Tag Archives: strawberry moose

Wednesday 20th October 2010 – I ALMOST FORGOT TO BLOG TONIGHT.

Yes, I was about to go to bed for an early night. I’m in Corner Brook for my last night in Newfoundland – a B&B in a private house at $50 for the night and they even let me use the kitchen to cook my tea from my supplies.

So a cheap night tonight – but it needed to be, because this morning I had a nasty surprise. Casey had a flat tyre. 2000 miles down the worst roads in the world and not a thing, and a puncture on the Trans-Canada Highway. And so off to Canadian Tyres it had to be.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom because they were having a sale of inverters – and I picked up a 75-watt and a 150-watt for just $19.98 for the pair.
And then, incredibly, at Walmart, a 40-watt slow cooker for just $9:99. So off to the dollar store for a pile of tins and so on and I now have all that I need to cook my meals in the car as I drive.

We’ve talked about the Newfoundland railway before and every so often I’d been encountering relics that looked very, very railway-like.

Here from my good spec up on Joey’s Lookout, whoever Joey might have been, near Gambo, I had this view and I don’t think that I’ve ever seen anything looking more like a railway line than this. It’s ironic in a sense that the railway, the 20th Century form of transport, has cut off access to the bay for boats, the previous method of transport around here

Another good stroke of fortune was that the Air Museum at Gander was open and while the girl in charge knew nothing about the missing artefacts she did know two authors of aviation books who are “friends” of the museum.

One of these men worked on the project for the replica flight of Alcock and Brown’s Vimy to celebrate the 75th anniversary. So if anyone knows anything about these objects one of these will.

Outside the museum was a fur trapper selling rabbits that he had trapped.

This took me by surprise. I thought that they only did things like that in the Last of the Mohicans but here he was – a genuine 21st Century trapper doing his stuff at the side of a main road in the middle of civilisation. If you were to read this in a novel you wouldn’t believe it.

A little further on I can actually get in touch with the railway line.

This is a beautiful bow girder bridge across the river at Elmwood. And having been for a little walk along the line, I can tell you that it’s single-track and judging by the radii of some of the curves, narrow gauge too.

So now I know.

So now it’s an early night in my guest house at Corner Brook.

There won’t be a posting tomorrow as I’m spending the night on this 7-hour crossing to Cape Breton Island where I’ll be picking up where I left off from my 2003 voyage.

And if I don’t blog the night after, it will be either because wherever I will be staying won’t have internet access, or else the ferry will have sunk. And don’t laugh about that either. On October 14th 1942 the Caribou, one of the predecessors of the ship I’ll be sailing on, was torpedoed by a U boat while crossing over the Gulf of St Lawrence.

And the ship I’ll be sailing on – it’s the first voyage since its rudder and steering gear have been repaired. So anything can happen – and it probably will, but I’ve got my Strawberry Moose to keep me warm.

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Tuesday 19th October 2010 – THE BIG ISSUE …

… with fulfilling your lifetime’s ambition is “what do you do next?”

I reached St John’s today and had a good wander around. But I found hardly anything much to hold my interest,apart from a couple of things below.

The view of the harbour from up on the hill at the entrance to the harbour is impressive though and it showed you why this was such a key harbour during all of the events that took place on the north-eastern seaboard.

Last night I stayed in a little B&B that was excellent. The brother of the woman who ran it came round – he’s a teacher and we had a good chat about the aviation history of the area.

Now in a book that I once read, it stated that there was a little aviation museum that kept the bits of- the 5 attempts to cross the Atlantic in May 1919 – the undercarriage that fell off Hawker’s plane for example. But try as we might we could find nothing anywhere that looked like it might be anything.

But then this guy told me that a good while back a new museum had been built and all of the relics from a load of small museums were collected there, and there had also been a Transport Museum created.

And as my book was dated 1970 or something, long before the consolidation, he suggested I try those places.

At the Transport Museum, one of my major assumptions was verified. Up in Central Newfoundland I’d seen traces of what looked like railway track bed – I would have staked my mortgage on it – and sure enough there had been a railway in Newfoundland and one of its tracks did go where I saw it.

So that was that. And a fascinating museum it was too – I spent ages there and learnt a lot but they had no trace of these aviation exhibits.

At the new museum, “unhelpful” is a word that I thought that I would never ever have to use in the English-speaking Maritimes, but unfortunately, here we are. The … errr …. young people on the reception desk knew nothing at all and wouldn’t be bothered to ring up to ask any elderly colleague to see what he or she might know.

But they did encourage me to visit the exhibition of a sculpture depicting the car-bombing of a street in Iraq – to see the “senseless destruction”.
“How appalling” I commented. “It’s a disgrace. It clearly made sense to the Freedom Fighter who detonated the bomb so I find your comments juvenile, offensive and patronising. When might there be an exhibition of some of the senseless American bombing of streets in Iraq?”

Yes, I was in a bad mood. I suppose these early aviation exhibits have been long swept into the obscurity of the distant past and probably won’t ever see the light of day again, which is a shame.

I did however manage to track down what I reckon is the crash site of the “Raymor” – the aeroplane piloted by Raynham and Morgan. They took off from some land at Pleasantville, near Quidi Vidi Lake, and crashed at the end of the runway, heavily overloaded with fuel.

I once saw some photos of the aeroplane on the runway and I could identify the hills in the background, and I also saw a photo of the crash site, and I was also able to identify the hills in that location too – so I’m pretty sure that I’ve got it right.

It’s really the only place that it could be because everywhere else is either totally uneven terrain or the hills are too close.

But it was still a hell of a place to try to take off with a new and untried aeroplane with an enormous load of fuel. Alcock and Brown, who had drawn to take off next from that field, immediately went around to look for another field rather than to try from there and in the end they used a field that had been allocated to another competitor but who had withdrawn. That, unfortunately, is now a big housing estate.

There were still a few other sites that I needed to track down, Hawker’s being the most important, but the light went and I needed to leave. I’ll have to come back again to Newfoundland, but I won’t be sorry. it really is a beautiful place even if the east coast does average something like … errr … 216 rainy days per year

So now I’ve turned back and sad as it is to say it, I’m on my way home. I’ve reached the apogee of my voyage.

But I did see at St John’s, a sign that said “3940 kms to Paris”. And when I fuelled up just outside the city I noticed that since leaving Toronto not quite 3 weeks ago, I’ve driven far enough to have gone to Paris and come back, and still had mileage to spare.

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Saturday 16th October 2010 – WE MADE IT TO L’ANSE AUX MEADOWS TODAY

The view is spectacular and you can understand why the Norse chose this particular site.

There are two crescent-moon shaped bays, both well-sheltered, next to each other surrounded by cliffs to the prevailing northern side, and a low bank behind to stop the easterly winds. The boats could be brought right up to the village when weather conditions were right but a sandbank has intervened these days.

Unfortunately, the place was all closed up and locked, but having driven all of this way to get here, I was not going to be thwarted.

A visitor centre with a low roof miles from anywhere where there isn’t anyone about is not going to be a barrier to anyone who is sufficiently determined, and 10 minutes later we were in the park.

It’s a little confusing at first – they have built some replicas of the Viking buildings, but these are some way from the remains of the original Viking ruins.

The remains of the original buildings are surprisingly open. They are not fenced off at all to anyone so you can wander around them.

There are all kinds of traces of bog iron too just floating on the surface of the bog. The Norse travellers would have found this very useful to repair their ships.

But after that I had to clear off smartish-like because the heavens opened and I was soaked to the skin just walking back to the car. And I don’t have long here and I have a lot to do.

You may not think it but Newfoundland is huge, much bigger than it looks on a map and I have to travel from here, at the extreme north-east, down to the Marconi station at the extreme south-west, and its over 1300 kms, would you believe.

And so in a kind of minimalist mode I’ve made it this evening to Deer Lake where I can pick up the Trans-Canada Highway eastward.

The motel isn’t as cheap (by a long way) as I’d been hoping, but around here there are not so many choices. There was a cheap bed-and-breakfast but no-one answered when I knocked on the door. It made me wish that I had bought a mobile phone as well as a Sat-Nav.

The drive along the Viking Trail down from l’Anse aux Meadows to here was almost 500 kms, you know and we went through some wonderful scenery, because Northern Newfoundland really is beautiful.

There are some really nice mountains and massifs and had the weather been better and had I had more time, I could have taken hundreds of photos along here but I was in a rush.

We also saw some of Strawberry Moose‘s cousins. One was quite a good clear shot which came out blurred due to the darkness that was surrounding me.

As for the second – there were about 3 vehicles in a line – I was the middle one – and in the darkness and we were travelling at speed, suddenly the front car slammed on his brakes and screeched to a stop, and we saw four long legs in the headlight beam disappear into the forest. He had just had a close encounter with a moose. It was noticeable that for the remaining 30 kms to Deer Lake his speed dropped from over 100 kph down to about 70 kph.

Tomorrow I’m back on the highway and I want to do all of it to Saint Johns in one go. If I can find somewhere cheap to stay I’ll do 2 nights there, visit Cape Race and the Transatlantic Air Museum, and then head back to the south-western corner (Newfoundland is like a big triangle) to my ferry Thursday night.

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Thursday 14th October 2010 – WELL, STRAWBERRY MOOSE HAD A GOOD DAY TODAY.

On the road between Port Hope Simpson and Mary’s Harbour we encountered some more of his cousins. This time it was mother and daughter.

And a short while later we encountered another juvenile. So he’s having fun anyway, meeting up with all of his family and he’s ever so excited about it all. Good old Strawberry Moose

As for me, I’ve done nothing like as much as I hoped. But then again, I’ve been distracted. For a start I couldn’t get out to see the Wunderstrand.

Although it’s just across the bay from Cartwright, it’s actually a 10-mile walk followed by a 10-minute kayak journey (you need to carry your kayak the 10 miles, by the way), or else it’s half an hour across the bay in a kayak (in a howling wind across freezing cold water) and of course regular readers of these columns know that you couldn’t get warm again. You know that it’s against the law to light a fire in a canoe – you cannot have your kayak and heat it.

There is however a certain spot to which you can drive and with a long telephoto lens and a little judicious crop and sharpen, you can make out the beach right away in the distance and see just how beautiful it all is.

Of course a photo isn’t the same as actually walking in the footsteps of Eirik the Red at the climax of his magnificent epic voyage to Vinland, but I suppose that it’s the best that I can do

Anyway, back on the Labrador Coastal Drive (as this bit of the Trans-Labrador Highway is called) the next stop was the most delightfully-named Pinsent’s Arm, a small fishing village on the coast in a sheltered bay off the Atlantic. I always thought that the name was quite romantic.

I had to ask directions when I got to Charlottetown. I hailed a passing native (who picked up a handful of gravel and hailed me back)
“Excuse me – can you tell me where I can find Pinsent’s Arm?”
“Why yes alrighty” she burred (I just love the way they talk in Labrador). “It’s over there in that bucket”.

Pinsent’s Arm has a population of 64 and they were all on the quayside waiting for me to arrive.

One of the fishing smacks that operates out of here had just put in to port.
“What do you catch here now that the cod has finished? Shrimp like out of Cartwright?” I enquired.
“Why no” he replied. “We get them thar whelks and scallops”.
But if they were whelks and scallops in those baskets they were unloading then I’m going to have my eyes tested as soon as I get back to Europe.

The natives, obviously wishing to see the back of me, pointed out to me the way through the rubbish dump and local tip to the point where you can see the Atlantic through the cove.

This is quite impressive, and would have been even nicer had I been more lucky with the weather. But it could have been worse – it could have been snowing.

I also went off down Iceberg Alley for a visit to St Lewis – the farthest easternmost settlement on the mainland American continent.

And if ever I have the luck to be able to choose a place out here to settle it would be here. St Lewis is easily the prettiest place that I have ever visited on the North American continent.

It was settled in the earliest days of white exploration and then forgotten.

And when it was “rediscovered” in the 19th Century, the person who discovered it (I can’t remember his name just now) remarked on the “industry and divinity” of the inhabitants. I suppose that a couple of hundred years of isolation had had its advantages for the inhabitants.

But all of that changed after World War II

Its more modern claim to fame, as everyone will tell you, is that it was a station on the DEW line – the Distant Early Warning radar system installed by the Americans on Canadian soil to track and then shoot down the atomically-armed Russian bombers so that the nuclear fallout would be in Canada and not in the USA.

But of course it wasn’t on the DEW line, despite how romantic the legend sounds, as you can tell from the antennae. It was actually a site on Pinetree – the forerunner of the DEW line but which operated on a much shorter-reach traditional radar system and with all the defects of a traditional system.

Once the Russians mastered the art of low-flying, Pinetree’s days were numbered.

But it’s unfair to single out places like St Lewis and Pinsent’s Arm for their beauty. The whole of this road – the Labrador Coastal Drive – is full of spectacular scenery.

This is, I think, Alexis River near Port Hope Simpson and if there is a more beautiful place to stop and eat my midday butty, I would really love to see it. In fact, the nice lay-by here would be an ideal place to stay for the night, if only I had a camper.

And after that, with me not being halfway around where I wanted to go, and having found some playmates for His Nibs, I’ve had to lay up for the night in Mary’s Harbour (spelt correctly – this is Canada not the USA).

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Wednesday 13th October 2010 – I’VE SEEN A BEAR!

Yes, I really have!

Rupert sauntered across the road about 150 metres in front of me and then stopped by the side of the road waiting for me to ensure his immortality by recording his features in the camera.

But I’m ever so impressed by all of this, I really am. I think that all of the wildlife have been briefed to expect the arrival of the legendary Strawberry Moose and they are lying in wait.

So this morning having left my extortionate and over-priced motel (but then again everything is extortionate and over-priced out here and when you work out the logistics of bringing the stuff up here it’s hardly any surprise – you just need to be prepared for the shock) I had a wander around to see the air base at Goose Bay

its well-known airfield from World War II when it was one of the wayside stations in the Atlantic Ferry but there wasn’t anything significant to observe. It’s all seen much better days and is pretty much derelict now.

And so I headed off for part III of the route – the Labrador Coastal Drive.

This part of the road here towards L’Anse au Loup was finally opened earlier this year and it is this that has made my journey feasible. Prior to this, one had to go to the docks, stick one’s car into a container and wait for a ship for Cartwright.

The road was surprisingly good and I could keep up a good speed along it for the most part although there were a few bits that were thin.

But I did have a problem. Casey is doing about 9.5 litres to the 100 kms on good roads and much more on the rough stuff and so when I took it to be fuelled up, the guy put about 24 litres in, to account for the 300 from Churchill Falls yesterday.

I reckoned that the fuel consumption over that last bit must have been exceptional despite the roads and I was expecting Casey to need much more fuel than that.

But halfway round the route today I noticed that the gauge had dropped alarmingly. It seems that the guy didn’t fill it all the way to the top and it was about 8 litres (the length of the neck) short of fuel.

if ever I come this way again, which I really hope that I shall, I’ll have a 20-litre fuel can with me, and I’ll make sure that it’s full

And Casey is now thoroughly filthy … "and as if you aren’t" – ed … as the weather conditions were pretty awful with the torrential rain that we were having every now and again.

And with another 750 kms to travel, despite what it says on the sign (and how the towns are spelt – clearly someone in the signwriting service around here has a sense of humour) his condition was not going to improve.

But I wouldn’t have missed this journey for the world, even if I didn’t have much luck with the weather. In good weather this journey would have been stunning and even in weather conditions that I was having, it was quite spectacular.

Anyway, these are only a selection of photos and a short resumé of the journey. To see more, you need to go to this page, start at the beginning, and read on until the end

Eventually, I arrived in Cartwright (after seeing my bear) on fumes, and also with a semi-flat tyre, not that this is any surprise. I’m surprised that it’s the only problem that I have had up to date, given what I’ve gone through this last few days. But now, another one has presented itself.

There are two hotels in the town, and one of them is fully booked and the other one is closed for the season.

However, the owner of the fully-booked one rang up a friend of the owner of the second one and she came out from home to unlock a room for me, and gave me the key to the kitchen to help myself for cooking and for breakfast. It’s a good job that I had bought a few tins of beans and packets of spaghetti for emergencies such as this. I knew that they would.

But there’s about a year’s supply of beer in the kitchen – all kinds of things and I could have a field day in there if I were of that type.

Here at Cartwright, an old fishing port dating back to the 18th Century and one of these stops for the coastal ferry trade up the Labrador coast, the road is a new arrival.

Isolated and Remote Canada seems to have these really old and traditional kind of values, as the affair of the motel has provd and I shall always be grateful to them.

Tomorrow when I’ve fixed the tyre and fuelled up I’m going to look at the Norse Wunderstrand then drive back the 82 kms to the highway and go to the site of a historic early Pioneer village, Canada’s second-highest lighthouse, an early Basque whaling station and the Basque fishing boats from the 16th Century that have been salvaged.

Finally, it will be Blanc-Sablon where I may well spend the night ready to take the ferry to Newfoundland the next morning.

But the bear. I can’t get over that. What with the beaver … "it was a porcupine" – ed … on the first day, the moose on the second, the bear on the third – I’m going for the Loch Ness Monster tomorrow!

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Tuesday 12th October 2010 – I’M IN GOOSE BAY THIS EVENING …

… the town, that is, not the bay itself, and I’m goosed.

This morning got off to a rather bad start. I was walking down a street somewhere in small-town America in a howling gale. I don’t remember who I was with, and we were watching this 8-storey brick-built rooming house which was swaying alarmingly in the wind. Suddenly the top four storeys were blown right off the building and crashed to the street with an almighty bang. The two of us dashed over to start to rescue the survivors and suddenly in the middle of all of this I sat bolt upright in my bed.

It’s been ages since I’ve had such a realistic dream as this.

So this morning I was up long before dawn and took piles of photos of Labrador City, only to find that I had the ISO on the wrong setting after last night’s photos, and I had forgotten to change it back. Hence, not a one came out, and was I upset?

Well, not quite. It wasn’t quite light when I took the photo of my motel this morning so I managed to salvage that.

And I’m not going to say anything about the motel at all – I’ll wait for another occasion after I’ve recovered. I was expecting the prices out here to be different than in most other places – 500 kms of dirt road to bring stuff out here will be responsible for that – but I wasn’t prepared for this.

If it wasn’t for the huge iron-ore mines out here, there wouldn’t be anything at all. But what we do have is, apart from the mine of course, a huge railway network for hauling away the output and that was one of the things that I had wanted to see.

Having grown up on The Land God Gave to Cain and similar books, to come out to Labrador to see the iron ore mines, the railway lines and the dams has been my main lifetime ambition ever since my childhood.

But back to the story of my drive over the trail. Today I drove about as far as yesterday, but the roads were a different thing altogether. Leaving Labrador City we had a paved road for all of about 50 kms and then that was about that.

Seeing an enormous snowplough coming towards me with its front all thoroughly plastered with snow gave me a little inkling of what the weather was likely to be, and as we climbed up onto the Labrador Plateau it started to snow.

The more the road deteriorated, the more snow we had and it started to become quite an adventure. The higher I climbed brought me up into the clouds and it became a question of not even being able to see what the weather was doing, and that was probably the best idea.

But Casey, Strawberry and I pressed on relentlessly along the worst road that I have ever driven, deep into the wilderness.

And Strawberry was well-rewarded because at a certain moment right up on top of the plateau with the wind whistling around from everywhere, one of his Canadian cousins slowly ambled across the road as if he owned it, which he probably did.

Strawberry was ever so excited as you can imagine and it brought me to a standstill for a good few minutes as the two of them exchanged pleasantries. Eventually cousin managed to manoeuvre himself into a good spot between a couple of trees where I could get a really good shot of him, and once he was sure that he had made his entry onto these pages, he made his excuses and left

We arrived at Churchill Falls and had a good hunt around to find the petrol station – it wasn’t easy to spot.

Churchill Falls is not on the main Trans Labrador Highway – it’s way off to one side and you need to drive down this road in order to find it. Fuel was $1.15 at Fermont but here it was $1.22 and that’s quite acceptable for where we are – after all there is no train hauling it up into the mountains just here and from the railhead it’s quite a way.

The falls though were a little disappointing, and for two reasons too. Firstly, at this time of the year it’s probably all frozen up high up in the mountains.

Secondly, the river has had part of its course diverted to feed the huge hydro-electric power station on the other side of town. But there isn’t too much to see – everything is inside a hollowed-out mountain, rather like Doctor Evil’s lair.

After Churchill Falls as we climbed back out of the river valley onto the plateau the little bit of paved road immediately petered out and from then on I can safely say that I was on the worst road that I have ever driven in my life as you can tell from the photo.

One stretch of 122 kms took over 4 hours to drive, and I don’t hang about as you know

At another point we were held up by a construction team (there were about 20 teams working up here and they could have done with 200 I reckon) for 10 minutes while they dynamited a huge rock.

And then we were held up for another hour or so while they shovelled it up from off the road as they had miscalculated the amount of dynamite to use. It certainly was spectacular watching lumps of rock the size of giant pumpkins flying down the road just a hundred yards from where I was parked.

And by the time they had finished, quite a little queue had built up

But the road really was awful – at times it was just like a sea of mud in places and I didn’t dare stop because I would never have started again.

After 3 hours of driving from Churchill Falls with just 87 kms on the clock it all became a little depressing. But eventually, after 122 kms we passed onto an area where the construction crews had finished and we could roll along at a much more relaxed 60 kph – even though the roads were nothing like anything that you would get anywhere else. Ruts and potholes, lakes of water, huge stones, these were all commonplace

.But that being the case, every so often you would catch a glimpse of the old road – the one that they used before they had the idea to make the Highway about 10 years ago.

Just imagine driving on that surface -you wouldn’t even manage 60 kilometres in a week on that. There just aren’t any words in the dictionary to describe that road

But all of a sudden, at exactly 191 kms from Churchill Falls there was a huge steep climb up over the mountains and Casey struggled up that, I can tell you, and as we dropped down the other side we found ourselves in a deciduous forest.

Yes, the deliniation of the climatic zone was as dramatic as that – you could draw a line to represent it. And as we drove through a steep-sided valley it was curious to note that in the valley floor and the north-facing slopes there were conifer trees, mosses and lichens yet on the south-facing slopes there were deciduous trees and grass. This kind of area is a real marginal climatic zone that’s for sure.

But who is this “we” that I’ve been talking about?

Well, in fact long before Churchill Falls when I had stopped to take a photo of something I was passed by a Ford F150 pickup followed by a Pontiac 7-seater MPV. Half an hour later I caught up with them again, and then lost them as I stopped again to take another pic or so.

And we continued like this all the way over the Labrador Plateau and right until we hit the paved road a few miles from Goose Bay, when they piddled off into the sunset. It really was quite strange continually catching them up at roadworks and so on. We must have made quite a strange convoy along that road.

Now if last night’s hotel was the most expensive in which I have ever stayed, today’s is the second. And not by much either. I reckon that I could have stayed for a night with a lady of ill-repute in each of these places and still been ahead of the game. I shall be looking into this.

Anyway, these are only a selection of photos and a short resumé of the journey. To see more, you need to go to this page, start at the beginning, and read on until the end.

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Saturday 10th October 2010 – RIGHT NOW…

… I’m sitting in a dingy motel room in Baie Comeau, a town that was built in the 1930s to handle the timber and subsequently the paper trade relating to all of the forests and so on around here.

At that time it was effectively the farthest north-eastern town (as opposed to “settlement”, of which there were plenty) in Quebec. They hadn’t yet discovered the iron ore and aluminium that led to the creation of Sept-Iles further up the coast.

>What’s interesting is that they have a rail link from here to Quebec City, would you believe?

There’s just about 10 kilometres of track on this side of the river to handle all of the paper traffic from the mill and then a rail ferry takes it across to Matane on the south shore of the St Lawrence from where it’s shipped by rail to Quebec City.

There’s quite a bit of sea traffic too. There are two huge freighters, of which this is one, anchored in the bay waiting to get in while a third one, the Australiaborg, owned by a Dutch shipping company, is currently being loaded at the dockside.

And of course there is the ferry over the St Lawrence to Matane. I’ve made a note of that for the return.

And don’t think that I’m complaining about my motel room either because I’m not. I’m on the economy budget plan as you know and a room here has only cost me $49 so I’m happy with that.

And not only that, it’s on the main road and nicely positioned for tomorrow when I head off into the interior. The Labrador Trail, Highway 389, starts just about 1km from my door and I’ll be on that tomorrow.

Talking of railways, sometime tomorrow I’ll be encountering the railway line that runs from Sept Iles up to Labrador City and all of the iron and aluminium lines in the interior. It might mean nothing to you at the moment but if you have ever read The Land God Gave to Cain by Hammond Egges, then this is the line that they were building all throughout the story, so it has some kind of literary interest.

My motel last night at St Simeon, despite being expensive, was quite comfortable and I was up and about quite early going for a little walk.

From here there’s a ferry across the St Lawrence that I sailed on in 2001, but I’m not going that way – I’m going much further along the river from here and then heading into the interior

But I’m not to be denied my ferry trip.

Back in 2001 I passed over the Saguenay River on the ferry that crosses here and I took it again this year.

But when I arrived here in 2001 it was dark and in the morning it was freezing cold so I didn’t gat to hang around too much and photograph the scenery. One of the things I had always planned to do was to come back and photograph it properly in the daylight, and here I am today.

And Strawberry Moose had a good photo opportunity today. Master Bates, Seaman Staines and Roger the cabin Boy, the crew of the Felix-Antoine Savard, did the honours as His Nibs posed for the camera. Luckily the ferry was comparatively empty.

And as for the weather, it might be freezing but at least we have bright sunlight. It could quite easily be raining.

I’m really off the beaten track now though. As well as the St Lawrence River and the scenery, I’ve encountered my first serious waterfall.

I think that this is the Riviere Sault aux Moutons – the River Leap-Sheep ad if the sheep were leaping over that waterfall they must have been pretty good. We have a parking place and a sign, but that’s our lot. Had this been in civilisation, we would have had a fanfare and a marching band, together with coloured lights.

There are several other ferries across the St Lawrence and I went to check them out. At Forestville, where there’s a ferry over to Rimouski, I was distracted by this.

Forestville was formerly an important logging town and to move the logs down to the river, they had a log flume. This was a wooden trough filled with water and they floated the logs down to the shore in it.

If you’ve ever been on the log flume ride at any adventure park, then you’ll be pleased to know that that attraction has been based upon this idea.

So here I am at Baie Comeau. I arrived at about 14:30 today so you are probably wondering why I didn’t press on. The fact is that the next motel once I hit the Labrador Highway is 213km away at Manic 5 and the route planner that I downloaded before I went says that it ought to take me all of 8 hours to do it.

It’s an unpaved dirt road with many bends apparently and with three long single-track bridges. I reckon that I ought to plan a full day to do that and if I do get ahead of myself I can drive on to Fermont, just another 250 or so kms further on.

There’s a few places to stop there as well.

-2

Friday 9th October 2010 – TODAY WE CROSSED THE RUBI … ERRR ….. ST LAWRENCE

This morning quite early, we said goodbye to our host of the previous evening. And as you can see, Strawberry Moose was particularly sad to depart.

And what a nice motel that was – there was even a microwave oven in the room and that made me wish that I had some proper food on board. In fact, I’ll stock up with a few bits and pieces next time I pass by one of these supermarkets just in case I find another microwave in a motel room.

Tracy, where the motel might be found, is a small port on the south bank of the St Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec and you may remember that I had a good wander around there last night.

Next item of interest is this gorgeous bow-girder bridge, the Pont Laviolette that spans the St Lawrence on the outskirts of Trois Rivieres, which is on the other (north) bank of the river.

I had a good drive around to see if I could have a closer and better view of the bridge, but no such luck. However, I’ll be coming back this way and I’ll spend some time then to have a really good look around.

And while we are on the subject of bridges, what do you think about this one?

This is the legendary Pont de Quebec, built at the turn of the 2Oth Century to carry the road and the railway across the St Lawrence to the city of Quebec. It’s been the subject of two major construction failures and cost more lives than the Tay Bridge disaster did, although it was never immortalised by William McGonagall.

You can read more about the Pont de Quebec on this page.

There’s no doubt about it though, the southern shore of the St Lawrence around by the city of Quebec is absolutely beautiful at this time of the year as the leaves are falling (and it’s funny that the further north-east I travel the more the trees have lost their leaves – it’s quite remarkable).

I chose this spot to stop and eat my butty, with the St Lawrence over my left shoulder and the city of Quebec across the river.

It was something of a late lunch because I went to the Walmart just up the road to buy another SD card – they had Kodak ones on special offer – 4GB for $10 but they had sold out. And in line with my resolution of this morning, I bought a tim opener, a mixing spoon and a microwave bowl to go with the pile of pasta in tomato sauce (4 for $5) and tins of beans (99 cents each) that I bought in a food supermarket across the road in case I find another motel with a microwave.

I have to be prepared.

After my lunch I crossed over into Quebec and had a drive around. Old Quebec is really beautiful but I didn’t stop as I’m running to a tight schedule. I hope I’ll be able to fit a day into my return journey to go for a wander round. It’s just like a late medaieval European city in places and has somehow managed to escape the developer’s bulldozer.

After that I headed north-east along the north shore of the St Lawrence and this is really where the beautiful part of Canada begins.

After maybe 15 miles you abruptly leave civilisation and go right into the mountains. It is just so spectacular, as you can see in this pic taken from halfway up Cap Tourmente. The St Lawrence is down there in the valley and Quebec is on the skyline.

>And this is what it is like – all up hill and down dale all the way along the coast, with the St Lawrence never more than a mile or two away.

Here, at the top of Cap Tourmente, you can see what I’ll be encountering. The mountains, the undulating road, the deciduous trees shedding their leaves, and the possibility of encountering a moose, if the one sitting beside me wasn’t enough to be going on with.

Tonight I’m staying in St Simeon which is a ferry port across to Riviere du Loup on the southern shore where I crossed over last time I was up here. This is the view of the ferry terminal from my motel bedroom.

And what I don’t understand is that last time I struggled to find a motel and had to drive another 25 miles until I found one quite by chance.

Just now, I’ve passed 6 at Malbaie, a small town about 15 miles west of here and there’s 5 motels that I can see from my window just here. I really must have been asleep that evening.

But even now I’m not lucky. It’s quite expensive here and there is nothing – no coffee machine (although I’ve sorted that out) and no microwave either. And even worse, there’s nowhere around in the town where I can find a meal.

I’m really not having much luck, am I?

Tomorrow I’ll be driving the 4 hours up to Baie Comeau, going by the famous ferry at Tadoussac, which you will have seen from the last time I was here, and then it’s into the interior. 400-odd miles of dirt track through the interior of Quebec and then 600 or so miles through Labrador and out to the Atlantic Ocean.

Now that’s what I call the wilderness!

-2

Wednesday 6th October 2010 – I RECKON THAT I MIGHT JUST STAY IN THE USA FOR GOOD ..

… if I could keep on finding business opportunities such as this one. What a way to earn a living, hey?

But seriously – I can’t live here. Driving through Buffalo earlier today and already in a really bad humour (I’ve had a run-in with another security guard) I came across a woman in tears on the edge of the street, with a baby, and with all her possessions scattered around her. And it was in the driving, streaming rain too.

Apparently the bailiffs had just been.

But Buffalo is a city that is already in my bad books, and has been for quite some time. In 1860-something a steamer launched in 1846 – one of the earliest lakers – sank in Lake Erie in a storm.

A few years ago a couple of divers located it and it was raised from the sea bed and taken to Buffalo for restoration. However the mayor declared it an “eyesore” and called in the scrapmen, who promptly cut up this rare, if not unique historical artefact.

In 1813 the British burnt Buffalo to the ground during one of the American wars, and believe me, I was sorely tempted to make my own re-enaction of that historic event.

There can’t be any greater eyesore in any city anywhere in the whole world than the sight of a crying woman and her child out in the street in the middle of a rainstorm with nowhere to go and no-one offering any help. 10% of the American working population is out of work, there are thousands of jobs going every day, and there’s no state aid for anyone.

And talking of that, just a short while later, I stopped to take a photo of an absolutely ancient Dodge Power Wagon plant mover used as a haulage truck in a boatyard. Fishing from the quay was an old guy. I got talking to him about things.

“Well”, he said “I worked for 29 years as a shopping centre manager and I was laid off in the spring. I don’t suppose I’ll ever work again and I don’t know what I’ll do now. And in my spare time I was a bailiff for the sheriff’s office but I had to give that up too. It was just so distressing turfing all of these people out into the street.

It’s the rich who are causing all of these problems in the USA – it’s high time a few of them were turned out into the street and made to suffer”.

I once heard someone say that the USA is a great place in which to succeed. Indeed it is, but it’s a dreadful place to fail. If the USA has the highest standard of living in the world, then there must be some awfully rich people somewhere well-hidden, because all I ever seem to encounter are the poor. And there are plenty of them!

r>After all of that, there isn’t an awful lot to say about my journey. I wasn’t really in the mood for much.

I left my rather expensive motel on the edge of Erie, Pennsylvania, in the rain and the further along the road that I travelled, the more the weather. Just like my humour did, I suppose. It was going to be one of those days.

But it’s astonishing, the things that you encounter along the road. At Westfield, near the quaintly-named Barcelona Harbour, I came across the Sea Lion.

It’s a replica of a British 3-masted sailing barque of the late 16th Century and it gives you an idea of the size of the ships that they used to cross the Atlantic in the early days of exploration.

But I can’t think what was going through their minds when they decided to build it, and why they have let ths ship degenerate subsequently into such a poor condition. Seeing that the bay in which the ship is situated is so depressing, perhaps they wanted their barque to be worse than their bight.

Strawberry Moose had a good photo opportunity today as well.

I’d stopped at a local Moose Lodge to see if there were any friends and family of His Nibs in the vicinity, but a local copper stopped to find out what was happening. So having given my explanation, he very kindly (and much to my surprise) allowed His Nibs to have his moment of glory.

So let’s hear it for the New York Police!

I also stumbled upon Graycliff – one of the houses that was designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright.It dates from the late 1920s and was built for the Martin family.

The were wealthy entrepreneurs in Buffalo and in fact sponsored Wright in his early days, but were wiped out in the Depression and the house was sold to a Monastic Order who used it as a school.

When the school was closed in the 1990s, there were plans to demolish the place and build a huge housing estate here, but the property was saved by a preservation group (a rare event in the USA)

And famous architect as Frank Lloyd Wright might have been, he designed his house without guttering as it would spoil the aesthetic effect. I suppose that that was much more important than spoiling the foundations and the clothes of the people entering and leaving the property.

It wasn’t actually open when I arrived but I managed to blag my way in for a look around the garden

No-one can pass by Buffalo without going for a look at Niagara Falls and once more, Strawberry Moose was in luck as a Tourist Guide/Security Guard agreed to pose in the same photograph as His Nibs.

It’s all quite astonishing, this. All of these officials and dignitaries and so on agreeing to be seen with him. Maybe there is an underlying sense of humour in the USA after all and I have been missing it for all of these years.

The view from the Canada Side of the falls is even more impressive – well-worth the walk across the bridge to the other side of the river.

What was even more impressive was that parking for the whole day (had I decided to stay that long) was just $5:00, entry to the park was free, and the border crossing in and out of the USA was relatively painless. I wasn’t expecting anything like that.

If you have been following my adventures from previous voyages you will be well-aware that I have been extracting the urine from the United States over its self proclaimed status as “Land of the Free”, because everywhere I have ever been to that has any kind of importance, it has been “Please Prepare Your Admission Money”

It’s only right and proper that I record the events surrounding my visit to Niagara Falls.

At the head of the river, on Lake Ontario, is Fort Niagara. There’s a British fort on the other side of the river directly opposite and during the various revolutionary wars and so on, there have been a good few battles between the two sides.

There was also a major battle between the British and the French in 1759, and in the grounds was a German Prisoner-of-War camp from World War II

Something right across the lake caught my eye but I couldn’t make out what it was, so I photographed it at the fullest extension of the zoom lens in order to have a play with the image later.

And this is what I saw – it’s the city of Toronto – probably 30 miles or so across the lake and it’s astonishing what a really good camera and lens can capture in the right kind of weather conditions.

You can see that the weather has brightened up – and so have I by now.

Tonight, I’m now in a small town called Ontario, in Upper New York State. Tomorrow I’m going to stay on the south side of the St Lawrence as far as I can until the last bridge across (round about Quebec I reckon) and then head north to Labrador.

-7

Tuesday 5th October 2010 – SOUTHERN SHORE OF LAKE ERIE

This is my motel from last night.

It was rather out of my budget but

it was here
it was open
it had a room
it was nice and comfortable
it had a good situation right on the waterfront

and you can’t say fairer than that.

And remember years ago when we saw that lorry driving up the railway line and I thought that it was an optical illusion?

So here’s another one and you can see by the fittings underneath it that it’s not an optical illusuon and these lorries do actually exist. I had a chat to the workers – apparently they are rail welders and check the rails for cracks, which they weld up if they can, or signal for replacement if they can’t.

Lake Erie has a reputation of being the filthiest lake in the world, with all kind of industrial discharges into the water.

But that’s not all that is discharged into the lake, judging by this sign. And to think that there’s a beach resort just a couple of miles up the road. Not that the USA would care too much about that, I suppose.

This is the Vermillion Inland Waterways Museum, or some such name. It goes without saying that it was closed when Casey, Strawberry Moose and I visited. But then again, I wasn’t expecting anything else.

And Vermillion is the birthplace of Lester Allen Pelton who invested the “Pelton Wheel” type of water turbine. I had a quick look around but couldn’t see anything in the town to commemorate him.

The Vermillion Museum is situated in Ferry Road, which tells you such a lot about the history of the town, and it its fortune has always been based around the water.

Today, it’s famous for its marina and attracts thousands of water-borne tourists each year (who I bet haven’t read the notice in the harbour down the road at Sandusky). Nevertheless, it’s a nice pretty little place even in this kind of weather.

That’s Cleveland, Ohio, just down there. I was planning to park up and go for a little wander around but just after this photo I was engulfed in this most astonishing rainstorm the like of which I haven’t seen in ages.

That put paid to all of my plans – I wasn’t going to set foot out of the car in this kind of weather. I stayed put and carried on driving.

But one thing astonished me about Cleveland is that not only did it have buses, it had dedicated bus lanes too. Imagine that in the USA!

And that wasn’t all that surprised me about Cleveland either. Here on the corner of Lakeside Boulevard and East 315th Street is an Aldi. I had to go in for a look around.

And my conclusion? Well, the only resemblance that it bears to the European version of the shop is the sign on the shop front. For a start, the Bargain Section is total rubbish, something that would never be the case in a European Aldi, and no-one from Europe would ever recognise any of the products on sale here. The “German” potato salad bore no resemblance to any potato salad that any German Aldi has ever sold.

Oooohhhhh! Now take a look at this.

I’ve been musing to myself as I’ve been driving through Ohio that I haven’t seen any old cars around and that’s been something of a surprise. But here on the way out of Cleveland near Madison, I’ve encountered an old Rover SD1.

You don’t see any of these in the UK these days – they’ve all been broken for the V8 engines that people have fitted into Land Rovers, so no-one was more surprised than me to see this one looking comparatively fit and healthy in the USA. However did it manage to come here?

This is Ashtabula – one of the very few working harbours remaining on Lake Erie these days. All kinds of stuff – coal, gravel are shipped from here and it has the reputation of being one of the most polluted places on the lake – and that’s saying something!

Bob Dylan sang about it, Jack Kerouac wrote about it, it’s also been the site of one of the USA’s worst railway disasters, and the rail ferry that sailed from here across the lake to Canada sank just off-shore following a collision. It was 52 years old at the time.

From here, I cross into Pennsylvania having missed out on the fate that befell Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer (and, incidentally, Joseph Lewis, John Cleary, Thomas Grace, Alan Canfora, Dean Kahler, Douglas Wrentmore, James Russell, Robert Stamps and Donald MacKenzie, the suffering of whom is largely ignored by the media).

In fact, you can tell that we are elsewhere other than Ohio by the amount of rubbish and old cars lying around. And I don’t mean that pejoratively either, because I’d been making little notes to myself all along today’s journey about how unusually (and unacceptably) tidy everywhere in Ohio is – it’s no place for me.

I’m running on fumes looking for a petrol station (which I eventually find, manned … "personned" – ed … by someone from Swindon, Wiltshire) and looking for a motel, as the night is upon me. Eventually, the town of Erie comes up with something and so I settle myself in.

It’s heaving down with rain and I’m not going out.

Monday 4th October 2010 – ENTER THE DRAG … UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Monday today. everyone is back at work or back at University, and so it’s time for me to be moving on. I rescued Strawberry and prepared to enter the drag … errr … the Untied States.

And another 3-hour grilling too – it really annoyed me. It reminded me exactly of when I used to go to the Soviet Union – exactly the same grilling and exactly the same reason – “the interests of National Security”.

The USA spent 50 years trying to destroy Communism and then went to install exactly the same system of controlr there. I’m waiting for some high-powered American politician to admit that maybe the Soviets had a point. But I’m going to have to wait a long time. When was the last time that you met a frank and honest politician?

Firststop for any transport fan has to be the Michigan Central Railway Station in Detroit.

Built in 1913-14 a long way away from the city centre as a deliberate attempt to pull the development of the city down to that end, at its peak it handled over 200,000 people per day, by far the greater majority of whom came by the tram network.

But the Depression dealt the expansion of the city and also the tram network a fatal blow and passenger use melted away. On 6th January 1988 the last Amtrak train pulled out of the station and that was that.

When I arrived here, there was a copper standing outside talking to some people and so I asked him if it was ok to photograph it. After all, you never know. This is the paranoid nation called the United States of America.

I asked him what they were planning to do with the station, and he replied
nothing
So now we know.

But the Depression hasn’t yet finished with Detroit.

Frankly, with all of the industry collapsing or moving away, the city is dying. And it looks like it too. Everywhere that you go, buildings that aren’t demolished lie abandoned and looted and the place looks something like Fallujah after an American offensive (and nowhere have the Americans been more offensive than in Fallujah).

This is the view across Roosevelt Park from the station. And it was this photograph, as well as several others, exhibited elsewhere, that let to the epithet “ruins photography” being hurled at my work. Still, I’m not here to please everyone – I’m only intending to please myself.

But some of the citizens in Detroit have managed to maintain their sense of humour despite everything that the world has thrown at them.

Here’s a walking advert for an auto insurance company, and he was pleased to make the acquaintance of a fellow-traveller. The scene certainly brought a smile to the faces of many people going past and makes a change from ruins photography, doesn’t it?

I wasn’t long in Michigan. Just a little further down the road is the Ohio State Line and I stop to take a souvenir photoin order to celebrate our crossing.

This is now much more like rural USA, where I am hoping to be. I find urban areas so depressing, even affluent ones. But I’m not too sure about the 45mph speed limit. I hope that that is only a local arrangement.

All around the southern shore of Lake Erie I’ve seen loads of signs “say no to wind turbines” – all identical and all supplied by an organisation financed by the coal owners of the USA.

But I haven’t seen a single sign against the nuclear reactor just here at Oak Harbor.

And that’s so surprising too seeing as in 2002 a large corrosion hole was discovered in the reactor head. The plant was closed down for two years “for maintenance” and the owners were fined a total of $33 million.

I think that that would worry me much more than a couple of windfarms. I just don’t understand the mentality of Americans who are so “suckered in” by corporate business-speak.

This is the County Court House in Port Clinton, a beautiful little lakeside town on the shore of Lake Erie (or it would be beautiful if there weren’t a suspect nuclear reactor just down the road)

What impressed me about the Court House is that it’s been extended (the USA being what it is, it’s hardly surprising) and although you can see the join, they’ve built it in stone, and matching stone at that.

They’ve clearly done their best, which is more than you can say for the UK. had this been on the other side of the Atlantic, a classic building such as this would have been totally disfigured by a glass-and-concrete monstrosity.

But while I was taking this photo a lorry clattered over the railway line behind me. I couldn’t believe it at first – thought that I was seeing things. I’ll have to look into that.

This is Marblehead lighthouse, with a beautiful view of the amusement park at Cedar Point which I have managed to avoid.

It also has a beautiful view of the city of Sandusky, which I have also managed to avoid, and they say that from the top of the lighthouse on a good day, you can see the tall buildings of the city of Cleveland 75 miles away, although why they think that that might be a selling point for tourists I really have no idea.

My road in the gathering gloom brings me into the town of Marblehead and its famous quarry, and overhead conveyor that takes the crushed limestone all the way down to the harbour, where it’s loaded into lakers and shipped off to wherever.

There’s only one motel around here and it’s quite pricey, but it’s too late to go to look for anywhere else that might be more suitable to my budget.

Mind you, it’s well-appointed and comfortable, and good value for money if I could afford it, and the view out of my front door is probably worth a couple of extra quid anyway.

In order to bring my buget a little under control, I had bean burritos for tea. It’s a long time since I had them – New Bern, North Carolina, in 2005 as it happens. And they were just as nice and tasty as I remember them too and filling.

I ordered two and with some chips and a salad from Arby’s and a huge mug of raspberry iced tea it was delicious. And it filled me up.

-2

Friday 1st October 2010 – I HAD A DAY OUT TODAY

The aim was to go to see Lake St Clair, the “forgotten lake” of the Great Lakes network. But I didn’t get far

I mentioned yesterday that the whole of this area seems to be littered with interesting cars from a bygone era, most of them awaiting some care and attention. This car, dating from the early 1930s I reckon (not that I would know) that I found in Deerbrook was in surprisingly good condition for an unrestored model.

I saw dozens like this – spoilt for choice.

On the shores of the Lake, making maximum use of the telephoto lens, I can give you all a good view of the city of Detroit, probably 15 miles away across the water.

And you can tell the kind of weather that we were having, just by looking at the waves. There was quite a vicious wind blowing around here. No wonder that wind turbines are so popular in Ontario, although I bet that there won’t be so many in the USA. No businessman there can control the supply of wind.

I’ve found the River Thames – but not the one in London (UK, not Ontario) but the one that flows into Lake St Clair. and much to my excitement (I’m funny that way) it has a lighthouse too.

The Thames River lighthouse here in the town of Lakeshore dates from about 1838 (that’s the date that the first keeper was appointed) with a grant of £1000 from the Government of Upper Canada.

Its claim to fame was that the family that supplied the keepers of the lighthouse from its inception until as recently as 1950 claimed direct descent from Jacques Cartier.

The whole area is now classed as a Conservation Area, and you can see why from this photo because it really was a pleasant place to be, especially in the sun.

And while I was walking around, admiring the view of the lighthouse and the lake, I fell in with a fisherman. He told me that this is one of the best places in the world to catch muskies, which apparently are fish that bear a close resemblance to pike.

He (the fisherman, not the fish) comes from Hamilton – that’s Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scotland, not Hamilton Ontario, although you never would have guessed judging by his accent.

My journey took me to the small town of Wallaceburg. I can’t go any further than this unfortunately as the Great Satan is just up the road and I shall be visiting here in a couple of days time.

Wallaceburg was formerly a major industrial centre, renowned for its glass, and was also the birthplace of what became more famous as the Lee-Enfield rifle.

The story goes that the industry here in the town and the agriculture of the neighbouring rural area were so important that lakers struggled all the way up the Sydenham River to here in order to load up.

Beautiful as views of the town might be, it’s only skin-deep because the southern shore of the river is nothing like the previous photo. It’s not always a railway line that divides the poor from the rich, despite whatever Tracy Chapman might have to say on the subject.

But then Wallaceburg is no longer master of its own budget, having been absorbed into the the municipality of Chatham-Dover.

I mentioned the agricultural produce of the area. Heading back to Windsor down the main highway, I drove through the Southern Ontario prairie.

It’s flat, as flat as the eye can see for miles around in all directions with not a single hill to relieve the monotony. The roads are totally straight and run for miles, and you are just surrounded by corn.

But while I was busy doing something else, I actually saw a diesel train and even more surprising, it was pulling four or five passenger carriages. Now as I was busy I didn’t get the chance to photograph it but the fact of it being a passenger train was totally surprising.

There are two railway lines into Windsor by the way, one from the Canadian Pacific and the other from the Canadian National. Now I could understand that if they served different townships on their way but they run parallel to each other just a mile or two apart which seems a strange thing to me – it’s just duplicating resources and bringing no benefits to anyone.

I also encountered the Taj Mahal – in actual fact the Gurdwara Khalsa Prakash Sikh temple somewhere between Tecumseh and Windsor.

There’s quite a large Sikh community in Canada, about 1.5% of the population, and like most non-white populations in North America they have suffered considerable discrimination, particularly in the early years of their arrival 100 or so years ago.

Immigration received a further impetus in the 1980s as Canada welcomed Sikhs fleeing from persecution in India, but this has led to a number of “incidents” taking place between the Asian communities in Canada, culminating in the attack on Air India Flight 182, widely credited to Sikh extremists.

But now I’m back in Windsor, in a really delightful evening. The weather is beautiful, very windy but hardly a cloud in the sky. I’ve been lucky with the weather so far but the locals think that it might break in a few days.

Tomorrow, depending on what time I wake up, I’ll go for another wander around. I’ve seen a steam locomotive on a plinth and that must be worth a photo. Tomorrow night Katherine and I are out a-dining. Doubtless Strawberry Moose will want to come too.

-2

Wednesday 29th September 2010 part II – WELL, HERE I AM.

In a motel on the edge of the town of Kitchener in Ontario. $62 plus taxes and you don’t get much for your money.

But having been into the city, tried unsuccessfully to withdraw cash at three banks with three different bank cards and missing my way back to the motorway, I was ready for a good sleep. Mainly because I hadn’t had one on the plane.

Some blasted infant started to scream the moment the plane took off from Zurich and didn’t stop until we landed at Toronto. And at one time it was screaming so much that it gave itself a nosebleed. I was thoroughly fed up with that.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been up, showered, dressed and breakfasted before 08:00 – I’ll tell you that. And up before the alarm as well. Well, breakfasted after a fashion with the rest of the biscuits from my bag – and no coffee either. With the prices that they were charging I’d need a mortgage for that.

And on the airport shuttle bus some American got on board with two of the biggest suitcases I had ever seen, even bigger than mine – while his wife stood and watched him. I couldn’t resist it –
“Wouldn’t it have been easier just to buy the kids a ticket?” I asked him.

And as the bus pulled in to Charles de Gaulle Terminal 2 his wife stood and watched as he struggled one of the suitcases off. And he had to hurry to take the second one off before the bus pulled off to the next terminal. If she had been my wife she would have had a smack in the mouth by now. It wasn’t so much the standing and watching that did it for me – she may well have been disabled or something, you can never tell, but it was the way that she was harassing him while he was trying to do it.

Once inside the airport we are subjected to what can only be called "Skyway Robbery". I’d already lost some dosh in a vending machine at the entrance and it took me ages of wandering around the concourse before I found some nice friendly woman with a coffee trolley who sold me a nice cup of hot steaming strong coffee for a very respectable €1:70. Yes, it can be done, but you need to persevere.

The final words that I gave to Strawberry Moose
before we parted were
“Are you going to be all right, stowed away in the suitcase?”
“Just bung me a bottle of whisky” he said “and I’ll be absolutely fine”
“Badger off!” I exclaimed. “I know you! We won’t be halfway across the Atlantic before you start singing bawdy songs”
“Once we’are halfway over the Atlantic it won’t really matter. They aren’t going to stop in mid-air to search the baggage now, are they?”

He did ask me though if we were flying by Lear Jet but I did explain that it’s spelt L-E-A-R.And in any case, it was a nice, comfortable Airbus 320 that took us over to Zurich.

My only complaint was that there was nothing for me to eat. somehow my request for a vegan meal doesn’t apply to snacks served on short-haul flights.

They said that out plane from Zurich to Toronto was a Boeing 777. Mnd you, it looked more like a 767 to me but I suppose that they ought to know.

And as we flew over Greenland I had my vegan meal. Couscous and roasted vegetables. Not as nice as Liz’s but then again, nothing is.

But you missed all of the excitement. When we were at about 20,000 feet we had the safety announcement. And one of the things that they said was “if you are sitting by an emergency door you must be able to open it”. And I didn’t see the point of that – they didn’t half yell at me when I tried.

As well as that, we had another exciting incident. I always understood that there had to be a good vertical and horizontal clearance between two planes on the same course ever since those two airliners collided over the Grand Canyon years ago.

But there’s not much in the way of separation between us and this Thomas Cook flight that we overtook in mid-Atlantic.

But that’s enough of that. I remained inconspicuous for the rest of the flight with my head down. And at least the skriking infant drowned out the bawdy songs coming from the hold.

We made it in one piece as far as Toronto where the screaming brat finally shut up. I’d made the most of the journey by watching a couple of Hopalong Cassidy films and the new Robin Hood. At least the headphones kept out the screaming.

And the queue into the country was miles long. Half a dozen flights from Europe had come in at the same time as, as usual, the airport wasn’t prepared for them

But good fortune followed me to the car hire place.

They didn’t have a compact car so they offered me an upgrade. After much negotiation we settled on a Chrysler PT Cruiser. Ive always loved these vehicles, ever since they first came out. They reminded me very much of the Ford Anglias and Prefects that my father had when we were kids. And it’s been a lifetime ambition to drive on. So I was more-than-happy with this.

And so in my Chrysler PT Cruiser which I have named Casey (check his numberplate) Strawberry Moose and I head off into the sunset – going west you might well say, along the motorway in the general direction of Windsor, Ontario.

I’m looking for a cash point and then I’ll be looking for a motel. I won’t be doing all of the trip tonight. I’m thoroughly exhausted after the events of today.

-1

Sunday 19th September 2010 – What do you make of this?

I went to Giat for the footy this afternoon and as I was a little early I went for a wander around the town.

Of course it wasn’t long before I found myself at the railway station – on the line between Montlucon and Eygurande (the junction with the line from Clermont-Ferrand to Bordeaux). Even though the line is still listed as being open, no trains run and the service is assured by an express bus, but I was here to look at the station.

And if as by pure chance I noticed this railway sleeper just here. – the second (and also the third) up from the bottom. The rails are firmly attached to the sleepers of course, and set at “standard gauge” – which is 4’8½”.

But if you look closely you can see other bolt holes and impressions in the wood where other chairs have sat on the sleepers at one time. And although I didn’t have a measure with me, a quick and rough estimation put the centre of these chairs, where the rails might be, at about 1 metre apart.

1 metre rings a bell of course – it’s our old friend the Ligne Economique up in the Allier and on a couple of occasions the Ligne Economique shared a set of sleepers and a common track bed with the standard gauge lines, especially in bay platforms at shared railway stations. And when the Ligne Economique closed down, the lines in these bay platforms were for the most part ripped up. So this has got me wondering if the sleepers from the ripped-up bay platforms were put into store for reuse.

The football at Giat was a real “game of two halves”. In the first period Pionsat swarmed all over the opposition. They scored 2 and they could have had 20 without too much effort.

But at half-time they went to sleep and in the second half Condat-Giat-Voingt went on the attack. They pulled one back and weren’t all that far from getting a second. The transformation was remarkable.

After the game I had to go to Terry’s to bleed the fuel system on the tractor. The quickest route between Giat and Terry’s passes through Pontaumur where I refereed last weekend so I had to stop and put on some dark glasses and a false beard.

We were ages trying to bleed the fuel system and it wasn’t working at all. There was clearly something I missed so I asked Terry to look on the internet under “bleeding diesel”. He replied that we may as well look under “f*cking petrol” and we would still have the same result. But we eventually solved it. The diesel was filthy and it seemed that when the tank ran dry the level of dust and scum floating on the top had settled down and blocked the top of the tap inside the tank. Draining the diesel (mostly all over me) and dismantling the tap and we could clean everything out. Once we’d cleaned it and bled it (and it worked this time) we got it running. And I was paid in food – something that is always welcome.

But on the way to Liz and Terry’s Strawberry Moose and I saw a deer. As it was a female, His Nibs wanted to chase it but I had to tell him … “if you are anything round here you are a stag – S-T-A-G – the second letter is not an H.

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Tuesday 10th August 2010 – Awwwwwwww Bambi!

Keen readers of my outpourings will know that I have something of an interest in the local wildlfe. There’s such a lot of it about of course, and examples thereof feature in these pages at regular intervals.

You might remember the fox that I featured on here a week or two ago, but anyway here’s a deer that I noticed down across the fields about 400 metres away as I was tidying up after finishing work this evening.

I thought at first that it might be Bambi but judging by those antlers, maybe not and he would probably be quite offended at the thought. He’s maybe come to challenge Strawberry Moose
for possession of the local herd but Strawberry Moose would soon see him off.

Anyway, he’s cute (I hope that it’s a “he” anyway) and I’m glad that I have a high-quality lens on the new Nikon D5000. He certainly merits a photograph or two on my blog.

In other news, we are making progress on the roof of this lean-to.

The front part of the wall has all been built up level, inside and outside, and we’ve put the horizontal wooden beam in position, embedding it into the cement and packing behind it with stones and cement.

The wooden beam is important because first of all it gives us a nice straight level and secondly, we’ll be fixing chevrons and laths to it in the long run so it needs to be good.

We have also been making good progress with the inner lining of the far wall. We are lining it in breeze blocks, and you can see the slope that we are starting to put into it. When the breeze blocks are all in place we’ll be putting a cladding of stones on the outside.

Terry and Simon have been doing the masonry work and I’ve been spending most of the day mixing the cement and doing all of the fetching and carrying.

It’s wearing me out but it’s clearly doing me some good. It’s been a long time since I felt as exhausted and I’m going to bed just now before I fall …..

ZZZZZZZZZZ

-2

EPIC HALL

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