is very difficult and also it’s not easy to find a good spot to take a photograph. Still, one does the best one can.

I went for a good long walk for a couple of hours along the beach. Part of the beach is actually an enormous sandspit that stretches for a good mile, if not more, just offshore and it’s a wonderful place to go for a stroll.

There was practically no-one about which was surprising given how qwarm it was this afternoon. But I bet that it wouldn’t be like this in July and August, not by any means

We’d had a few sudden, short storms during the day, some of them quite heavy, and while I was out on my sandspit we had another one.

Come and gone in a flash, but we had the most astonishing rainbow and I’ve never seen one quite like this before. It came out really well on the photo which was something of a surprise as it doesn’t usually happen like this either.

But on the debit side, dunno if you remember me fixing the auxilliary charging circuit on Caliburn on Monday. Since then, there has always been an occasional little whiff of Sulphuric gas from the battery – no surprise as the battery is goosed and it’s only there to make a circuit. But this evening there was a different smell. The second battery is behind the driver’s seat so while I was driving, I put my hand down to feel if anything was out of the ordinary happening to the battery – and promptly burnt my hand.

The battery was more-than-red hot and so I think that it’s gone totally o/c. And so hot that I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had burst into flames either.

I’ve disconnected it anyway and I’ll have another look at it tomorrow. Or sometime. Maybe.

But now I’m in a little seaside hotel just down the road from Le Cap Ferret. No idea where I’ll go tomorrow, but I don’t feel like going home.

And last night?

I was with Nerina and we went to the Victoria Hall in Hanley to see Neil Young. We were very early and caught him on stage setting up and checking his equipment. There were about 20 early birds in total and he invited us all on stage for a chat, and asked us if we had any questions.

I asked him about his songwriting – I reckoned that the songs that he wrote when he had the Black Dog looking over his shoulder were by far and away the best. Did he agree? And how did he cope with Depression affecting his songwriting.

He replied that he was so accustomed to it that he had learned to live with it and what he wrote, as long as it was technically competent, he had no qualms whatever about recording. Songwriting is all about expressing the writer’s moods and there is good and bad, just like in life.

He then asked for a volunteer todo something and, to my surprise, Nerina volunteered. Not like her – she always had very firm preiciples. But nevertheless she left her position of crouched on the floor at Neil Young’s feet and went off to do this task.

-3

Thursday 3rd October 2013 – STRAWBERRY MOOSE …

mans … "persons!" – ed … a British 12-pounder gun that was dragged to the top of Mount Defiance by a troop of General Burgoyne’s artillery with the aim … "ohh, well done!" – ed … of threatening the American rebels in the fort way below on the promontory on Lake Champlain.

It just goes to show you the power that modern artillery posed back in the early modern era because I doubt very much whether any cannon in the British artillery train, and certainly not a 12-pounder, would have had the effective (or even the absolute) range to do anything like any serious damage to the fort.

Don’t forget that these forts are not like early medieval castles, built of stone walls, where a few 14th- and 15th Century cannon balls could send them crashing down. These fortresses might be faced outside and inside with stone (or even wood) but in between the facings was often as much as 24 feet of earth or sand and any cannon ball, explosive or otherwise, would be merely smothered. At Fort William Henry they were firing point-blank (like 150 yards) with all the artillery that Moncalm had and the only reason that the fort’s north-western bastion collapsed was because a lit howitzer shell from outside landed in an opened box of fused shells on the parapet. And even that wasn’t enough to breach the walls – it simply showed Munro that the writing was on the walls.

Of course Strawberry Moose was not alone up here. He recruited a very keen and willing artillery crew from amongst the local residents out for an early morning hike, and they were only too ready to help him in his exploits with his weapon.

With one volunteer being worth ten men, it was certainly enough to put the wind up the American rebels down in the fort below and they soon fled across the lake into Vermont. But seriously, I cannot imagine whatever was going through the mind of the commander of the fort that he didn’t put a detachment of his men up here to stop the British from taking the position and threatening the fort. Overconfidence?

I did promise you all yesterday that I would show you a photo of my camp site from last night, and you won’t be disappointed, because I wasn’t. This is Rogers Rock campsite on the very northern edge of Lake George and it is one of the most spectacular places in which I’ve slept (strangely enough, of my “top 10”, every one of them is in North America).

As for Rogers, he was someone who became totally disillusioned with the British tactics of marching in fours, dressed in bright red uniforms, through the forests around here. He recruited a band of volunteers, called them “Rogers’ Rangers”, and dressed them in greens and browns. Then he sent them crawling through the forest to wreak havoc and destruction amongst the French military, their native Algonquin allies, and the Frech settlers who had settled around the head of Lake George in defiance of the treaty of Utrecht of 1713.

From there I drove on across the pass and the old portage to Crown Point, where Lake Champlain narrows to about half a mile. Crown Point actually faces north rather than south and so once the French had abandoned Fort Carillon (as Fort Ticonderoga was known) in order to defend Montreal after the fall of Quebec and the loss of Montcalm’s army in 1759, the British dashed here to where the French formerly had a trading post (Fort St Frederic) to take possession.

Here, they started to build what would have been the largest fortress in the whole of North America and in a rush that would have put modern builders to shame, they were well on the way to completing it when the dramatic collapse of French military resistance in North America in 1760 meant that the fort was no longer necessary. After all, who could have foreseen the American Revolution?

The fort was built much more substantially than this, but a chimney fire in one of the barracks went out of control and set alight the armoury, wherein was stored most of the British munitions, including a couple of tons of gunpowder. The subsequent explosion atomised the armoury and set everything else alight, including the timber cross-bracing within the earthen walls and so there was a subterranean fire that went on for weeks until everything was consumed.

There’s a bridge here too – the Champlain Bridge, that crosses the lake into Vermont (I was in Vermont when I took this photo). Pretty though this bridge might be, it’s not a patch on the one that used to be here. That was a graceful steel lattice-girder bridge that was totally innovative in the 1920s when it as built, but the techniques used went on to be standard bridge-building practice until the advent of (yeeuucchhh) concrete bridges.

Accordingly it was classed as a National Monument in 2009 and a team of experts was sent to examine the bridge and make an inventory. What they found so horrified them that the bridge was immediately closed and demolished, for it seems that in the confusion about who actually owned the bridge, there had never been an inspection or even five minutes of maintenance of the structure since the day that it was built.

So tomorrow, I’ll show you this evening’s camp site and you can see what you think of that.

+35

-4

Monday 30th September 2013 – THE FRENCH ARE COMING! THE FRENCH ARE COMING!

And even if it is General Montcalm and his Abenakis allies about to wreak havoc on the British soldiers and massacre their prisoners on the plain in front of the fort, there’s no need to worry because as well as Hawkeye and Chingachcook, Strawberry Moose is there ready to repel all boarders – and a few … "you said that yesterday" – ed .

Where I am is at the infamous Fort William Henry, another one of those humiliating episodes in British Military History in North America where, due to an insufficient lookout and picket, Lt-Col Munro allowed the fort to be enircled by Montcalm’s French troops and Iroquois allies and whose superior artillery (which should never have been allowed to land if the look-out had been up to much) battered the fort into submission.

Although the story of the subsequent massacre of the captive women and children was grossly exaggerated by Fenimore Cooper in The Last of the Mohicans, there was certainly a considerable slaughter here outside the fort as the Iroquois, drunk on the rum looted from the fort and having been denied any say in the peace process thus feeling cheated of their right to obtain scalps and other booty from the occupants of the fort, were determined to seek redress.

So this morning after my relaxing stay at the camp site at Schaghticoke last night, I hit the road.

First stop was at Schuylerville, the old “Saratoga” and a pretty place it is too. But this sign isn’t so pretty. The ground is so polluted by PCBs that it’s against the law to dig in the soil – no use trying to grow potatoes and the like here, even if not a couple of hundred yards from where I’m standing there are corn fields and all kinds of things.

But tha corn is not of course intended for human consumption – it’s for animal feed (and humans will then eat the animals)and so that’s ok. But it’s frightening all the same, what’s happening to the world’s food supplies.

Yesterday I showed you a photo of a lock on the Champlain Canal. Before the modernisation of the Hudson navigation, there was an “Old Champlain Canal” that was on a much smaller scale. I’ve been following that today too, and I reckoned that I would show you a photo of a lock on here. This is in fact Lock 12 and it’s a little different, isn’t it?

Still, for a canal that was built in 1832 the masonry is in surprisingly good condition although the amount of neglect of the canal and the amount of route that has been lost means that it will never be opened again, which is a shame.

A little further up the road is a town called Glen Falls and while there is nothing to see here (the falls have, like many on the Hudson, been oveebuilt with barrages for hydro-electric power) it has its own excitement. On Lap Three of the circuit of trying to find my way out of the town , I noticed a place called “Mailing Made Easy” – a kind-of boutique which guarantees to find the cheapest method of mailing parcels. Too good an opportunity to miss and so I took the Roland amp that I had bought. They told me the price and, picking myself up off the floor, I packed it because $35:02 was too good a price to miss out on.

And it’s not going on a snail’s back either – delivery 2/3 weeks they say, which may well be before I get home and certainly before I get back from my next stint in Brussels. And so, Liz and Terry, if you read this before I get in touch with you, I’m sorry that I didn’t ask you if you will take in a parcel for me, but I had to make an on-the-spot executive decision, and with it being an executive decision, if it is the wrong decision, then you can execute me when I return home.

-2

Sunday 29th September 2013 – THE BRITISH ARE COMING! THE BRITISH ARE COMING!

No reason to be alarmed, though. Strawberry Moose and his faithfful artillery crew, namely Roy the Ranger, have manned … "personned" – ed … the guns and are ready to repel all boarders – and a few day pupils too by the sound of things.

I’m deep in the Hudson Valley near a town called Schuylerville and while that name might mean nothing to most people, it used to be called Saratoga and that might mean a whole lot more because the battle here, in October 1777, put the writing on the wall for the British occupation of what is now the United States of America.

For four months of the year the St Lawrence is frozen over and the only way to send supplies to Montreal and Lower Canada is up the Hudson Valley, over the portages around the various lakes and then down the River Richelieu to Montreal.

At Saratoga there’s a bluff overlooking the Hudson River and whoever controls this bluff controls all of the upper Hudson Valley – a fact perfectly well realised by the rebels, and only belatedly by the Imperial power who had failed to stock up with supplies. The rebels made it here first and as winter started to draw on, the Imperial forces realised that they needed to move them off the bluff in order to restock themselves for the winter.

So on October 7th, 1777, the Imperial forces attacked and after a fierce fight, were pushed backwards off the bluff and right into the arms of rebel reinforcements, and that was that. This was the first nail in the coffin of Imerial domination of the 13 colonies.

So that was how I spent my afternoon, and a beautiful afternoon it was too and no mistake. So much so that I ran completely out of time. luckily though, although the visit cost me all of $5:00, the Tourist Information service gave me a campsite list and so I was able to find the campsite that I missed in the dark last night – must remember to finish earlier in the daytime.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my preoccupation with roundabouts in North America. When I fist started travelling here, finding a roundabout was a major achievement. Nowadays, though, it’s the “in thing” for towns to have roundabouts, almost a status symbol, for here at Malta on Highway 9, they have two in quick succession.

However, it’s all very well having roundabouts here, but it’s another thing completely about drivers knowing how to use them, as this truck driver has discovered, and he has come to a sticky end as he tries to turn off Highway 9 to go up to Interstate 89 and Montreal.

On a neagtive camber like this with a high centre of gravity like that, a dead stop at the “Give Way” sign and a slow and careful drive around would have been much more appropriate than showing off the handling capabilities of his rig. At least the cab hasn’t gone over, so he’s not hurt, except in the pride department, and also in the wallet I bet, because there were several of New York’s finest in attendance.

Why I was down here was for the huge Home Depot that I encountered last night. There was a sale on and so I stocked up with cheap tools – not rubbish but heavily-discounted stuff including a Ryobi all-in bit collection, the type that sells for about €35 in Brico Depot but here reduced to just $6:00. I can do all sorts of things with that.

My route is going to take me along the side of the Champlain Canal – the 19th Century water route between the Hudson and the St Lawrence. While much of it has been abandoned to due navigational improvements on the Hudson, there are still several locks along the route that are used.

This is lock 4 and I watched it being used by a pleasure boat, sadly the only type of traffic along here these days with commerical freight long-gone.

Ironically though, I’ve had lengthy (and I do mean lengthy) chats with 3 people today and they have all featured one thing in common – the scepticism of their Government’s foreign and militarist policies. All three of them have been as cynical as I am about all of this.

There’s an undercurrent of dissent running through the USA and people seem to be only able to express their discontent to foreigners. It really is just like the Soviet Union in the 1970s here, only that the authorities use ridicule and ostracism as a punishment instead of imprisonment. And believe me, ridicule and ostracism are far more devastating a punishment.

But yes, 50 years of fighting Communism, and now they have installed the worst aspects of it here in their own country? There’s something fishy here, and I’m not talking about the contents of Baldrick’s apple crumble.

-4

Sunday 22nd September 2013 – AND IT WAS AS WELL

Yes, a rough night with howling gales and driving rainstorms and one more night where I don’t seem to have had a decent sleep. I’m getting rather fed up with this.

Anyway, everyone else was up and about early (no surprise) and oo we hit the road. Having telephoned Rachel, we all arranged to meet up at the truckstop at Houlton for breakfast and then while Darren and Hannah went home, Rachel, Amber, Zoe and I went shopping around Marden’s and Walmart. Walmart is having a CD sale at $5:00 a time and so I’m all loaded up with all kinds of goodies to take home with me. Add that to the Ryobi bit driver and Strawberry Moose, and there won’t be any room in there for my clothes, not the first time that this has happened to me. His Nibs did offer to buy his own jet and fly it home, but that was ruled out when I explained to him that it was spelt “L-E-A-R”.

Back home I had a shower (no, the OUSA Executive Committee hasn’t come over to join me) and then did quiet domestic things to finish off the day. After all, it is Sunday

-3

Friday 20th September 2013 – AND WE’RE OFF …

… tractor-pulling again. Just the four of us this time, namely Darren, Hannah, Yours Truly and of course Strawberry Moose. We’re going to a place called Millinocket which is deep inside darkest rural Maine and miles off the beaten track, so I shall be quite at home there.

But a crisis at the local truck stop (not the big one where we stopped last time). My fries turned up, well, sort-of okay but my beans had bacon in them despite me specifying “just beans – no cheese and no bacon or anything else”. Apparently a simple request like that is beyond the capacity of some trukstop waitresses in the USA. “However did this lot become the new master race?”, as I have asked myself before.

Today started off early as it was Inspection Day at Zoe’s salon. A couple of last-minute tasks needed to be carried out and so Yours Truly was roped in. This little desk with two shelves that we bought (was $60, when we first saw it, it was reduced to $40 and when Zoe bought it it was further reduced to $20) is an absolute bargain and does exactly what it’s supposed to do, and more besides.

Then I went off to Tim Horton’s to give two people the shock of their lives. There they were sitting at a table next to me quietly nattering away, and then I caught the “long Jaaaa”. “Jullie komen uit Nederlands?” I asked them, and then we had a very interesting 10-minute conversation in Dutch. Probably the last thing that they were expecting in a coffee bar in a small town in rural New Brunswick.

The rest of the day was spent running errands. They are short-handed in the tyre depot again and deliveries were piling up and so with Zoe as navigator (her salon passed its inspection and as soon as Darren finishes welding the sills on her car she’ll be in business) we went off around Bath, Florenceville and Bristol with a pile of parcels and envelopes. And of course the bank. I don’t know if I mentioned last time the fun that I had trying to get US dollars out of US cash machines with my Canadian bank card, and so I went to the bank and took out some USA cash.

Now I’m sitting at the side of a deserted runway in rural Maine watching the stars and the full moon, and waiting for things to happen.

-3

Thursday 19th September 2013 – WE STARTED OFF THIS MORNING …

… with the usual and traditional panic-stricken 20-minutehunt for the keys. And no-one was more surprised that I was to find them, after all of that, in their proper place. Yes, the last place to look for them of course.

Nevertheless, by 07:30 I was sitting on the docks at Baie St Anne drinking coffee and contemplating the gorgeous weather. It was absolutely taters when I woke up, all of 3°C, but it quickly warmed up once the sun rose and even despite the wind, it was lovely out.

A short drive down the road I discovered another quite little cove and thatw as the spot for breakfast, and then I continued my drive along the Acadian Trail.

One of the places that has to be visited along here is the little fishing port of Escuminac, in the Miramichi Bay.

This was the scene of a major disaster in JUne 1959. All of the boats were out fishing when a sudden storm sprang up. 26 boats sank in the gale and 39 fishermen drowned. The entire communnity was devastated by the disaster as most of the male population was lost at sea. It puts a totally different price on the kipper on your breakfast plate, events like these

In the afternoon I left the coast and headed to Centreville. There’s a tractor pull this weekend and Strawberry Moose and I will be there.

And so I stopped for lunch up on the top of Tobique on the site of the old railway station on the banks of the river about 10 miles from Plaster Rock.

And here we had an exciting incident. Some woman with a dog came by and we had a chat, and during the course of the conversation it came out that I was on my way to Centreville. She mentioned that she knew people there, even though it was about 80 miles away, and subsequent enquiry revealed that it is Rachel’s parents-in-law at the mill.

THis world is getting far to small for my liking.

-4

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: strawberry moose

Tuesday 23rd September 2014 – I SPENT LAST NIGHT …

Thursday 18th September 2014 – WHICH FINISHES WITH OUR HERO ALL AT SEA

Wednesday 10th September 2014 – DAY ONE OF THE HARVEST JAZZ AND BLUES FESTIVAL …

Tuesday 9th September 2014 – I’VE LEFT CENTREVILLE …

Thursday 27th March 2014 – IT WAS ANOTHER DAY …

Wednesday 26th March 2014 – IT’S AMAZING …

Monday 3rd March 2014 – LAST NIGHT’S HOTEL …

Sunday 2nd March 2014 – I CAN’T LEAVE …

Wednesday 26th February 2014 – THIS IS WHERE …

Thursday 3rd October 2013 – STRAWBERRY MOOSE …

Monday 30th September 2013 – THE FRENCH ARE COMING! THE FRENCH ARE COMING!

Sunday 29th September 2013 – THE BRITISH ARE COMING! THE BRITISH ARE COMING!

Sunday 22nd September 2013 – AND IT WAS AS WELL

Friday 20th September 2013 – AND WE’RE OFF …

Thursday 19th September 2013 – WE STARTED OFF THIS MORNING …

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