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Saturday 26th September 2015 – BRRRRR – THAT WAS COLD!

Here I am at 06:30, just before dawn. The alarm went off at 06:00 and again at 06:15 and it was so cold that I wasn’t going to hang about.You can see the ice all over the truck cap and the pile of snow that is on the side of the road that fell off the insulation when I moved it. I froze in the 5 minutes that I was outside.

Mind you, inside the truck cap there was no condensation or ice on the roof, and only a little on the sides. That insulation and the sun visor seem to have done their job and I’m pleased with that.

In fact, I had a good night’s sleep all in all and the lorry that pulled up alongside me at 03:00 didn’t really disturb me too much at all.

Now I can see why it is that ancient man worshipped the sun. I’d been on the road for half an hour in the freezing cold when suddenly the sun put in an appearance over the horizon.

This sunrise was one of the most magnificent sights that I have ever seen and you’ve no idea how warm this made me feel and just how welcome it was. It made me feel so much better.

And so we pushed on – or, rather, pushed off – through old familiar territory that you have seen many times before and so I’m not going to bore you with photos.

Nevertheless, I will show you some which might be of significance here, such as the amount of roadworks going on up here. If you read my earlier notes, you’ll recall me saying how bad the road was back in those days. Now, while it’s not quite a black-top highway,it soon will be, given all of this work.

This view is reinforced by the amount of construction equipment up here.

In 2010 we drove 1800kms of some of the worst roads in the world and I counted just a handful of compactors. Here, in this two-mile length of roadworks, there were two of them. You can see that they really mean business out here.

And while that’s bad news for me and any other adventurer, it has to be good news for the inhabitants.

And while I once famously said that the only time that you would ever see a photo of a flower on my pages would be if there were to be an old car parked upon it, I couldn’t resist a photo of these plants.

I don’t know what they are – add the names into the comments if you do know the answer – but they are very symbolic of the sub-arctic vegetation that you encounter up here because this is really a part of the tundra out here.

We always stop and take a photo at this spot whenever we are in the area. It’s far from being the most isolated spot along the trail, but it’s quite symbolic as being the first place where Labrador City appears on the road signs.

Before 2010, the road turned right just behind me and went down to Cartwright (well, it still does of course) but this road that we are taking didn’t exist. If you wanted to go west from here, you would have to go east down to Cartwright and wait for one of the weekly coastal boats that went up to Goose Bay, and then drive from there over to Labrador City.

This is one of the things against which you have to guard yourself along the trail.

You can see that he has a flat tyre and by the look of things, he’s driven quite a way on it, because the tyre is off the rim. Why he hasn’t put the spare on, I really don’t know (and it’s none of my business anyway) but if you do have to abandon your vehicle to go and seek help, you should take your tyre with you. It won’t be fixed while it’s still on the vehicle.

And about 100kms further on, I found a loaded trailer with the same issues

There’s a photo of me and a Dodge Grand Caravan stopped here for lunch last year in brilliant sunshine and I remember saying how I would love to stay here and settle down.

Today, though, we have lunch in a snowstorm, although you can’t see the snow very clearly. It’s not looking too good out there along the Eagle Plateau but at least this year I have the right kind of vehicle to make the trip.

Furthermore, further along the Labrador Coastal Drive they are gravelling the road – and doing it seriously too. There’s tons of stuff being spread out here.

With the compactors that I’ve seen, I wonder if they are preparing this for tarmac? They were building an asphalt plant when I was here last year and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if we are going to end up with a black-top highway.

But this gravel is impossible. everywhere there are clouds of dust and stones being thrown up and Strider’s windscreen has taken a few heavy knocks.

And not only that, Strider is rear-wheel drive when he’s not in 4×4 mode, and the rear end is quite light. I don’t have much grip on the gravel and when I try to swerve to avoid a pot-hole, Strider goes everywhere across the road and we’ll be doing pirouettes soon.

But Strider is definitely the right vehicle to do this trip. Even in rear-wheel drive, his high ground clearance, larger non-standard wheels and heavy off-road tyres has meant that I’ve done all of this road with the cruise control set at 70kph and we haven’t missed a beat. Whenever the road has been rough, Strider has taken it all in his … errr … Stride.

Contrast that with the Dodge Grand Caravan and its rubbish tyres, and Casey, the PT Cruiser with his town tyres and low ground clearance. We really struggled on parts of this road.

I just wish that Strider had a tank that was 20 litres bigger, or that I could do something about his miserable fuel consumption.

Yes, and here we are, folks.

I’m listening to Counting Crows and “Pave Paradise, Put Up A Parking Lot” – and right at that very moment, look what we have here. The highway is paved at this point and there is a parking lot by the side.

How depressing is that? The end of my adventures along this road are in site and in about 5 years time, the whole of the route will be just another black-top highway.

But anyway, this is where I’m stopping for the night. It’s not as cold as last night anyway and I do have to say that it’s a comfortable spec. I even cook a meal inside Strider’s truck cap and the condensation is minimal with the insulation on the roof, even though the windows aren’t open that much.

But it’s cramped in here and this truck cap is not going to work in the long term – that I have realised.

I really do have to think of a Plan B.

Friday 25th September 2015 – WHAT A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP!

Having done everything that I needed to do last night, I crawled into my sleeping back and settled down to watch a film. But it wasn’t for long. After about 15 minutes, I switched off the laptop and that was the last thing that I remembered.

I must have had a good nine hours when I didn’t feel a thing. And when I awoke, it was reasonably warm inside the truck cap, there was no condensation at all on the roof and only a few minimal traces on the walls. It seems that this idea of putting the insulation on top of the roof of the truck cap is doing its job. I’m well-impressed with this. But I’ll need some more tape though. If the plastic sacks become torn or damaged, I have plenty to replace them but I’ve run out of tape to hold everything together.

I didn’t stop for breakfast though. There’s a sailing across to Labrador at 10:30 and I want to be on it if possible and so I hit the road.

But I did take a minute or two out to take a photo of my spec for last night and Strider with his exterior insulation. You can see just what a good spec this is.

And now, a weird idea is running through my mind that if I could find a plastic sheet that is 6 feet by 4 feet, I could fit that over the top, hold it down with ratchet straps and that would make a very permanent arrangement while I’m on my travels. Something like a corrugated roofing sheet would be ideal for this.

An hour on the road found me at St Barbe and there was an enormous queue waiting for tickets to sail. I was given ticket 16 – which meant that I would be the 16th casual voyager to be added after the reserved places are loaded. And to my surprise, with the senior discount to which I’m now entitled, a 90-minute crossing with Strider costs me all of just $18:58 – eat your hearts out, you European ferry travellers!

Having fuelled up Strider (I keep telling you that out here you need to fuel up when you can) I lined up on the quayside watching the antics of the artics loading up the trailers, and then I was squeezed on board into a little corner of the ship.

And poor Apollo. As she steamed in, I couldn’t help noticing that she’s looking every day now of her almost 50 years and she can’t be long for this world now. The inside is pretty rough too, and I’d have taken a photo of what I meant, except that Bane of Britain here seems to have forgotten to bring his camera with him up into the lounge.

But now, after a heary breakfast of coffee, four rounds of toast and a plate of hash browns, I’m ready for anything. Including a couple of chats that I had had, one with a German guy in an ancient New-Brunswick-registered Dodge Caravan from Woodstock (the Caravan, not the German) with a spare wheel strapped to the top, and another older guy heading out to Goose Bay.

In May 2012 I’d done a tour of Quebec Highway 138 from Montreal all the way to the end at Natashquan where the road comes to a shuddering halt in the middle of nowhere.

It’s not actually the end of Highway 138, theoretically at least, because there’s part of the Quebec coast accessible from Blanc Sablon,and the road along there is also called Highway 138. I’d driven down here last year but there was that much fog and rain that we hardly saw a thing

No such complaints today though. I was really lucky with the weather and couldn’t have wished for better. I’ve managed to retake all of the photographs that I took last year.

And you can see just how beautiful the road is. It doesn’t quite have the grandeur that the Trans Labrador Highway has, of course … "nothing can quite manage that" – ed … but it was a journey that I wanted to make, just to complete my Highway 138 adenture

And so we arrive at Vieux Fort, known to the locals as Old Fort Bay because this is an Anglophone area, as I discovered a few years ago.

The Highway terminates at the harbour and here, right in front of us is an old quay. It’s closed off and marked “danger” so it’s clearly unused, but in view of its substantial construction, I wonder if the coastal boat that plies along the Lower North Shore used to call in here before the road through to here was opened.

It’s not quite the end of the Highway though. If the Highway ever is extended, which won’t be in the lifetime of anyone reading this rubbish, it’ll come round the head of the bay and head west.

At the moment there’s a dirt highway that takes that road, and this eventually brings you down to this beautiful sheltered bay just here. When I arrive, a couple of fishermen … "fisherPERSONS" – ed … were launching a boat and setting off. This really IS the end of the road as far as I can tell, and it was a convenient place for me to stop for lunch.

There are a few of the villages along the highway too and I took hundreds of photos of them. This is just one of them, Middle Bay.

This is said to be the site of a Basque whaling station back in the 16th Century. There were a couple of dozen along here and the most well-known example, Red Bay in Labrador has been excavated and there’s a museum there. However, I don’t know what, if anything, has been discovered here from that period

From here, I retraced my steps to Blanc Sablon and beyond towards L’Anse Aux Loups in Labrador.

We had to stop though, in order to take a photograph at the border just to prove that Strider was here. This is the border today, of course, but it might not be in the future because the mayor of Blanc Sablon has said that he would like to apply to the Canadian Government to secede from the Province of Quebec and join up with Labrador. Whether the Province of Quebec will agree to releasing some of its prisoners however remains to be seen.

There are many French names just here. Some of them relate to the exploration of Jacques Cartier, others to the French fishing boats that came along here in the 18th Century, but many others relate to inhabitants of the Channel Islands who colonised this area.

The old road along the coast prior to the construction of the new highway is called the Jersey Trail today, and there are all kinds of remnants and relics of the previous inhabitants along here. Excavations have taken place and many artefacts have been uncovered.

There are a dozen or so villages along here too. I missed out photographing them in 2010 because I was rushing for the ferry (I hadn’t realised that it ran on Newfoundland time, which is 90 minutes ahead of Quebec) and in 2014 I had the weather against me.

But never mind. Today, even though it was now going dark quite rapidly, I still had time to take all of the photos that I wanted to take.

When I was here in 2010, the Labrador Coastal Drive followed the narrow valley of the Pinware River, but I did notice a considerable amount of roadworks in the area round by the County Cat Pond.

This is what they have been doing. The old road goes off to the right, but there’s a new road now going up the hill just there.

I can’t think why they have done it, though. The route along the Pinware River is beautiful, but this new route is all straight up and straight down. In 2014 I watched a huge lorry struggle up the hill in the rain and I bet he wasn’t amused.

I had planned to stop at a Guest House in Red Bay for a wash and a change of clothes, but there was no-one there when I called, and so I’ll be spending another couple of nights sleeping along the road. I found a very basic rest area and even though it was early, it was freezing cold and so I went to bed. But not before putting the big insulated sunshield across the rear window of the truck cap and wrapping the rest around the head of my bed. I’ve a feeling that I’m going to need it tonight.

-2

Wednesday 23rd September 2015 – I HAVE MADE A STARTLING DISCOVERY!

I woke up this morning to find no condensation on the roof of the truck cap. There was quite a bit down the sides, so clearly there was plenty about, but none on the roof.

What had happened was that in the confined and cramped circumstances yesterday, I’d put the pack of insulation outside on the roof of the truck cap instead of by the side of Strider as I would normally do. This seems to have had the effect of insulating the roof but from the outside.

And so what I’ve done is to go to a supermarket and bought a pile of giant-sized plastic bin bags. I’ll wrap the insulation up in those and stick them on the roof of the truck cap at night – I’ll be interested to see if this might solve the problem.

But apart from that, I’d had a reasonable night’s sleep last night even though I was on a truck stop and some of the trucks were idling away all night. even a train on the railway line across the Canso Strait didn’t disturb me all that much.

But next morning, I was surprised to find that the Tim Horton’s at Aulds Cove didn’t have a wifi connection. It’s the first that I’ve found that hasn’t had one. I had to decamp off onto Cape Breton Island and the Nova Scotia Tourist Board offices there

And I’m glad that I did, because when was the last time that we have had a “ship of the day”? Back in Montreal I reckon, and that was by default too.

This ship is the Rt Hon Paul E Martin, whoever he was when he was at home, if he ever was, anchored up at the huge quarry at Auld’s Cove. She’s a CSL (Canadian Shipping Lines) ship and has come here from Brayton Point, which is the site of a coal-fired power station on the coast of Massachusetts, USA, although she was seen in the Panama Canal a couple of weeks earlier.

It’s been years since I’ve travelled up the southern shore of Cape Breton Isle – 2003 in fact – and so I reckoned that I would go up to Sydney that way, even though it’s the least interesting route.

I’d had a brief glimpse of the canal here when I passed by back then and so I reckoned that, seeing as how it was a nice day, I’d go and have a closer look.

That’s the Atlantic Ocean just there and just a couple of hundred yards away to my right is the Bras d’Or Lake which almost cuts Cape Breton Island in two. This little strip of land is all that prevents Cape Breton Island being split in two.

This area has always been a favourite portage site and the French had a fort around here – Fort Toulouse – that guarded the crossing

At one time there was a rolling plank road that enabled sailors to drag their boats from one water to the other but in the 1850s the canal was built and this is what we have today, one of only two canals east of the St Lawrence that are still working.

You’ll notice that there are two lock gates at each end of the lock, and the gates are pointing in opposite directions. That’s because with the tides, the Atlantic Ocean can be either higher or lower than the Bras d’Or Lake and so the water flow needs to be controlled in either sense.

There’s nothing at all now left of Fort Toulouse but the British had a fort up here on a dominant eminence for a short while.

This was called Fort Dorchester and you can still see quite a few of the remains of earthworks up on the top. This appears to be part of an earthen bank that might have been part of the walls of the fort at one time.

Another place that I had passed by back in 2003 was Louisbourg, the principal town and seaport of the French on Ile Royale – Cape Breton Island – in the 18th Century.

It’s quite an astonishing place, being effectively a fortified city in the middle of nowhere, and was a city over which the French and British fought on many occasions.

The French engages in a triangular trade route between Nouvelle France, the French West Indies and France itself, and they needed a seaport somewhere in between to be a naval base, ship repair centre and trans-shipment port for the interior.

They chose Louisbourg to be the place, in view of the magnificent bay here, and so they build a fortified city.

And it needed to be fortified too. Its central position meant that it was miles away from anywhere else, and so miles away from where reinforcements might be obtained.

And with it straddling the British trade routes from British North America and Newfoundland, it was quite likely that in the event of war between Britain and France – a regular occurrence in the 18th Century, the British would want the fort neutralised.

It was captured on several occasions by the British and returned at the end of conflict, but finally the British captured it for keeps and it was abandoned, falling into ruin.

It’s been slowly rebuilt over the years and the result is quite spectacular. It’s just as it was back in its heyday and there are all kinds of 18th-century trades being undertaken here. I ended up having a lengthy chat with a couple of 18th-century boatbuilders who were building a caravel.

Louisbourg is alwo well-known as the terminus of the Sydney-Louisbourg railway, and there’s a kind-of railway museum here.

I say “kind-of”, because no-one in their right minds would call it a real museum. While most “museums” in North America “preserve” their artefacts by slapping layer after layer of thick black paint over their exhibits, they can’t even be bothered to do that here.

The “exhibits” here are just rotting away and in a few more years there won’t be anything at all left.

This is beyond embarrassing and beyond shameful – it’s a total disgrace and how the administrators of the museum have the nerve to exhibit artefacts like this is totally beyond me. There’s nothing left for these artefacts except the scrapyard because they are way beyond any kind of preservation.

The administrators should be ashamed of themselves.

So having dealt with that rant, I went up to North Sydney, the Marine Atlantic terminal where I booked my passage on tonight’s sailing to Newfoundland. $155 too – it’s becoming more and more expensive. But then again they have a new ship and, this year, a new ferry terminal to pay for.

It’s the new “Highlander” upon which we are sailing, and it’s not sailing until 23:45 so that gives me plenty of time to organise some food. And in the terminal I have a very lengthy chat with an old guy who is also retired and is also off on his travels.

On board, we are stuck in the bowels of the ship, and I mean that too. There’s a hatch in the middle of the deck with a ramp that goes down another level with room for about 100 cars, and that’s where we end up – well below the water line. It’s a good job we don’t stay with our cars during the crossing. I’ll be a nervous wreck down here.

Monday 14th September 2015 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT

No sooner had I settled down than we had a rainstorm. And while it might not have been as intense as the other night, a rainstorm it most certainly was. And it went on and on and on until I never thought that it would end. Certainly, for four hours it kept it up because I remember looking at the time when I went out in the middle of the night to check that the stream right by my tent wasn’t going to burst its banks and sweep me away.

And that’s a shame too because for once I was comfortable in here. Now that I’ve rearranged the inside of Strider I can actually reach the bed and I pinched the mattress off it and that made quite a difference. And I must have dozed off during the proceedings because I was on my travels again. We needed to obtain some information from a certain guy and the best way to do this was to find someone to impersonate his secretary. She was a small blond who did her hair in a special way with a long pony tail, so we found a girl who resembled her from a distance and who, with a hairpiece, could pass close enough to fool the security cameras. So when this other girl went to lunch we infiltrated our girl into the building, but while she was in the ladies room checking her hair, the real secretary came in and was astonished to see her doppelganger. Our girl solved the problem by knocking the real secretary into next week with a frying pan and that was that.
But later, I was on the move again in my old van (it might even have been Bill Badger, the Austin A60 van that I had for years) with, of all people, my brother. He needed coal and there was just one place to go in Crewe for bagged coal, so off we went. When we arrived there, I was absolutely whacked and so I sent him in while I had a sleep, but anyway he came out to say that there was no coal (I’d heard this conversation anyway). I asked him if he’d asked if there was anywhere else where he could get it but he said that he hadn’t. But he knew where we could go, so I told him that I wasn’t going to mess up my van by putting loose coal into it. He’d also needed to post a letter (price £0:09) but they only had a stamp for £0:08 in there so the sales lady there sold him that stamp and told him to go to the post office and tell them that he’ll post anther letter with a stamp for £0:01 in it, and the’ll accept that. Such weird things as that happen when I’m on a nocturnal ramble, but even in that kind of state I knew enough that it seemed simpler to me to simply stick the stamp for £0:01 on the outside of the letter with the stamp for £0:08 and save the discussion.

And so while you admire the very basic, very primitive and very very free camp site on the outskirts of Greenville, I woke up to an inch of water inside the tent in the bottom corner, which was rather disconcerting but not surprising given the amount of rain that we had had during the night.

Water will always leak in around the zip and so you always pitch your tent with the entrance pointing downhill and you sleep in the uphill bit and even if it does rain in a little you can stay relatively dry. But I’ll go to Walmart, buy some more of these super-duper heavy duty tent pegs that I bought the other day, and stick the big tarpaulin that Rachel gave me over the top next time that the weather looks threatening.

A quick coffee and I was off down the road into Greenville

Parked up here in the town centre, I had a very nice piece of entertainment.

It had been seaplane fly-in weekend at the weekend here on Moosehead Lake, and there were still two left tied up at the quayside. And as I left Strider in order to admire the view, one of them started up, left his berth, and came right across to where I was standing, right by the paddle-steamer Kathadin, which you all saw in 2013 when I was here because, in the famous words of the legendary Jimmy Ruffin, “I’ve passed this way before”.

And so he (the seaplane, not Jimmy Ruffin) did a few laps of the bay in order to warm up his engine to operating speed, and then shot off down the lake.

After a run of about a quarter of a mile he heaved himself into the air and off he went.

And off I went too, to see about this log cabin.

And I was disappointed too. It seems that prices have increased considerably since I was here and what I want has priced itself out of the market. Not only that, many of the items that were included in the price back then are now optional extras and so what looked two years ago like $20,000 on the site all in and delivered is going to end up being twice that, and twice as much work too.

In fact, I can go as far as to say that my journey for the first month of my stay in North America this year has been a period of 30 disappointments. “But smile!” they say. “Things could be worse!” And so I”m smiling – and you know what that means.

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

Over the road was a hardware store and they are agents for log cabins. Nothing like as de-luxe as what was available back where I’d just been, but then neither was the price, and this looks much more “like it” from that point of view. I’m going to have to give this some further consideration.

Ably assisted by The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav, I left Greenville by the main highway that goes south-east to Millinocket and you can see what a beautiful road this highway is. Very reminiscent of the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Strider, as befits any good ranger, took it in his stride … "ohhh, very good" – ed … and I can see the benefits of having a solid truck with decent all-weather off-road tyres. The Dodges that I used to have wouldn’t have lasted five minutes down here

I had to stop for a minute or two for a gypsy’s, and found myself right by the rapids on the river just here.

This river goes down eventually past Millinocket, and while you’ll see hundreds of timber lorries down the roads here, even as late as the 1930s it’s suggested that they were still floating logs down here to the huge lumber mill down there, even past rapids like this.

If you were with me in 2013, you’ll remember our discovery of the grave of a flotteur de bois that we discovered at the foot of another series of rapids not too far from here.

At Millinocket, I nipped onto the Interstate for half an hour and then took the old road up to Presque Ile

This is another one of those roads that can be classed as one of the most beautiful roads in North America. It’s all up hill and down dale and shows Upper Maine at its beautiful best.

It’s another one of those roads that can only be driven properly on a big old single-cylinder long-stroke motorcycle and a beautiful 600cc side-valve Panther solo would be a pleasure to drive up here. And I deeply regret the one that I missed out on a few years ago.

But that’s not looking too optimistic, is it? That’s right over Presque Ile where I’m going. I don’t fancy camping in that.

And at Presque Ile I had a little success. Walmart did indeed have one of the slimline air beds that I need for the bed that I’m going to need for Strider, and they also had (at just $8:00) a little wooden fold-flat table, the size that you’d have by your chair for your coffee and cake. This is a good size for Strider, to cook on, eat off and use as a desk.

And at the Super Save shop, that has a good vegan range of food, I treated myself to a pot of carrot-flavoured vegan hummus.

It was pitch-black by now, even though it was only 17:00 and suddenly the storm broke. And how it broke too! I wasn’t going to camp in this – not under any circumstances.

And as I left Presque-Ile, the “Budget Traveller” motel appeared in the gloom. $59:95 including breakfast, and I was entitled to a discount on that rate too. I’d had a free night last night and so I wasn’t going to miss out on any of that.

There was a microwave in the room too and so I treated myself to a vegan pizza (I have plenty of my vegan sliced cheese) and that was gorgeous;

But now it’s 20:28 – I’m watching film, but my bad night last night has caught up with me and any second now I’m going to drop ….

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

-1

Tuesday 8th September 2015 – WHAT AN ASTONISHING STORM!

It went very hot and humid late at night and then about 23:00 he wind got upand we had a howling gale for 20 minutes, and then the most tremendous thunderstorm for ages and ages – at least I know that my little tent it waterproof. I sat there for hours (probably 20 minutes in fact) wondering whether I should evacuate the tent but I’m not sure at all what happened because the next thing that I realised, it was the alarm going off at 06:00. Yes, the bed, even though it is too small for the tent, has made a world of difference.

But I couldn’t stay here lounging in my stinking pit all morning. This is the morning when I need to be moving on, so I have to pack everything away. And I’m pleased that I packed away everything yesterday so that today’s packing is a simple (well, relatively simple) half-hour’s job once I’d dealt with everything that needed dealing with on the internet.

Then a shower, followed by the laundry. There was a machine and a dryer available, both at $1:00 a go, and I could have put myself in there with the clothes. Everything took a while but it all came up clean and dry and you can’t argue with that. I just wish that I’d brought the washing from home.

And the result of my little stay at Goose’s Point campground? Covered with (harmless) whitefly and my spec wasn’t up to all that much. However, the internet connection was the fastest I’ve ever had in a public place and it was just $21:00 per night. I’d more-than had my money’s worth just here for sure.

First job after leaving the campsite was to go down to the Isle la Motte, or la Motte Island or whatever it’s called. The woman I met the other day recommended it.

This place is important for several reasons, not the least of which being that it’s yet another place where Samuel de Champlain is said to have landed. And it might be true too, although if de Champlain landed at every site that is claimed for him, he would never have found the time to get back into his ship.

The second claim to fame is that it was the site of one of the French forts – Fort Sainte Anne – that protected the Lake Champlain / Richelieu Valley supply route from attacks by the Iroquois. Built in 1665-66 by Pierre la Motte, it was garrisoned by about 300 soldiers (the first “European” settlement in what is now Vermont) and only lasted for three or four years before the French pulled back, destroying the fort as they left.

Nevertheless, a great many artefacts from this period have been unearthed by different archaeological squads over the years. It’s a shame that they haven’t rebuilt a replica of the fort around here.

But I have been told a story about the time that Hawkeye and Chingachgook came around here on a spying expedition for the British

“How many soldiers do you see in the fort?” asked Hawkeye.
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground. “About 300” he replied
“And how many cannon?”
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground again. “About 30”
“And how many horses?”
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground yet again. “About 60”
“And how many native allies?”
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground once more. “About 200”
“That’s incredible” said Hawkeye. “Can you tell all that by just lying down and listening to the ground?”
“Ohh no” replied Chingachgook. “If I lie down here like this and turn my head so that my ear is to the ground just like this, I can see right underneath the gates of the fort”.

In its short lifetime, the fort was aid to be an “exciting” place to be if you craved for contact with the native Americans.

Its third claim to fame was that it was the site of the first mass said in this region – in May 1666 as the fort “opened for business” and a shrine to Saint Anne, mother of Mary and grandmother of Jesus, was dedicated.

Although the fort itself was abandoned, the shrine lived on and since then it’s become a place of pilgrimage for many people. There’s also a retreat here, where people can come to seek peace and quiet, and communicating with nature, although if the racket that I heard coming from the unsilenced hedge trimmer used by one of the gardeners was anything to go by, I would have done my communicating with a pickaxe handle.

I’d seen this sign a few times as I had been driving up and down the road between Alburgh and Rouses Point and so I had to take a photo of it, just to prove that the street did exist.

And sure enough, down at the end of the road were a few derelict nissen huts and a few bits and pieces of other stuff, but nothing exciting in the way of ordnance like an A4 rocket or something. The place was however sealed off with chains and padlocks and so a really good exploration was out of the question.

It wouldn’t normally bother me as you know, but bearing in mind the paranoia and fear that is gripping all Americans right now, I’d probably wake up in an orange jump-suit in Guantanamo Bay – if I ever were to wake up at all.

I went into Rouses Point after that to buy myself a coffee and something for lunch (yes, it was that time already) at the big petrol station in town.

And just to prove to many people that bad parking isn’t just confined to Liverpool, here’s some pretty shocking car parking in Rouses Point New York as Madam abandons (because on-one can say that this is parking) her vehicle across two parking spaces, one of which is a disabled bay. It’s hard to believe just how selfish and thoughtless some people are.

Over the road from the petrol station is another historic site, of which there are thousands all around this area.

This promontory where this derelict motel is situated is a former quay and over there where the lighthouse is is another quay. And this was apparently the route of a sail ferry that plied its trade across the head of Lake Champlain. I’m not sure how long it lasted but the first bridge across the head of the lake wasn’t, apparently, until the 1930s so I suppose that there had to be something going across here until then.

From here I retraced many of my steps from the other day and ended up in a town called Plattsburgh

And once again, it’s amazing the things that people leave lying by the side of the road isn’t it?

Never mind the FB1-11 that was parked up here, this is a B47 and to see this kind of thing parked up here must be something pretty exceptional. Where we are in fact seems to be at some old military complex with loads of decaying and abandoned barracks-type of buildings. apparently there was an Air Force base just outside town and the two planes here were of the type that flew out of it.

And now, almost my final destination for today.

This is the harbour at Port Kent and why it’s important for our journey is that it’s the terminal of the only crossing of Lake Champlain that I have not yet taken. It’s another one of these places that was very important once the area calmed down in the late 18th Century, becoming a thriving port and holiday resort, because there are some nice beaches here.

But the coming of the railway here (and, very much to my surprise, there is still an Amtrack railway station here and that just about beats everything) took away much of the river trade and the port declined in importance.

According to a very friendly old guy with whom I had a lengthy chat, there are three scheduled goods trains that pass by here every day, as well as the once-per-day passenger service between New York and Montreal.

And of course, I missed them all.

I’d also missed the ferry too. Only 4 per day and the one that I wanted was steaming (or dieseling) out of the bay as I arrived.

But never mind. It gave me a good opportunity to go for a good wander around and admire the local sights, including some of the famous local beaches. And they were quite nice too. But many of the hotels that used to be here no longer exist or else have been converted into private houses, such as those up there on the cliff behind.

Eventually, after a two-and-a-half-hour wait, the Good Ship Ve … err … Valtour came steaming back into harbour from its trip across to Burlington and we made oursleves ready to cross.

$30:00 to cross for a 45-minute sailing, which is starting to become excessive, but with just 7 cars, one motorcyle and a dozen foot passengers, they need the revenue. It’s a seasonal service too, that’s why it’s not very well advertised, but yet it sails right into the harbour in the centre of Burlington.

As we sail out of Port Kent harbour, I have to tell you that it’s ironic really that we are on our way to Burlington, the largest city in Vermont and whose metropolitan area includes one-third of the State’s population, and the railway line there has long been pulled up. But you can still reach Burlington by rail, in the summer months at least, if first you take the train to the little station here and then take the ferry.

It did make me wonder if they synchronised the times of the trains to correspond with the ferries? Knowing how public transport works, I doubt it very much. But they could make quite an impression on Burlington’s public transport if they were to make an effort

“Twas on the Good Ship Ve .. errr … Valtour”
“By God you should have seen us”
I know that I shouldn’t have let His Nibs near that bottle of rum.

Strawberry Moose and Strider are here enjoying the relaxing crossing, which was nothing like as rough as I was expecting, given the weather that we were experiencing. It had changed dramatically for the worse since this morning.

While you enjoy the rapidly-deteriorating weather, I wandered off to check out the facilities on the boat.

And much to my surprise, there is actually a ship’s cafe on board – the first that I have encountered on a North American short sailing. But it’s down in the bowels of the ship and you have the disconcerting sight of watching the water splash against the portholes which are round about your eye level.

I don’t mind being below water level if I can’t actually see it, but this was getting to be a little too near the knuckle for me. I’d rather be out on deck in rough weather where I have a good chance of escaping if we turn turtle. What kind of wimp am I?

We eventually make it over to Burlington in one piece, and I end up chatting to a guy and his wife who are doing a tour of the North-Eastern states on a Harley Davidson. I asked him what the fuel consumption was like, because I’d head the stories.
“Depressing” was his reply.

Anyway, they are planning to end up in Halifax and so we had quite a lengthy chat about the city which, as you know, is one of my favourite places in the whole of North America. I really hope that they enjoy it.

Having left the ship, I made my way out of town to the campsite at North Beach – and it really does have a beach too!

But I didn’t show you this cloud that was looming away in the distance as we were crossing the lake. It was in fact right over the campsite and we were having a torrential rainstorm and high winds there when I arrived. I quickly put up the tent (you’ve no idea how quickly I can do that when I’m being soaked to the skin) and crawled inside.

That’s all that I’m doing tonight!

-2

Friday 4th September 2015 – WELL, THAT WASN’T …

… a very comfortable night last night. The foam mattress isn’t good enough for what I need and an air bed would have made an enormous difference. But seeing as how I have my camp bed in my storage locker in Montreal, I’m not spending out on one for just a couple of days.

It didn’t help by having noisy neighbours – a couple of guys from Pennsylvania who arrived late, moved around a lot during the night and then drove off early in the morning. And while it didn’t actually rain, the condensation was terrific. Mind you, I must have slept during the night at some point because I was off on my travels again during the night, although I can’t remember now where it was that I had been.

But it did all have its compensations. At least the view from my tent (or, rather, from just around the corner from my tent) was pretty impressive, with the wind turbines that I had somehow managed to miss yesterday evening when I arrived.

Apparently I’m in the Green Mountains around here and quite a few of the ridges here have wind turbines on them. It’s a symptom of the constant American demand for power, more power, more power.

So having hit the road, my first stop was for some coffee at a service station up the road. And here I fell in with an old guy who was supplementing his meagre retirement pension by driving a lorry for a local farmer.

If you remember a good few years ago now whan I was in Trois Rivieres, I heard what I reckoned to be a two-stroke diesel. This truck was the same type, and made the same noise when it slowed to enter the garage, so that was what made me go over for a chat.

In fact, it’s a four-stroke but it’s the Jake Brake that makes it sound like a two-stroke and furthermore he remembers two-stroke diesels because there was a “Detroit” two-stroke diesel that was made until well into the 1960s, he reckons, and he thought that the sound was familiar too.

Having resolved the accommodation issue, I’m now officially on holiday and so I went for a short wander (more by accident than design) through some of the Green Mountains.

They really are beautiful – not quite as savage as the Appalachians next door or the Rockies, and this would be a beautiful place to come and explore when I’ve picked up my maps and so on from Montreal, which is planned for Tuesday next week.

On the Motorway, I headed for a rest area. Vermont is well-known for the high quality of its public wi-fi available on motorway rest areas and I was determined to take full advantage. I had a short chat with Liz and an even longer chat with Cecile.

I also had a most extraordinary encounter with a most extraordinary woman. A Quebecoise, she had been living for 9 months illegally in the USA in an old Dodge Caravan, and going back to Canada as her Dodge was about to give up the ghost.

She was one of these “New-Age” spiritualist healer-type of people and she insisted on trying to “heal” me – but I could have told her everything that she was trying to tell me, and a good deal more too, so really she was wasting a good deal of her time. Like most of these “New Age” people, they don’t really understand the significance of what it is that they are doing.

Now, what do you reckon that this is?

I knew the answer to this straight away, long before I ever saw the faded and derelict sign torn down at the side of the property. It’s an abandoned and derelict drive-in cinema, a symbol of 1950s and 1060s USA. I reckon that more children of that era were conceived at one of these drive-ins that an any other place in the whole of the USA and it’s a shame that they no longer function.

Not that there is anything worth watching at the cinema these days.

But I’d come here, seeing as how I was in the vicinity, to visit another RV dealer. He wouldn’t sell me a slide-in camper back for Strider as he was aware of issues that no-one else knew. And that was that the weight of the camper distorts the body of the truck and causes the doors to fly open when you go over a bump.

I must admit that I’ve not heard of that one before (and neither has anyone else with whom I’ve talked)

So here I am at my campground – the Goose Point campground at Alburgh, Vermont. I’m a stone’s throw from Canada, a mere cock-stride from New York, and I’ll be staying here for four days so that Labour Day can pass me by.

I have a noisy spot, right by the road, but one of the most impressive views that I could wish for – right across Lake Champlain – and all at $84 for the four nights, so beat that if you can. It’s not even the price of a motel room for one night and the camping gear that I bought is now paid for (in spades).

We have free showers, a washing machine at just $1:00 a load (and I’ll be taking full advantage of that in due course just as soon as I’ve found a pile of quarters) and a few other bits and pieces too.

But it’s no surprise that the American people are so … errr … large. Here, we are just 200 yards away from a marina and boat-launching ramp, and the number of people who are travelling from the camp to the marina … on golf carts.

No-one seems to walk anywhere any more in the USA and so the obesity crisis is no surprise. A good walk or two every day would do these people good. How ever this lot became the Master Race totally defeats me.

-2

Friday 28th August 2015 – HERE’S STRIDER …

… all loaded up with a huge domestic fridge and a big cooker, and in a few minutes we are off to Sharp’s, the metal place just outside Woodstock.

I’m taking my leave of Darren, Rachel and family and heading off into the hills. I mean – I’ve been here 10 days and that’s not like me at all to put down roots like this.

At Sharps, there was nearly a lot more metal hauled into the yard as I failed to see a dark purple car against the dark vegetation background as I pulled out to go across the road. That was rather embarrassing, to say the least, especially as I had something of an audience watching me.

Anyway, having done that, I went down the road and to the border with Great Satan at Houlton. Crossing into the USA there took ages with the queue of traffic (but nothing like what it took to get into Canada the other week) and just for a change, every single one of the border guards was friendly, cheerful and helpful. If all border crossings could be like this one, travelling would be a lot less stressful.

However, just to prove that little of the underlying spirit of the USA has changed very little, while I was there, four people were chosen from the queue to receive closer attention

me – with a foreign passport
a black guy
a long-haired hippy-type
an oriental family

Still the same old stereotypes, so it seems. But as I said, even though I was selected for closer attention, it wasn’t a stressful experience by any means – just a friendly chat.

In Houlton, I struck lucky yet again at Marden’s and it made me wish that I hadn’t spent that monay at Canadian Tire the other day because they had everything that I needed there and at half the price too. But this is the thing with Marden’s – their stock is very much of the moment. It’s all bankruptcy, liquidations, fire sale stuff and it comes and goes. You can’t ever rely on them for having anything.

I fuelled up Strider as well, and I’ve come to the conclusion that his fuel consumption isn’t as bad as I was fearing. I let him run quite empty, to a rather depressing 425kms (not enough for Labrador) but to refill, it took 15.4 US gallons – about 55 litres. It’s still not very good, but at least I know what to expect.

Consequently, at the Walmart at Presque Ile, where I went next, I picked up a second 20-litre fuel container, just to be on the safe side.

And here, I struck lucky too. 2-tonne trolley jacks on sale at just $18:86. Anyone who has tried to jack up a vehicle on a dirt road with a sill jack (as we did in 2012 out in northern Quebec) will know the value of having decent tools and equipment for tyre changing. I could have done that job in 20 minutes, not three hours, with decent equipment.

Back on the road again, I didn’t go far. Just as far as Bridgewater in fact

This is a 1919 Mack fire truck, “used” here in Maine at a fire depot until 1960. Then it was converted to a tow truck but was never used and was simply laid up, until the present owner acquired it.

And I said “used” in inverted commas, because it’s done a verified 1900 miles since new.

Never mind shaft drive, this is chain-drive – in fact twin chain drive – as you can see.

It’s a 4-cylinder engine, displacing 600 cubic inches, and has a belt-drive clutch, which is bound to make for exciting motoring on the modern highway. And it does run too – in fact the owner takes it out to park it on the verge every morning and then brings it back inside at night.

You all know where this is though – it’s at the place where they have the scrap Rolls-Royce that has featured on these pages in the past. And he also has a 1925 Dodge Brothers (NOT a Dodge) convertible, a 1924 Renault, a 1910 Panhard-Levassor (and we spent ages discussing the merits and otherwise of sleeve-valve engines) and, would you believe, a Kawasaki motorbike with an Isuzu 4-cylinder 1700cc diesel engine fitted.

I couldn’t take a photo of it because they were still “work in progress”, but I’ll be back here next year to see how he’s getting on.

Not I’m in a motel just off the highway going south. I’ve had a shower, washed my clothes, and had beans and chips for tea. Now I’m ready for anything.

Monday 17th August 2015 – LAST NIGHT …

… could have been a night just as good as the previous one, and that’s exactly how it was heading. And then it all came to a sudden halt at 01:30, for Bane of Britain here had forgotten to switch off his European alarms.

If I had had a quid for every time that I’ve done that while I’ve been in North America I would be dictating this to half a dozen secretaries draped all over my knee and thereabouts. You would think that I would have learnt by now, wouldn’t you?

To make matters worse, I was away with the fairies somewhere at the time, and by the time I’d composed myself afterwards, it had all gone.

I was still up before the alarm at 06:00 (I’m doing my best to keep to some kind of semblance of time) and after breakfast cracked on with a few things.

And here I am, on the bus heading towards the railway station. First stop is Namur and the Walmart, which comes up with a cap at $5:00, a big bottle of water, and 150 sheets of A4 paper at just $0:10 in the back to school bargain sale and you can’t say fairer than that. A useful thing to have around seeing as how I’ve forgotten my graph paper.

Back on the metro to Berri-UQAM and the long long walk to the coach station to buy my ticket for Florenceville tomorrow. $114 – arrgghh – and that’s with the senior citizens discount too. Heaven alone knows what it might have been at full price. But with 10.5 hours on the bus (changing at Riviere du Loup) it’s not really all that bad, I suppose. But 22:30 I leave, 09:00 on Wednesday I arrive – I am not looking forward to this, but since they ripped up all of the trains there isn’t much of an alternative.

So I had a really good chat to Rachel on the phone, giving her enough advance warning so that she can flee the country, and then a wander through all of the galleries – or, at least, as many as I could find. It’s cooler in there than outside.

That cheap technology shop near the railway station had nothing of interest although I did start to notice in one or two places that Government energy stickers are slowly starting to appear in the shops. A sign of the times, hey?

And look at this! This is not a new Ford Transit but a replacement for the Ford F-series panel vans. And if you are wondering why many of the very useful white-van-man features of the previous Ford Transit have mysteriously (and surprisingly) disappeared from the new version on sale in Europe, then look no further.

They don’t have white-van-man in North America. His equivalent over here drives a 4×4 pick-up and that’s where you will find the interesting bits and pieces. White vans here are just used for furniture removals and parcel deliveries and a little bit of urban maintenance and so are a completely different breed.

So if any North American has had a hand in designing the new Transit, that will explain why, as far as facilities go, the new Transit is essentially a backward step. I’m convinced that Transits of the model such as Caliburn
actually had a white-van-man on the design committee and it’s sad that Ford Europe doesn’t have the muscle to have pushed forward their observations to whoever was on this global design panel.

Abandoning another good rant for now I head off down the rue St Catherine where there’s a big new shopping mall type of place on the right as you go down the hill. All clean and bright, with a Subway sandwich place down in the basement. Ahh! Lunch!

And for the first time ever, since I’ve been visiting a Subway, when I asked the Serving Wench for my 12-inch with just crudites (yes, if it’s crudities you want, then I’m your man) she did not ask me if I wanted cheese with it. I made a comment about it, to which the aforementioned replied "well, I’ve been working here for quite a few years now so I’m used to it"

They had a fountain here too so I took a photo of it seeing as how pretty it looked, and as soon as I had started to leave, it erupted, so I came back for another photo.

Back outside and down the street they had the giant chessboards out again and so I watched 3 or 4 games in the company of a woman, and we were exchanging comments about the games. One game was ultra-defensive and everyone lost interest after a while, including the two players who abandoned the match.

Another one was however quite exciting. It was a younger girl against an older man and was played in what you might call something of an aggressive spirit, swinging like a pendulum from one way to the next as they traded piece for piece. She made a couple of moves that had mystified me, but then suddenly she caught his king in a trap against her pawns. By this time he just had his king and a knight and she a bishop (or fou as they are called in French, so I discovered) and a king, and they both had four pawns each.

What helped my concentration was that there was an ice-cream parlour right next door, and I can thoroughly recommend the coconut milk sorbet.

Further down the road in St Catherine Est I came across a bookshop selling second-hand books and CDs and so that’s me spent up yet again for another year.

The Chapel of Notre dame de Lourdes was erected to the glory of Mary so we are told (but just WHAT is the Glory of Mary?) thanks to the generposity of the local people.

However that generosity does not extend to giving out help to those who ask for it. There’s a big sign outside saying that it is forbidden to solicit alms either outside or inside the Chapel.

Just what kind of Christians are these?

My reverie was interrupted by the rather bizarre noise of something different coming down the street. Luckily I had my camera to hand to photograph it.

I couldn’t get close enough to this to see what it was, which was a shame, but it looked very much like a three-wheeled batmobile to me. It bore something of a close resemblance to The White Swan that we saw on the Saguenay Ferry in 2011.

I had my falafel for tea as well. I walked right up the bank to the rue Sherbrooke and then rue St Denis to where I had had my tea one night in 2014.

Just up the road from here is this magnificent building, the address of which is 3725 rue St Denis, and one day I’ll find out much more about it. It has to be something quite important or have an interesting history.

The metro from Sherbrooke brings me all the way round to the metro DuCollege, and then back on the bus. And I ended up being guide to a couple of French tourists from Picardy on the same bus who were trying to find their hotel.

I had a shower, for by this time I was steaming and then to bed for my last night for a while in Montreal.

Saturday 15th August 2015 – NIGHTMARE AT DORVAL

We had another “sleep of the dead” last night – this change of air must be doing me good. So after a shower I went off to see if my room rate included breakfast, but of course it didn’t. Whatever was I thinking of? Breakfast is another 11:00CHF. It’s a good job that I picked up those bread rolls last night.

On my way back to my room though, I couldn’t help but admire the view from the window right outside my door. I thought that I could hear aeroplanes close by.

So in a minute, I’m off back to the airport even though there is hours before my flight. I might find a power socket somewhere that I can plug into – there are none here of course.

The tram came pretty quickly (so quickly that I forgot to photograph it) and the journey was quite simple. And while I was travelling to the airport, I came to a conclusion. My really bad experience last night was caused by nothing more than my lack of preparation – and the hotel can take most of the blame for this (just for a change).

Had it been clear in the hotel’s publicity that there was no shuttle to the hotel (but trams 10 and 12, and bus 510 pass in front of the hotel and a 24-hour bus pass can be obtained … etc), that breakfast was 11CHF extra, and that a Swiss adapter was needed for the electricity, then I would have been prepared, and my stay there would have been quite acceptable, instead of the totally chaotic mess.

But to give you one idea of the hotel, the coffee machine in the hotel sold at 3:00CHF. The same machine installed by the same company selling coffee to a captive audience at the airport was selling at 2:50CHF.

Negotiating the maze that is the airport is by no means easy, and we had another pig-ignorant security guard who doesn’t understand the word "please". All these people who were kicked around and bullied at school when they were kids have really been able to wreak their revenge on society with the massive expansion of what is laughingly called "security". The place was totally packed with people too

But on thing will tell you all that you need to know about the mentality of the Swiss – the "security" screening decants you straight into a huge duty-free shop.

And the number of people wandering around the airport carrying "duty-free" carrier bags shows that this shameless selling technique really works. It would probably work even better at the other side of the security check-in too, especially if it were to sell tranquilisers to calm the nerves (and pickaxe handles to deal with the security staff).

I’m here watching them load up my plane. It’s an Airbus A330-300. And what’s more, I’ve even found a plug that will charge up my laptop.

In fact it didn’t take too much finding – rows and rows of empty seats all over the airport but just one row every now and again with hordes of people congregated around it

Boarding the plane was straightforward and, much to my surprise, the plane seemed to be almost new. Luxury wasn’t the word and the flight over to Montreal, although the longest that I’ve been on to date, was very comfortable. My meals were excellent too. The entertainment was not really my choice – I was even offered the chance to see The Great Escape
– however it wasn’t Christmas so I didn’t bother. Instead, I had Shaun the Sheep, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
.

One downside of the flight, nothing to do with the company of course, is that my neighbour’s idea of personal hygene was even less than my own.

With a window seat, the views outside were superb. With the airport being busy, I’ve never seen a queue like this of aeroplanes lined up in the queue waiting to take off. It was like the M25 at rush hour with all of them here.

The plane in front of us was something quite big and we had a wonderful view from right behind of it taking off. It’s probably the most impressive sight that I’ve ever seen, and there wasn’t much room between the tail of the plane and the ground. You can understand why so many tail strikes are recorded.

Having flown over a great big pile of tundra, we hit the St Lawrence River right at Sept Iles, and I recognised it immediately from the air.

The bay itself was easy to identify, with its seven island and a pile of big ships anchored there, but what gave the place away was the huge Alouette aluminium smelting works and the port facilities that I’d seen in 2012 on my trip up the coast.

I’d wanted to see them from inside, but failing that, a view from the air is good enough.

Another thing that I have mentioned in the past are the huge LaFarge quarries on the outskirts of the city. They are not very easy to photograph from outside, as I had discovered once when I had driven past them, due to all kinds of fencing, lack of parking and so on.

However, here we were this afternoon, flying right over the top and here I was, sitting by a window seat. This was far too good an opportunity to miss, wasn’t it?

But don’t get me started on the ariport and Immigration, will you? Every day, during the mid-afternoon, about 20 long-haul jets arrive at Pierre Trudeau Airport, Montreal. If they are all full, that’s about 6,000 passengers (plus however many come in from other destinations).

The Canadian Government’s response is to have just FOUR (and for a short while, just THREE) immigration officers on duty.

My ‘plane was about 8th in, and I had a wait of 2.5 hours. I feel really sorry for the people who came in near the end and who were stacked up on the balcony because the immigration hall was full. Nowhere to sit, no water to drink, not possible to visit the bathroom. I could go on and on … "not with a bayonet through your neck you couldn’t" – ed.

Luckily I had some good music to keep me company, and that always calms me down. But finding, once through Immigration, that all of our suitcases had been taken off the carousels and dumped on the floor (and no-one knew where they were), and discovering that I’d left my cap on the ‘plane too, and I was off again, wasn’t I?.

Luckily the hotel bus was already there so I had to take my leave of my delightful companion with whom I’d been spending a little time just recently since I encountered her in the queue and we drove the half-mile to my hotel down at the end of the runway.

Having checked in, next task was to hit the city, and there’s a bus stop right outside the hotel. The bus 202 took me from here down to the Metro at DuCollege, and the metro took me to Snowdon where I made a stunning discovery – an Indian restaurant. From Calcutta, they are, but it was the nicest Indian meal that I had had outside Stoke on Trent. Beautiful, it was.

Bad news, though, is that my little ice-cream place on the Cote-des Neiges has closed down. A tragedy! So I had to make do with some mandarins from the outdoor office.

Getting back from the town is not quite so easy – I have to go miles to find an overpass across the Cote-de-Liesse, but I came across some nefarious, nocturnal dealings here. There’s a whole pile of school buses, all from Nova Scotia and all on temporary licence plates, parked down the road. The drivers are, apparently, staying in my motel.

It seems that they are all time-expired (you can only use school buses for a limited number of years) and are being traded in for new ones, to be driven back to Halifax.

And back here, 22:00 (04:00 in real time), I just crashed out. And that was that.

PS- my phone number seems to be working, much to my surprise. It’s the same three figures as the last 4 years, but then 740-6186. If you don’t have the first three numbers, send me a message.

Friday 7th August 2015 – I’M NOT QUITE SURE …

… what happened this evening.

I came back up here at 18:00 and I don’t remember anything until about 19:00 when the evening buzzer went off. The best that I could do then was to haul myself off into bed – at 19:00!! – and I didn’t move until 23:30 when I crawled off to do the stats.

It’s not as if I’d done very much either. Up at the usual time and then a few hours on the website.

After lunch, I went out and tidied up the drive, collecting all of my tools because, as you might have expected from yesterday, the owner of this Hyundai never turned up at all.

Lieneke came past though, and we had quite a chat for a while.

But now all of my tools (except my trolley jack, which is holding up this Hyundai) are now put away. I’ve officially finished work until I return from Canada towards the end of October. Just some tidying up, cleaning up and doing a pile of paperwork.

And that was when I came up here to sit down for five minutes.

What a waste of an evening.

Friday 17th July 2015 – WE ARE NOT ALONE!

I had a visitor this evening, and peering through the gloom I managed to take a photo of it.

A nice deer has come out this evening looking for food, or perhaps looking for Strawberry Moose – after all, it is that time of year and he does need to get back into practice seeing as how he’ll be off to Canada in about three or four weeks time.

I really don’t understand why anyone would want to kill anything as beautiful and graceful as this.

I was awake once more before the alarm clock, mainly due to the heat, and after breakfast I had another really good session on my wen pages. The trouble is though that the more I do, the more there is to do and rather than catching up, I’m falling even further behind.

I was driven out of the attic by the heat too, and I ended up wedged in a corner in the bedroom with the fan blowing full-on at me. Even then, it was almost impossible to keep cool.

After lunch I turned the house upside-down looking for some more tongue-and-grooving but that was completely unsuccessful. There is now no alternative but to go to Montlucon tomorrow and buy some more.

What i did do was to sort out the plasterboarding in the shower room ready for tiling and ready for finishing off the ceiling, and then to attend to some more outstanding bits of wiring. And that was where I reached at knocking-off time.

I finished off today by having a good shower – more to cool me down than to actually clean me off. And that’s me set up for the weekend now.

All ready for Montlucon, in fact.

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Thursday 16th July 2015 – NO PRIZES FOR GUESSING …

… what was the first act this morning.

With it being rather hot up here, I went to open the window at the head of the stairs. And there on the windowsill underneath the window – well, I’m sure that you can guess what it was that I found.

The irony of it all is that I can see the windowsill from where I’m sitting. How I failed to see Cailburn’s insurance papers, I really do not know.

This morning I was up early once again and after breakfast I had another marathon session on the laptop and that took me right through until lunchtime. I edited a load of pages from 2009 as well as doing a few album lists from previous Radio Anglais programmes.

But I’ll tell you what – having seen the prices at which some of my CDs are on sale (one is on sale at €199:00) my CD collection must be worth a veritable fortune. And the irony of it all is that I doubt that there’s very much for which I’ve paid more than €10:00.

After lunch I cracked on with the ceiling in the shower room. That involved drilling a few holes, sorting out the wiring a little better and so on, as well as having to find a few tools and things.

But I came to a resounding halt, mainly because I’ve run out of the tongue-and-grooving that I’m using for the ceiling and I’ll have to buy some more. I’m about 10 rows short, which is a shame. I’ll have another scratch around to see if I have any more, but I’m not very hopeful.

Rosemary rang up too – she’s planning on paying me a visit on Tuesday, and then Rob called. The head gasket has gone on his car and could I help him fix it?

Yes, it’s THAT time of the year again.

Wednesday 15th July 2015 – I’VE FINISHED …

… the flying shelf this afternoon.

It took quite some effort and a pair of arms about 2 metres longer than mine, but nevertheless, after some considerable amount of ado about a great deal, I managed to do it. Strangely enough, the part that I thought would be very difficult was comparatively easy, and the part that I had expected to do quite easily was the part that took the longest.

However, looking for tools, nuts and washers was a considerable part of this too. But then that’s only to be expected.

It’s not as good as I would have liked – I can see several shortcomings in my work, but the design was good anyway. Just the execution was wrong and I’ll have to do better than this if I do it again.

But anyway, it looks OK if you don’t look too closely, and everything works as it is supposed to, so I suppose that that is something.

I was on my travels last night, visiting a football ground at a sports club in Crewe with a cement mixer – the lorry-based cement mixer thing. Someone connected with my family had connections there and they had ordered the cement, and meeting up with this person was the last thing on either of our minds. So I tipped the cement and when I tilted up the mixer into the vertical position, the lorry started to roll back. But someone from the football club grabbed hold of the bumper of the truck and hung onto it to stop it moving.

I was up before the alarm clock and so I spent a very profitable morning on the laptop doing some various assorted computer work, including finishing off a couple of radio programmes. I even managed to telephone the insurance company to have a duplicate label for Caliburn sent to me – which means that I will definitely find it now.

I had to go into Pionsat to buy some bread today for lunch, and also to try out the new bank card that I have received.

And tonight, I had a lovely warm solar shower that has made me fit for anything.

Tomorrow, I’ll be finishing the ceiling in the shower room, or at least, doing as much as I can.

Tuesday 14th July 2015 – HAPPY BASTILLE DAY

That’s right – the story goes that the reason why the French stormed the Bastille on 14th July was because it was a Bank Holiday, all the shops were closed and they had nothing better to do.

But I had plenty to do, such as trying to find this insurance sticker. I’ve waded through all of these papers and some have been filed, some have been put tidily in a box and the rest have been filed under CS. But as for the insurance sticker, well, not a glimmer of it, I’m afraid. I’ve no idea where I might have put it.

The only thing now is to contact the insurance company and ask for a duplicate. And then that will guarantee that the original one will come to light immediately.

I’ve also done the notes for four days’ travel around Labrador and I’ve now arrived back in Newfoundland. I’ve also done some research as well and found a few really good e-books about the region that I have saved to read at my leisure.

Not only that, I’ve collected the details for a couple more months of radio rock shows and made up the icons for the albums so that I can build playlists.

But all of that was later first job, before I’d even had breakfast, was to make some muesli, seeing as how I’d run out.

All in all, I’ve had a busy day, despite it being a Bank Holiday.

Finally, I’ve made a huge aubergine-and-kidney-bean whatsit and that will keep me going for four days. It won’t take much to warm up, the food for the next few days, and it won’t make much washing-up.

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Monday 13th July 2015 – IT’S JUST LIKE OLD TIMES …

… up here in my attic tonight. I’m surrounded by papers everywhere – all over the floor and over the bed-settee and it feels so good to have reverted to all of my old untidy habits.

It all started off so promisingly too. I had a nice lie-in to reward myself for my efforts over the weekend and then after breakfast I attacked the dictaphone notes from my voyage to Canada in 2014 – must get that done.

No bread today because the boulangère is off on holiday so I needed to go into Pionsat, and that led to a little complication.

The insurance on Caliburn will expire on Wednesday and here in France, you have a little sticker to put in your windscreen to display your insurance details. I need to put the new one in the windowand I know that I have it – it’s been in my sticky little mitt at least once just recently and I’ve probably put it safe somewhere so that I know where it is.

But where?

This led to a search around up here, in the most obvious places, but it still hadn’t come to light by 14:30 and so, fearing that there would be no bread left at all in the Intermarché, I shot off to Pionsat where I was lucky enough to buy the last baguette. Not even one for tomorrow and that’s sad, as it’s Bank Holiday here and all of the shops will be closed.

After lunch, I started to search in the less-obvious places and that led to an unearthing of a load more paperwork – nothing to do with what I’m trying to find but there’s no sense in ignoring it so that’s being ruthlessly sorted out as well. I’m finding tons of stuff, a lot of which is really important and that I wish that I had found ages ago, but no sign at all of the insurance sticker.

Like I said, I know that it’s here somewhere, but the question is “just where?”

So guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow on my Bank Holiday day of rest? It’s not as if I don’t already have enough to do.

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EPIC HALL

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