Tag Archives: strawberry moose

Saturday 2nd July 2011 – AND SO, AFTER …

… my day off yesterday and my new plans for the rainwater harvesting I went to Commentry today and bought everything that I need.

Cost me an arm and a leg again but I ought to be getting used to this by now.

And on the way home I thought of yet another potential improvement. But I’ll worry about that later.

And while I was in Commentry I spent a small fortune too – a lot of which went on toys.

Well, you might remember that I bought an eccentric sander for my workshop a few weeks ago. And today, LIDL was selling off its stock of sanding discs – 30 in a box and all for €1:00 a pack.

At that price I had to clean out the store as I’ll get through a pile of them when I’m body-filling. There were a few other toys as well and it all adds up.

One thing I did do was to buy some ready-mixed bread mix. My baker is on holiday and so when I cook my pizza on Sundays I can experiment with making bread. This ready-mixed stuff should make it easier.

And what I didn’t do is spend any money in Centrakor or Les Bonnes Affaires – and that must be an event worth recording too – it’s probably never happened before.

The swimming baths at Neris les Bains were crowded but it was all good fun. So hot was it that the sides of the baths were opened to the air. And I had to wait ages for my private shower – there was a queue.

A report on the other new toys – the SatNav and the new electric coolbox from Tuesday.

  • The satnav doesn’t display the speed at which I’m travelling and doesn’t have an audible speed alarm.

    That’s a major issue. It’s not half as good as the LIDL one, wherever that might have gone to. But apart from that it does everything else that it’s supposed to.

    And strange as it might seem, when I switched it to American English I was reunited with my old friend the Lady Who Lives in the Magellan SatNav that I bought in Canada. Yes, it is she. It’s just like old times now in Caliburn, with me, she and Strawberry Moose.

    I’m half-expecting Casey – the Chrysler PT Cruiser from Canada – to turn up next.

  • The coolbox is impressive.

    An ice-cream left in there for over an hour was still unfrozen – and that was inside the cab of Caliburn with the outside temperature of over 30 degrees.

    The frozen stuff had defrosted after 5 hours but was still pretty cold, and so I suppose that this is doing what it is supposed to.

    I’ll wire that permanently into Caliburn now and they can live happily ever after.

Tomorrow morning I’m helping Marianne at Roche d’Agoux, there’s the brocante at Arpheuilles-Saint-Priest, – first of the year, and then there’s the new water system to fix.

Good job I had the day off on Friday.

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Sunday 19th June 2011 – I’m going to bed in a sec.

eric hall renewable energy energies renouvelables francois carriat fete de barrot les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, I had an early night for a change. But then again I needed it for I’ve been busy today at Francois’ event at Le Quartier today.

I met loads of interesting people, picked up loads of interesting ideas, and even sold some product, so it was definitely well worth while my going even though I smell of wood-smoke seeing as I was set up next to a guy selling woodstoves that he makes out of old gas cylinders.

strawberry moose eric hall renewable energy energies renouvelables francois carriat fete de barrot les guis virlet puy de dome franceStrawberry Moose was moose-napped again by a young admirer – he certainly has more luck than I do – and came back decorated with flowers. He liked that very much.

I met loads of friends too – too numerous to name – and I was reminded that there’s a chantier at Karl and Lou’s on Saturday.

It was quite a good event and my stall worked well but I didn’t stay for the dance and disco stuff – I feel much better curled uo with a glass of warm wincarnis at my age after my exertions just recently. And if a couple of these apparently-genuine enquiries come off I’ll be able to eat next week too.

In other news, another thing that I foretold has truly come to pass. Yes, the Septics are in talks with the Taliban. And who is surprised by this news, except the UK of course whose public position that “We will never negotiate with terrorists” (although in that case what the Good Friday Agreement is all about is a totaly mystery) is now in tatters and revealed as the farce it was always going to be.

The USA is pulling out of Afghanistan shortly and the whole basis of these negotiations with the Taliban is that the Yanks have no confidence that Khazi’s government will last 5 minutes after they have gone. The fact that Khazi’s writ runs no further than the walls of his palace is something that I have been saying for years – now it seems that the USA agrees with me.

And so what does this mean? It means that the west is fleeing from Afghanistan with its tail firmly between its legs. Not only did the Yanks lose all these people at the World Trade Centre, they have lost 4000 more in Afghanistan and the Brits almost 400 dead and for absolutely nothing at all, and as well as they they have stirred up a hornet’s nest of hatred that won’t die down in a lifetime.

The West’s campaign in Afghanistan has been a failure, and it’s been a failure since day one. Serve the badgers right as well.

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Tuesday 14th June 2011 – I LEFT YOU …

… last night as I was pulling up outside the Library at Cambridge University.

Today, I was battling, and battling unsuccessfully as you might expect, with one of the most classic examples of incestuous Academia that you would ever have the misfortune to meet.

There’s a really big car park at the University Library, as I knew. What I didn’t know is that it’s locked during closing hours. Parking in the street outside is controlled during working hours, but it’s a nice wide verge with plenty of free spaces and in a quiet area.

The plan would be therefore that I would park up for the night outside in the street, wake up really early, and be queueing in Caliburn at the gate to the car park when they came to unlock it.

strawberry moose cambridge university library UKHere’s Strawberry Moose queueing up to enter the library.

He was quite keen to teach a couple of courses at the University until I explained to him that the word is Lecturers, not Lechers.

Rather like the time that he tried to charter a plane to come home from Canada – but changed his mind when they told him that it was spelt L-E-A-Rjet.

So in I walked to the University library.

And I had a reason to be here too. Someone in Pionsat had heard of a story that an Eton teacher by the name of William Johnson Cory had visited the Auvergne and made a reference to the Chateau de Pionsat in one of his letters.

Before setting out, I had done some research into the aforementioned and discovered that on his death in 1892 he had bequeathed his letters to the Cambridge University library.

So here I had come to read them.

But I was failing to take into account the incestuous nature of Academia at the UK’s top-drawer University.

Yes, his papers are here. But no, I can’t see them.
“Why not?”
“Are you from the University?”
“No I’m not”
“Well, you need to have a letter from someone connected with the University validating your research project”
“But I’ve just come from France – I don’t know anyone here.”
“Well we can’t let you consult our papers until a researcher connected with our own University has had the opportunity to examine them”
“You mean that no-one from the University has examined them yet?”
“That’s right”
“And they’ve been here since 1892?”
“Yes”.

No wonder that mainstream Academia has such a poor reputation when the Universities are prepared to sit upon piles of unrecorded papers until the cows come home rather than let researchers from outside their own sphere of control have a peek.

Who knows WHAT treasures these Universities might be sitting on? When you read in some of these journals things like “a rare 7th-Century poem by Caedmon has just been discovered in an Oxbridge Library” you can understand why, now.

But I had nothing better to do and nowhere else to go, so I raided the University library just the same, seeing as I was in.

And here I hit the jackpot.

On the shelves was an original version of all of the volumes of Sir Walter Raleigh (not him, the other one)’s The War in the Air – totally original and un-defaced, even with all of the maps and plates. And I’ve never seen that before.

This was the book commissioned by the British Government as the Official History of the Royal Flying Corps (later the RAF) from its inception until the end of World War i.

I’ve been trying to find a copy of all of the volumes but the only ones that I have ever seen have had their maps and photograph plates removed, and the books are of much less interest without those.

But here I was in my element.

Later that evening I went for a drive to the outskirts of town where I cooked a meal (not practical to do that in the street right outside the Library) in a layby.

Having eaten, I then went on to a Motorway Service Area on the M10 – quite a drive and after all of that, the internet was down.

So I came back to my my spec outside the Library and had an early night.

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Saturday 11th June 2011 – HIS NIBS IS AT IT AGAIN!

caroline strawberry moose caliburn sandbach cheshire ukHere you can see him dipping into his Auntie Caroline’s cod and chips.

To pass the evening, I went to see Caroline again.

We ended up going out to the chippy (not half as good as a traditional Belgian fritkot), I have to admit, and that was where His Nibs joined in the (af)fray.

But Caroline’s cat Bigsy is very poorly and she might not pull through. I wanted to make sure that I saw her and gave her a stroke.

So after many vicissitudes, not the least of which was parking up for the night in a zone where there was no mobile phone signal (something that only I can do), I finally made contact with whatsername and, sure enough, my wallet was there.

That was just as well as I would shudder to have to think what I would have had to do had it not been there.

She was making breakfast for the family (it was quite early) I was also invited to eat there and that really put an end to my journey to Ilkeston and Vehicle Wiring Products, as they would have been closed by the time I would have arrived.

Instead I went to DK Motorcycles in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

As well as selling road-going machines the company also imports classic motorcycles from the USA. They arrive in all states of repair and I always like to go along if I can to see what’s arrived.

They had a few mint Hondas, including a couple of rare 1970s 350-fours as well as a pile of other stuff as well that was fit for renovation, including a 95%-complete Honda 160.

As an aside, I passed my motorcycle test on a Honda 160 belonging to my mate Ray Stigter.

Many of the machines that arrive there are only suitable to be broken up for spares and I always go to chat to the guys there because many of you might not know that I own probably one of the rarest of all Japanese motocycles – a CB92 “Benly” from 1961.

It’s basically complete and after we assembled it we even had it running after a fashion, but that was back in 1974 and that is a long time ago.

It desperately needs an overhaul but spares for it are impossible to find now – hence the regular visits to DK Motorcycles.

They might one day have one in that is only fit for dismantling but to date the guys in there freely admit that this is one motorcycle that they have never ever seen and don’t ever reckon that they will do either.

One regular feature of this blog in its previous incarnation was something to do with poorly-sited solar panels.

badly sited solar panels keele staffordshire ukBut we gave that up when we were overwhelmed with them. Some of these solar panel salesmen have no shame of course.

We’ve seen some dreadful ones on our travels in the past but this must be pretty near the bottom of the pile.

It’s all about the salesman’s income and nothing whatever to do with the reputation of the product that he’s selling

Lunch was at Waitrose in Sandbach and then I went to B&Q in Crewe to see if they had the doors that I need for my house. My house is dark and gloomy due to the small windows and if I’m putting partition walls in, this will cut the light down further.

What I need is some dirt-cheap glass-panelled doors and finding them in France is impossible. However B&Q does a nice cheap line in exactly what I want.

The door that I fitted into the attic came from there and you can see what a good job it does as well – hence a requirement for another half-dozen to match.

B&Q came up trumps in more ways than one.

  1. they had enough in stock.
  2. they had some that were only 650mm instead of 750mm and that’s what I need for the bathroom and the office.
  3. with my trade card I had almost £100 off the retail price – £240 for 6 instead of about £335 or so.

When you think about it … “you are always thinking about it” – ed … that’s just 20 weeks of rental on my mailbox paid off in one swell foop.

You can see why it’s important to have a UK address if I am buying stuff over here.

Now Caroline and I are having a coffee on Sandbach Services. In a short while I’ll be dropping her off at home and making my way in the general direction of Bacup.

I have to go to see a digger there tomorrow morning.

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Monday 6th June 2011 – THIS WAS A HECTIC …

… day, and there have been quite a few of those just recently, haven’t there?

caliburn overight parking seaburn ukI think that I left you at Washington Services the last night, and from there I went on to Whitburn to spend the night by the seaside.

Unfortunately my little hidey-hole there was otherwise occupied so I had to search elsewhere.

There’s a nice cul-de-sac just across the road from the promenade that is a useful place to park up.

whitburn seaburn ukAnd that’s where I should have been last night – somewhere out by that headland over there near Whitburn.

But I’m not complaining at all about where I ended up. It was nice and quiet – much better than I anticipated.

This an area that I know very well from when I used to spend a lot of time up there in a different life, and so I took the opportunity to go for a wander round.

river wear mouth sunderland whitburn seaburn ukIt’s what early mornings are for, isn’t it? Especially when those early mornings are as nice as this one.

A little dull at first but the sun soon came out and I had a lovely walk along the promenade.

And I was swamped with telephone calls too – it seems that word has spread about that I’m over here right now and I seem to be in great demand.

roker pier river wear mouth sunderland whitburn seaburn ukI walked down almost as far as Sunderland – only about a mile or so, it has to be said.

Sunderland is a port at the mouth of the River Wear and the entrance – the Roker Pier – is protected by a beautiful Victorian construction that despite everything that the modern world can chuck at it, still retains most of its contemporary charm.

No ships though. It’s been … ohhh … a whole week since I’ve seen a ship! That’s no good!

bede's cross rokerr wearmouth sunderland whitburn seaburn ukThis statue here is known as Bede’s Cross. It commemorates the life of the aforementioned and was designed by Charles Clement Hodges and erected in 1904.

He was born sometime around 672 just down the road in the town of Wearmouth and died in 732.

He was a monk at the Abbeys of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow and his claim to fame is that he wrote a book An Ecclesiastical History of the English People of which several copies survive today.

This is the book which provides most of the History of England from the departure of the Romans until his death.

katherine ayers natasha asda boldon colliery sunderland ukThis afternoon I drove down to the big ASDA on the old Boldon Colliery site.

Here, Strawberry Moose met up with his sister and her friend Natasha and they had quite a chat about their adventures and what had happened to them since they last met.

While we were there I took the opportunity to return to her her coat and another one or two things that be had brought back with him

Another opportunity that I took was to have a little wander around the shop. Amongst the exciting things that I found were some 75-watt inverters for just £7:99. They had three in the shop.

After I left, there were none. Handy little things, those.

It’s not finished yet – not by a long chalk.

Later in the evening saw me in Hexham, round at at Dave’s. He needed his Detective Agency website bringing up-to-date and so that was another task that had been on my list of things to do.

We had a really good chat about this and that for quite a while.

And despite the lateness of the hour, I still had things to do. I have to be on my way to Edinburgh.

Well, Rosslyn actually. Something about my trip to Canada in 2010 had come up.

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Sunday 5th June 2011 – HERE’S AN INTERESTING …

WOMEN ONLY WALK SIGN LADYBOWER RESERVOIR SHEFFIELD UK… notice.

I was always under the impression that the 21st Century was going to be all about doing away with sexual and gender discrimination, and promoting equality and all of this lark.

So what part in modern society does a “gender-discriminative” event such as this have to play?

And not only that, it is a blatant ageist-discriminatory event and even worse, it discriminates against single parents who are prevented by this ageism from bringing along their children – but yet no childcare or creche facilities are on offer.

The Sheffield City Council and its employees should hang their heads in shame. An event such as this has no place in modern society

ladybower reservoir sheffield UKThis was photographed at one of my habitual haunts – the Forestry Commission car park at the Ladybower Reservoir. That was where I spent Saturday night.

We’ve been here on many occasions in the past as it is one of my favourite spots. And you’ve been lucky enough to have seen the photographs in winter when there have been no leaves on the trees to obscure the view.

But I’ve known this area for much longer than that. It was here that the 1971-72 North West Schools Orienteering Championships took place and Yours Truly finished 18th – and no, there were many more than 18 entrants.

Having dropped Caroline off last night, I come over the top via Axe Edge, Buxton and Castleton to arrive here. A beautiful drive in the dark and even better in the daylight.

It was quite late by the time that I arrived so I treated myself to a lie-in (well, it IS Sunday) and then off to Towsure in Sheffield for some gas and some other assorted bits and pieces.

One thing that I wanted was a new mounting for the jockey wheel on the Sankey trailer. I want to tart that up a little this year. It’s showing its age

strawberry moose helena morley UKThis afternoon I went to Morley, just off the M62 to meet Helena, one of my friends from school. Something else for which Social Media has a lot to answer.

We haven’t seen each other in … oohhh … 38 years I suppose; so we had a lot of news to catch up on over a coffee or two.

Of course Strawberry Moose took the moment to have a photo opportunity like he does. He’s quite a hound for publicity.

Right now I’m at the Motorway Services at Washington on the M1 not too far from Newcastle-upon-Tyne heading to the seaside at Whitburn where I’ll be staying the night if all goes well.

Tomorrow His Nibs is being reunited with his sister. It’s been a good few weeks since they have seen each other and he has some things to give her.

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Saturday 4th June 2011 – HAVING ORGANISED …

… most things around here, I’m moving on tonight.

Last night I slept in comfort and tranquility on the fishermen’s car part at the back of Moston near Sandbach. If there’s no night-fishing going on, that can be a nice peaceful spot, as indeed it was last night.

There was tons of work to attend to today – all kinds of paperwork that I had been letting go which needed bringing up-to-date.

There was also some stuff that I needed to check up with on the internet and so that involved removing myself down to Sandbach Services, for whose assistance I have long been grateful.

For lunch I nipped into the supermarket in Sandbach – a Waitrose, would you believe – to pick up some stuff and then went and found a quiet corner in which to eat it.

Later that afternoon I went back into Crewe. It was probably 20 years or something like that since I’ve seen Cassie, Joanie and Malcolm. it was only meant to be a brief one-hour visit but we had so much to say that it was gone 20:00 by the time I left.

That took me round to Congleton and Caroline’s to rescue Strawberry Moose after all of his adventures in North America, and we all went out for a pizza, a coffee and a good chat too.

Dropping Caroline off, I hit the road for the North.

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Monday 8th November 2010 – I DID OK …

motel orangeville ontario canada… with last night’s motel here on the edge of Orangeville. 58 dollars it was, and no-one waking me up in the middle of the night. But I was up early and gone by 08:45.

However, you will have noticed the frost on the roof. Yes, winter is following me around now.

road sign perth donegal brussels ontario canadaThe drive down to Windsor was absolutely uneventful – I can’t think of anything at all to say about it, even if it was a rather circuitous route that I was obliged to follow.

I was back in Windsor by 15:00 and I found yet another cheap motel- 39 dollars a night and with internet too. I worked out that staying for three nights here (which is what I’m doing) is costing me less than one night in Labrador City.

Mind you the paintwork in here could do with a really good clean and there one or two channels on the TV that are what might be described as … errr … interesting but there’s no Monday Night Football which is rather annoying.

I met up with Katherine and we went for a coffee and a chat. And Strawberry Moose is now making up for lost time, recounting all his adventures to his big sister. And now I only have the SatNav to talk to.

Tomorrow I’ll be emptying out Casey and giving him a thoroughly good clean, and that will take a good while. Then I’ll be posting off all my purchases back to France.

I’m shuddering at the thought of the cost of that.

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Sunday 7th November 2010 – I DON’T THINK MUCH OF OTTAWA

parliament buildings ottawa canadaThe Civic Centre and all of the Parliament buildings are really quite beautiful and well worth a journey to go to see but 10 minutes out of the centre in any direction you have quite a seedy and down-at-heel inner city. Something like Brussels or Washington DC for example.

motel concorde ottawa canadaMy motel was right next door to a Salvation Army thrift shop and there was a pawn shop just across the road. And outside my room this morning was a …. errrr … pavement pizza.

But before anyone becomes too excited by my comments, where else would you find an adequate (because it was) motel or hotel at 68 dollars per night within a short distance of the epicentre of a Capital City?

parliament buildings ottawa canadaBut I had a good couple of hours around the city even though it was absolutely taters and what with all of this and with yesterday at Exporail I’m a day behind.

But I don’t regret the delay for a moment, as you can imagine looking at these buildings. Sticking around the Parliament buildings, you can see why.

spectacular setting bluff river ottawa canadaThe setting of the Parliament buildings is quite spectacular too, on a bluff looking over the Ottawa River.

You can see why it might have been that this bluff at Bywater, as Ottawa was originally called, overlooking the Ottawa River, was chosen to be the site of the new Canadian capital (much to the chagrin of the Quebecois who refuse to acknowledge its existence and have all their road signs pointing to Gatineau, the town across the river.

typical rural road ontario canadaBut I had a belt through the high Ontario plateau across the top of Toronto on some really stimulating roads that reminded me very much of my wander around the Trans-Labrador Highway and I’m now in another cathouse of a motel at an even-more-reasonable $59.

Tomorrow I’ll be back in Windsor where Strawberry Moose
will be meeting up with his big sister again.

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Tuesday 2nd November 2010 – HAVING SURVIVED …

arts motor inn dalhousie new brunswick canada… last night’s motel I woke up to the coldest day of the journey so far (Labrador excluded of course).

It’s minus 1°C as I leave the motel and I’m now in winter gear – thick jacket, hat and gloves.

I’m just amazed at how quickly winter has arrived here.

campbelltown new brunswick canadaSo off for a quick tour of Dalhousie and its neighbouring town, Campbelltown, where the predominant language spoken here is, as you might expect, … errrr … French, even though this is New Brunswick.

And crossing the head of Chaleur Bay into Quebec, the predominant language in the town in which you arrive is … errrr … Mikmac.

Strawberry Moose and I had the pleasure of being introduced to the new tribal chief, the old one having just won the world’s tea-drinking championship, he died in his teepee.
“I am Chief Sitting Duck” said the chief
“How” I replied
“How” replied Strawberry Moose.
“And this is my favourite squaw Minnimama”
“How” I replied
“How” replied Strawberry Moose
“I bought her for two buffalo skins” said the chief
“How” I replied
“Never mind how” said Strawberry Moose. “Where?”

carleton gaspesie gaspe peninsula bay des chaleurs quebec canadaAnd so then along the north bank of the Baie de Chaleur, or the south shore of the Gaspe Peninsula, depending upon how you look at it.

The first European to set foot here was Jacques Cartier in his epic voyage of 1534 (although if he did indeed set his foot in everywhere that he is supposed to have set his foot he would never have had time to have written about it)

caplain gaspesie gaspe peninsula bay des chaleurs quebec canada
This north bank (or south shore) is really beautiful and you can’t move along it without tripping over a motel ir a guest house. There are thousands of them.

And quite right too – it is one of the most scenic parts of whatever passes for the Canadian Riviera and well worth the visit, and it’s not all that often that you hear me say that.

gaspesie perce gaspe quebec canadaHighlight of today’s part of the voyage has to be the town of Perce, and this was where I was headed.

Cartier also had a landfall here and this time there would seem to be no doubt at all about this – he describes perfectly the offshore island with the hole through the middle, and it truly is spectacular, so I’m not surprised that he remarked upon it.

motel adams gaspe quebec canadaI’m now in a motel in the town of Gaspe – the eastern-most town on the peninsula.

Gaspe is quite a historic place, a well-known former port but, alas, with everything demolished in the 1970s and much of it not yet rebuilt, as modern ships are far too big to use the new port.

And I have realised that tomorrow, if I can get a place on the late evening ferry to Baie Comeau from Matane, this will be my last night south of the St Lawrence.

That is rather a depressing thought, you know.

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Sunday 31st October 2010 – I ATTENDED HALLOWEEN TODAY

First time ever that I have done something as North-American as this.

family taylor carving pumpkins centreville new brunswick canadaAfter what can only be described as a leisurely brunch (with my “never ever call me before midday on Sunday” I would fit in so well here) we all sat down at the table and started pumpkin-carving.

First job was to top and then to empty 15 or so pumpkins and that led to seeds and flesh everywhere. Darren had a pile of images and so we photocopied them and used them as templates for the carving.

We sellotaped them to the pumpkins, pricked out the patterns and then joined up the dots with a small knife. And considering that I’d never ever done it before, my group of bats, my witch and my “screaming skull” came out quite well, and I was so impressed. Little Amber even did a freehand carving of Strawberry Moose (you can see him modelling for his portrait) and that was pretty impressive too.

carved pumpkins illuminated centreville new brunswick canadaDarren’s friend George took a few pumpkins down to the gate and I set the rest up in the living room and put tea lights in them so that I could photograph them.

On a long exposure (which counteracted the flickering of the flame) the image came out really well and the effect is pretty good.

strawberry moose zoe taylor halloween centreville new brunswick canadaAfter Hannah and I had lined the drive with flaming pumpkins Rachel and I took Zoe, Amber and Amber’s friend (and Strawberry Moose who had donned a tutu and a bumble bee headgear for the occasion) out trick-or-treating.

It was all terribly tacky as you might expect but it was also fun and you can’t spend a Halloween amongst a family here in North America and not participate in the entertainment.

And tomorrow I’m moving on. My time here is up. I’ll be driving to Bathurst where my journey started in 2003 and heading north from there. The idea is to go around the shore of Northern New Brunswick and then round the Gaspe peninsula to Matane and then take the ferry over to Baie Comeau, where the adventure really began, and that will be the Great Circle route completed.  

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Thursday 28th October 2010 – AND HERE I AM …

… in the bosom of my family – or at least the friendly part of it.

They say that being an intellectual runs in our family and of course anyone who has ever been an intellectual really had to run, and so it is nice to report that there is a civilised bit somewhere, even if one has to cross the Atlantic to find it.

Strawberry Moose has disappeared of course. I have three great-nieces aged between 7 and 16 and they have already worked out a rota as to whose turn it is to moosenap him for which night and so I don’t imagine that I shall be seeing him again until I go back on the road.

international boundary usa canada maine new brunswick woodstock houltonThis morning though I went into Houlton, which is just across the river in Great Satan.

Its claim to fame is that it’s the town in the USA that has the largest fire brigade per head of population, and when you look at the statistics you’ll find that it’s also the town in the USA that has been burnt to the ground the most often.

Are these facts related, I wonder.

german prisoner of war camp houlton maine usaIt was also the site of a German Prisoner-of-War camp for German soldiers captured in north-west Europe following the D-Day landings and I had to hunt around for hours until I found any trace of that.

But any trace – the site has long since been built over and it’s now a civilian airport and new industrial estate. There is however a little monument to the place as it was, but that’s well-hidden in the undergrowth and I stumbled upon it in more ways that one.

I was talking to Darren and his Dad about the Templars and my theory that Columbus sailed to America to recover the treasure for Ferdinand and Isabella that the Templars had carried across to there when they escaped from La Rochelle in France in the fourteenth Century. We chatted for hours about this and when we returned home,

Darren switched on the TV and there was a programme on the Templars taking the treasure across the Atlantic and the efforts made to recover it. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction at times.

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Monday 25th October 2010 – I’M IN A BAD MOOD AGAIN.

Yes – I went into Truro today.

Now if Truro were ever famous for just one thing it would be the Teachers’ Training College. If you have been following my journey you will know that Nova Scotia is a province of mainly small villages in isolated situations and until the road-building process that started in 1918 and is still not yet finished these villages had no connection to any other.

But if you can’t bring the children to education the province realised that it needed to bring education to the children and in 1876 it created a small College in Truro to train teachers to educate children in the wilderness.

These teachers, once they had qualified, were sent to these isolated villages, lodging with parents and teaching children in empty fishing sheds and generally integrating into the village to which they had been sent. And this programme continued until 1960.

The college itself is a magnificent building crowned with a copper dome and spire, and features as the centrepiece of the Truro Heritage poster. And when I came here in 2003 I had a quick look for the building but couldn’t find it.

However today, with more time on my hands, I wandered around until I found it. And I had to find it too, because the people whom I asked, including the lady in the Tourist Office, knew nothing about it.

teacher training college truro nova scotia canadaSo here’s the building – the most significant in Truro and probably the most influential in Nova Scotia.

And the reason I couldn’t find it is that there is a huge concrete bunker – a public library – right in front of the building, built on the lawn, and a huge modern building – the police station – built in the old courtyard (this photo was taken around the back).

teacher training college truro nova scotia canadaAnd of course the copper dome and spire have gone – sold for scrap, I shouldn’t wonder.

The building has been abandoned for probably 30 years and there’s a notice on the wall – “The Truro City Council is actively seeking new opportunities for this building”. So how about using the money spent on the new police station to refurbish the building and moving the police into here? Or demolishing the library and ……

But I’m not going to go on and on about this because I’ll get more and more depressed. My opinions about Canadian preservation efforts is starting to sink to the same depths as those of the USA. Or of France. Or of the UK. People no longer have any pride in their heritage.

So to cheer myself up I went in search of what may well be the oldest intact steam railway locomotive in the world.

highway 311 cobequid hills nova scotia canadaMy route north out of Truro took me along Highway 311 and Highway 326 took me over the watershed between south-western Nova Scotia and north-eastern Nova Scotia and I encountered some views that were truly beautiful.

However, it also took me into a load of traffic as you can see and I’m not at all used to this. Still, you can’t have everything, I suppose.

1930s ford 2 ton chassis V8 flathead fire engineYou can’t have this either, because the owner has no interest whatever in parting with it, although Strawberry Moose has a good go at driving it.

It’s basically a standard 1930s Ford 2-ton chassis with twin rear wheels, a single-wheel front and a Ford V8 flathead (sidevalve) engine and formerly belonged to a small paper mill out on the coast in British Columbia, a mill that was isolated from the main road network.

1930s ford 2 ton chassis V8 flathead fire engineThey built it themselves after a fire in the mill during the 1940s had caused considerable damage because they had no means of extinguishing it.

And the next fire, in 1994, he fire engine had been out of use for so long that it wouldn’t start and so the mill burnt down again. Consequently they junked it and the present owner rescued it and, having fixed it, drove it back here.

At least, that cheered me up considerably.

albion samson nova scotia museum of industry stellarton new glasgow canadaI eventually tracked down my steam locomotive, thanks to the owner of the fire engine who put me right.

A group of engineers have liberated it from its depressing situation on a plinth outside in all kinds of weather and, having restored it to something resembling working order, it’s now in the Nova Scotia Museum of Industry and I was lucky enough to be allowed in to see it.

The locomotive is called Albion and came to Nova Scotia from Newcastle upon Tyne in 1854.

For a long time it was considered that 1854 was the date of manufacture, but I would find this hard to believe without convincing evidence. If you compare this design with any other design of 1854 and the evolution has been considerable.

I’m not going to go into a long discussion here because I have expounded at considerable length elsewhere, where you can read at great length exactly what I think about this locomotive.

What is comforting about this is that the people who, while they might not know exactly what it is that they have, are fully aware of the fact that they are in possession of something that is truly special and they have gone to considerable lengths to take care of it. That can only be commended.

And that cheered me up considerably too

main street new glasgow nova scotia canadaHaving been bundled out of the museum with indecent haste because it was closing time, I wandered off to have a look at New Glasgow.

This was another town with quite an impressive past, growing rich on all of the industry and coal mining that took place in the vicinity, but now all of this is long-gone and the town is a shadow of its former self.

There were houses on sale here for as little as $26,000 which, for a European such as myself, is an astonishing price. You couldn’t buy a garage for that in the UK, never mind a house.  

new theatre old shipyard new glasgow nova scotia canadaThat down there is a new theatre, so if you did come here to live, there would be something to entertain you.

But on the site of the theatre and its car park, between 1821 and 1918, there were 5 shipyards and a total of 210 sailing ships were built there. The largest was one of 1400 tons, would you believe.

The ships were built by local men using local materials and from here they went out to sail the world. You would never believe that now.

lionstone motel pictou nova scotia canadaYou’ve all seen this before. This is the Lionstone Motel up the road in Pictou and I stayed here in 2003.

Time was marching on and I didn’t have time to look for another motel (I believe in spreading my largesse about) so I came back here. No reason why not, after all, I was quite comfortable here last time.

bowater paper mill new glasgow nova scotia canadaThe restaurant that had served me a decent meal last time had closed down, so I bought some chips and went to look at the Bowater paper mill – one can’t escape the smell of wet paper around here.

With a better camera, this photo worked much better than the one that I took in 2003.

So having accomplished that task, I went to heat up some beans in my slow cooker. Pour them over my chips and I’ll have a meal fit for a king.

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Friday 22nd October 2010 – SO WE WERE ALL DISCHARGED …

caribou ferry north sydney cape breton Channel Port au Basques newfoundland labrador canada… from the “Caribou” … “He wasn’t discharged, he was expelled” – ed …  at 07:30. We weren’t torpedoed during the night after all. And the first thing that I did, after getting a coffee from Tim Horton’s, was to go to have a look around Sydney.

I’d been here in 2003 but with not being very well at the time I’d never really seen the place and so I resolved to rectify the matter.

main street north sydney cape breton island nova scotia canadaSo here’s a photo of Main Street, just to prove that I was here. This is actually North Sydney, where the harbour is and I drove all around the harbour and I didn’t find a flaming Opera House or a blasted bridge anywhere.

Nothing for it but to head into Sydney itself, and that’s quite a hike away. And the road down to there has grown a roundabout. 10 years ago you could drive all around North America and not find a single one. Now they are all the rage and everyone wants one.

sydney opera house cape breton island nova scotia canadaThere may not be an Opera House here at Sydney but this is the next best thing to it.

Someone has certainly been on the fiddle here and I’ll probably find, if I were to go in, that it would be quite a vile inn. But there’s no chance of that at this time of morning.

But anyway, now you know that I’ve been here and seen it. That’s dealt with that outstanding issue.

seal island bridge cape breton island nova scotia canadaClimbing up Kelly’s Island, where in a space of 7kms the road climbs 240 metres, we can pull up at the viewpoint and take a good look at one of my favourite works of engineering, the Seal Island bridge.

It’s a shame that I have the early morning sun to deal with, but never mind. Lurking in the shade of a convenient pine tree, I can still manage something and the bridge still looks quite impressive regardless.

st anns lookout cape breton island nova scotia canadaOn the other side of Kelly’s Mountain there’s a lookout on the way down and I missed that completely in 2003. And it really is beautiful too.

There’s a ferry down there that goes across to the start of the Cabot Trail and I went that way in 2003. I’m going to go down there and cross over on the ferry and then do the Cabot Trail in the other direction.

grave of giant macaskill englishtown cape breton island nova scotia canadaI had to take a little deviation to visit the cemetery at Englishtown. Here is the grave of Giant MacAskill. A normal-sized baby, during adolescence he just “grew and grew” and reached a height of 7’9″, a height that puts him well up in the ranks of the tallest men in history.

Born in Berneray in 1825 and christened Angus, he came here to Nova Scotia with his family in about 1831 and died in 1863.

estate of Alexander Graham Bell baddeck cape breton island nova scotia canadaBaddeck is said to be the birthplace of canadian aviation, with the flight of the “Silver Dart”, and it was also the home of Alexander Graham Bell.

There’s a museum here that is open for visits, but if you want to see the home of Bell, you can’t because it’s still occupied by his family and so is off limits to tourists. But out of pure interest, it’s over there on that headland where that tower is.

canso causeway cape breton isle nova scotia canadaCape Breton Isle was formerly an island as you might expect, but it’s been joined to the mainland of Canada by a causeway which carries a railway line and a road, as you can see down there.

There’s a canal through the causeway so that ships can still pass from one end of the Canso Strait to the other, and the bridge swivels out of the way whenever a ship needs to pass.

pleasant street nova scotia canadaI followed the western shore of the Canso Strait southwards for a while and it really was a beautiful drive, far too nice to ignore, and I must have taken hundreds of photos.

This is Pleasant Street, a very apt name I do say, but I forgot to record the name of the town in which it is situated. But the whole area was as beautiful this and I was having the right weather for sightseeing.

commercial cable company hazel hillAnd as well as beauty we were having plenty of history too.

All around here was a very important area 100 years ago, being the part of the North American continent nearest to Western Europe and several submarine trans-Atlantic telegraph cables came ashore here. This was the Hazel Hill terminal of the Commercial Cable Company and the story goes that the company built its offices and staff houses in brick in order to attract employees from urban areas to come and settle here

stormont country harbour ferry nova scotia canadaBut after my marathon drive today, I began to lose the light. Here on the Good Ship Ve … Stormont, Strawberry Moose took the helm with his assistants Seaman Staines and Roger the Cabin Boy while I worked out my next move.

According to the crew of the ferry, there’s a place down the road where they take in boarders  – “what do they tell them?” … ed – and that’s where I went.

bed and breakfast country harbour nova scotia canadaAnd if I could find more places like this on my route – nice friendly and cheerful proprietors, bed and breakfast in a comfortable room with use of cat and kitchen, for $45 cash, all of my troubles would be over.

>No internet though, but you can’t have everything I suppose.

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Thursday 21st October 2010 – I KNOW THAT I SAID …

caribou car ferry channel port aux basques newfoundland north sydney cape breton island nova scotia canada… that I wouldn’t be blogging tonight but here I am in the harbour (well, the terminal, not actually in the harbour) of the ferry terminal at Channel Port Aux Basques with a few hours to go before I sail back to civilisation and I’ve discovered an internet hotspot.

And furthermore some very kind lady fellow passenger has shown me how to configure my computer to use it, so here I am

bed and breakfast corner brook newfoundland canadaLast night’s B&B was exciting. $50 a night for the room and breakfast. Breakfast was help-yourself, make it yourself, cook it yourself – just like last night’s meal where my stock of food was put to good account.

And although the room was advertised as “with private bath” I quickly learnt that what that meant was that when it was your turn to go in, you could have it to yourself without 20 people clambering in with you.

And that’s not as strange as it might appear either as all through breakfast different people kept on appearing – out of the attic, from tunnels in the ground, all kinds of places. It was a hobbit-hole to go with the best. But who’s complaining? $50 with breakfast and I could do with some more places like that on my travels.

typical newfoundland scenery canadaI wasn’t in a great rush to get to Channel Port Aux Basques as the ferry wasn’t until the late evening so I had a leisurely drive southwards.

The scenery along the road is typical of the western side of Newfoundland and in the early morning sunlight with a hanging cloud so typical of my own home in the Auvergne in France, I could be quite at home here.

abandoned American air base USAAF stephenville newfoundland canadaAlong the road I noticed a sign for the town of Stephenville and that rang a big bell with me. During World War II Britain mortgaged everything that it had in order to raise the cash to buy weapons from the USA and when the money ran out, they started selling off the land.

The US Air Force took over a large area of land here at Stephenville and built a huge air base, aimed primarily at refuelling the bombers that were always on patrol ready to attack the Soviet Union. It remained in service until guided missiles and rockets took over from bombers, whereupon it was abandoned.

lighthouse cap anguille newfoundland canadaI stopped for lunch by the seaside in the shadow of the Cap Anguille lighthouse. We’re close to the entrance of the Strait of Belle Isle here, and this is the short cut out of the Gulf of St Lawrence and Western Europe.

The Strait is narrow and is quite often beset with icebergs, so navigation is not as straightforward as it might be. There are hundreds of wrecks littering the shoreline of the Strait as we know, hence all of the lighthouses along here to warn mariners of the dangers.

typical south western newfoundland scenery canadaWe’re back on the road and back in the typical Western Newfoundland scenery again. This is what the road looks like between Woodville and Codroy, at Bear Brook Cove not far out of Channel Port Aux Basques.

But now you’ll notice something else, and that is that the weather has closed right in. Rain is something that it’s impossible to avoid in Newfoundland and although I’ve done well this last couple of days, it’s finally caught up with me as I prepare to leave.

railway museum channel port aux basques newfoundland canadaAt the entrance to the town of Channel Port Aux Basques is a small railway museum exhibiting relics of the Newfoundland Railway. As a good way to pass the time in the middle of this torrential rainstorm I went over for a wander around to see what I could find about the history of the railway.

However, as you might expect, the museum was closed, and that was that.

fox roost harbour newfoundland canadaI wasn’t going to hang around in the town and so instead, I went for a drive along the southern shore of Newfoundland. After a short drive, I found myself at the harbour at Fox Roost.

In fact, this is what most of the southern shore of Newfoundland looks like and had the weather been better, I would have been happy to spend much more time along here having a really good explore around.

newfoundland railway waggon body fox roost canadaAnd not only is the area famous for its beautiful scenery, it’s also famous for being littered with old waggon bodies from the Newfoundland railway.

The metal frames would be quite valuable for scrap but there would be no market for the bodies and they would make excellent garden sheds and storage units. In fact I could do with a few around here.

harbour le cou road newfoundland canadaThe road only goes so far down along the coast – you have to take a ferry the rest of the way – but right down as far as it is possible to go, there’s harbour le cou road – the road to neck harbour.

And the view from down at the end is just as stunning as the view from this end, but there is a limit to the number of photos that you can put on these pages. To see the rest, you need to go to this page.

By now, it’s going dark and I can see my ship in the distance heading towards port. I need to be heading back or I’ll miss it. And it’s not the Joseph and Clara Smallwood either – it’s the “Caribou”, and so when I went into the ticket office, I did say to the girl at the desk that I hope it doesn’t get torpedoed tonight in mid-channel. But that went clean over her head.

But here’s a thing.

There’s a cigarette lighter socket in the boot of Casey, and it only works when the ignition is switched on. I’ve wired a small inverter in there, one that I bought the other day, and I’ve wired the slow cooker into that. At lunchtime I threw in some water, a couple of handfuls of pasta, a small tin of veg, half a tin of beans – and a while later 1/3 of a tin of sauce into it and that’s been cooking away as I’ve been driving around.

While I wouldn’t say that it was boiling, it was certainly hot enough to eat. I reckon that meal cost me less than $1:00 and if I can keep this up, it’ll go some way to bringing the budget back under control.

strawberry moose casey chrysler PT cruiser caribou channel port aux basques newfoundland car ferry north sydney cape breton island nova scotia canadaEventually, we were allowed to board the ship and Strawberry Moose did well to park Casey correctly.

And having wined and dined, I’ve now found myself a nice comfortable reclining seat and I’m all set for a long voyage across the Gulf of St Lawrence, some of the most unpredictable waters in the world, submarine attacks notwithstanding.

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