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Thursday 6th September 2018 – DESPITE MY …

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

… rather late night last night looking at the midnight sun, I was still awake before the alarm went off. And much to my surprise, I find that I’m starting to rely on this and include it in my timetable, and that’s something that will never do because in the long run it’s all going to end in tears.

However, I did stay in bed until the alarm went off, and then I was straight out and on deck with the crowds who were also up there early. Our captain had managed to find the pack-ice. My fellow-voyagers were all trying to see the wildlife but as for me, it’s not my thing at all, unless it’s a polar bear of course.

I’m much more interested in the landscape and the historical aspect of it all. But the land was rather far away and swathed in fog, and we’ve yet to touch on the historical aspect, at least from my own point of view.

It was at this point that I realised that I hadn’t had my medication and so I went back down to my cabin.

Breakfast was the usual. Bran flakes with raisins and fruit, with toast, coffee and orange juice. And then I made an appointment to see the Cruise Director about an issue that has suddenly developed.

I was going to add “unexpectedly” but regular readers of this rubbish that I write will recall the fact that the only thing unexpected about all of this is that it’s taken so long for me to get myself into trouble.

After this, I’ve been keeping a low profile. After all, it’s not like me to court controversy, is it? After all, Henry Hudson was cast adrift by his colleagues and subsequently lost on an Arctic voyage after one such confrontation.

Back on the ice and watching the wildlife. At least – they were. And later we were all given a lecture on bird-watching. I had plenty of those from Nerina when I was married, as you can imagine. But again, I wasn’t all that interested. The only birds that I am likely to be interested in watching aren’t likely to be found in the Lancaster Sound.

Later, there was a talk on navigating the North-West Passage. I was really looking forward to this but once again, I was confounded. Rather than a discussion on McClure and Franklin, with maybe Amundsen thrown in for good measure, we had someone else from the staff going on an ego-trip about how he once sailed around the passage in a catamaran.

I really don’t know where they find these people. But the ordinary punters quite like it. So I suppose that we have to cater for them. After all, they are in the majority.

But I’m not here to listen to that, as you know. I’m all out to hear how the ancient explorers did it, and then to go out and do it with them.

We took a diversion up Burnett Inlet to have a look at what wildlife we might see up there.

Someone saw a few walruses, and, well, I suppose that they were once I magnified the image.

Someone else saw a dozen or so musk-oxen on the slope leading up to the glacier. And all that I can say is that I’ll have to take their word for that.

I managed to see the seal though. So at least that’s something. It would have been nice to see a polar bear stalking him but I suppose that that’s a luxury I’ll have to do without.

We settled down for lunch but we weren’t there long. The cry went up “beluga whales on the port bow” so we had another “Gold Strike at Bear Creek” moment as everyone dashed outside.

Quite frankly, I wouldn’t recognise a beluga whale if I were to trip over one on my doorstep, so I didn’t really know what I was shooting at. But later on and the end of the evening, several things that I had photographed that I thought were ice – floes are in fact the aforementioned. So how about that?

Of course, Vera Lynn would have no such difficulty. As everyone knows, she was once a cook on a whaler up her, and the legendary cry from the crew of her boat of “Whale Meat Again!” still echoes out across the icebergs… "are you sure about this?" – ed.

As we exited the Inlet, I was convinced that I saw something black on the horizon that I was convinced was a ship. No-one else could see it, even with binoculars, and were of the opinion that I was hallucinating.

But anyway I took a photo of it and with a little judicial “crop and enlarge” I could certainly see something.

And when I enlarged it even more, I’m even more convinced that it’s another ship.

Back to lunch, and I suddenly came over all peculiar. I’d noticed yesterday evening that I was having a shaking fit which I put down to something that I must have eaten, but it certainly erupted while I was trying to finish my lunch. It’s not very often that I have to walk out on a meal but I did today.

Later on we went into Stratton Inlet, and the cry went up “walruses on the starboard bow” so yet another “Gold Strike At Bear Creek” moment as everyone dashed upstairs.

This time I was lucky and actually managed to see them. And I’m glad that I did too, because there were a couple of dozen of them – dominant males, females, and loads of pups splashing around in the water.

There were several workshops going on later in the afternoon. I was torn between the Geography of the North West Passage or the Camera demonstration and lecture, and chose the latter.

To be honest I didn’t really learn much, except that my equipment is total garbage and my technique is even worse. Seeing other people’s gear and the output that they can obtain makes me want to delete all of mine and send them to the recycle bin?

I’m totally demoralised.

The day’s ice report hadn’t come in and so we all went for a sail in the zodiacs. I had the camera and the zoom lens with me and took a few pics, a couple of which came out okay, but still not good enough for what I want.

When we arrived, we were told the bad news. The channel ahead is blocked and we need to retreat to go around another way.

And this is really bad news for me because the four places that I had wanted to see had now all been by-passed. We aren’t going to reach a single one. I’m now totally inconsolable. I may as well get off at the next stop and fly back home for all the good that this trip has done me.

I was reminded of a quote from a certain Lieutenant Skead who accompanied Collinson on his leisurely stroll around the fringes of the ice back in the 1850s. He said An ordinary yachtsman might have taken his craft (there) and his wife and daughters to boot. I’m afraid to think of what we shall do if we meet with difficulty

However, a little bit of research did tell me that in November 2015 our captain had almost sunk the ship in the Antarctic after a rather injudicious encounter with an ice-floe and this had cost the company a considerable amount of money and prestige.

It’s quite apparent therefore that he’s going to be even more cautious whenever he encounters any ice, and that can only be a disastrous thing from our point of view.

All afternoon, I’d been trying to have a crash out as this illness slowly takes hold again. But each time I’ve gone to lie down, and there were dozens of such moments, something else has come up to disturb me. And so it was this evening as I was invited to sit at the top table.

Everyone is supposed to be dressed to impress but badger that for a game of soldiers. I’m here with three tee-shirts, two fleeces, two pairs of trousers and several undies – washing them in the shower as I go along.

Talking of washing clothes, I’d had another bad attack out there on the way back to the ship in the zodiac. Still quite shaky, I went back to my cabin and had a nice hot shower and a clothes-washing session.

They say that you aren’t allowed to wash your clothes yourself, but the small print says quite clearly “with detergent”. I’m using the soap provided in the dispenser. That will keep my clothes going for quite a while.

After tea I came back and started to work on my photos and to write up my notes – constantly being distracted by thing happening outside, like a glorious sunset, a rising crescent moon as thin as a rake and, despite what everyone has been saying, another ship on the far shore.

Not to mention a wonderful Arctic daylight at midnight
“A wonderful Arctic daylight at midnight?”
“I told you not to mention that!”

And there’s already a record that has been chosen that sums up my currently manic-depressive mood. For the last few days I’ve had Colosseum Live going round and round in an endless loop, especially “Skellington” and “Lost Angeles” which somehow seem to be quite appropriate right now.

There’s one bit in “Skellington” about “Make damn sure your reflection can look you in the eye”. Hmmmmm.Quite!

And I’m going to check the binnacle in a moment because there’s something bizarre going on with the way that the ship has been manoeuvring in the last half-hour or so.

Thursday 30th August 2018 – I WISH …

… that banks would stop employing cashiers who wear low-cut tee-shirts. When this one today leant over the counter to give me my US dollars in a fashion so that we could count them together, I was totally distracted and I have no idea how much she gave me.

It’s definitely bad for my health, all of this.

Last night was slightly better. I slept all the way through until the racket from the fridge and the air-conditioning awoke me at about 04:00. But I soon went back to sleep until the alarms went off.

Breakfast for some reason didn’t start to be served until 08:00 so I had plenty of time to attack the notes from yesterday, and I’d even finished by the time that they opened the dining room, which is always encouraging.

Afterwards, I had a shower and washed my clothes from yesterday. I’ll be washing myself away at this rate if it keeps on like this.

A little later, I went out into town, stopping off for a bottle of water and to explore the shopping mall just down the road.

And why is shopping in North America so boring? Well, when you’ve seen one bunch of shops, you’ve seen a mall.

I’ll get my coat.

Down the road at the foot of the hill by the Parc Viger is this beautiful building.

Dating from the early years of the 20th Century, it was formerly the Montreal Technical School but today it’s the BANQ – the Bibiliothèque and Archives National de Québec.

I’ve taken shelter there from the rain once a few years ago, but I’ve never actually visited it. However, it is my destination for this morning.

While you admire one of the most beautiful interiors that I have ever seen, let me tell you my story.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago I wrote a pile of stuff about the Chemin du Roy, the road that was built by Pierre Robineau de Bécancour and Jean Eustache Lanouiller in he early 18th Century to link Montréal and Québec

I wrote at the time that I would one day have to visit the National Archives to find the original maps of the route, because much has been lost in the subsequent 300 years.

So here I am.

But I’m in for a massive disappointment.

There are indeed record of the route, that’s for sure. But they are held at the archives site in Québec, not Montreal. So I need to go there instead.

And where are the BANQ archives in Québec? Why, on the campus at the University of Laval of course.

Ring any bells?

But all is not lost. It wasn’t a total waste of time.

I’ve been wondering for years about the track arrangements at the Gare Viger – how the platforms were actually laid out in relation to the buildings, and here I struck gold.

On the wall was an exhibition of the area, and one of the exhibits was a map of the area 100 years or so ago which showed everything that I wanted to know.

The station was subsequently modernised and extended, and this meant that the track layout needed to be changed.

And while I wasn’t able to see a plan of how the station layout was configured afterwards, there was a handy aerial photograph hanging on the wall that showed at least some of the train sheds.

So I might not be any the wiser, but I’m certainly better-informed.

The Gare Viger dates from the turn of the 20th Century. But before this, there was an earlier Canadian Pacific railway station in the eastern side of the city – the Gare Dalhousie.

It was from here that the first trans-continental train set out in 1886 (and we’ve all noticed that, once again, the Maritime Provinces have been totally ignored by the official Canadian History. According to them, there’s nothing except eskimoes and indians east of Montreal and they don’t count for anything)

After the opening of the Gare Viger it became a freight depot and then an industrial warehouse. However it’s recently undergone a programme of renovation and they have done a good job here.

It’s now a circus school, and seeing as it was formerly a Canadian Pacific building, that is quite appropriate. Clowns should feel right at home here.

Down on the docks Oakglen is still there, as we might expect, but we have another bulk carrier down at the far end.

She’s the Gullwing, a Maltese bulk-carrier of 39000 tonnes and was built in 2011, although you might not think it.

She’s come in from Quebec after an exhausting tour around the Pacific, and were I going to visit my friend Rhys I would hop aboard because according to the port authorities her next stop is Charleston in South Carolina.

Also in the far end of the harbour was a huge MSC container ship.

No chance of reading its name from here unfortunately but according to the port records, there’s an MSC Alyssa in port and she seems to fit the bill.

She’s of 61500 tonnes and has arrived from Liverpool. And were I to want to go back to Leuven for my next hospital appointment I would immediately leap aboard, because her next port of call is Antwerp.

The brats still aren’t back at school yet in Montreal, and so the children’s entertainment is in full swing.

I was impressed by the pirate ships, and even more impressed by the fact that the kids were being allowed to swing on ropes and slide down zip wires and all of that.

Can you imagine that in the stupid nanny-state UK where the ridiculous Health and Safety rules are such that you even need a fire safety certificate to wave a flag at a football match.

But I haven’t come here to waste my time.

I had it on good authority that there was a cruise ship in town ready to do a voyage down the St Lawrence and the Eastern seaboard of the USA, and so I went for a look.

And here we have the Seabourn Quest, all 32,500 tonnes of her and built as recently as 2011, which is quite modern for a cruise ship. We’ve seen some thoroughly ancient and disreputable ones in our time.

Unfortunately the quay was heavily guarded so if Strawberry Moose and I want to nip aboard, we’d have to buy some tickets.

The little tender alongside her is the Juno Marie.

She’s officially described as a tanker, and being small like this, her task is very likely to be to fuel up the larger ships in the docks as they arrive so that they are ready to set sail as quickly as possible.

There are a few of these little tankers in port and we’ve seen at least one of them before.

When I was here last October I’d finally managed to make it to the real centre of the city where it all was happening back in the 17th Century but I didn’t have time to go far.

One of the places that I hadn’t seen was the old Ursuline convent, or what remains of it.

This organisation of the “Grey Nuns” was founded here in Montreal in 1737 by Marguerite d’Youville and they ended up over time with quite an impressive range of buildings here.

Their claim to fame is that they were the first female religious organisation to undertake the full range of social and charitable aims.

There had been many people engaged in these tasks before, and we’ve talked in the past about people like Marguerite Bourgeoys.

But they just had their little niche of interest, not the whole range.

There was a large hospital on the site too, as well as a very large and impressive church, if the old drawings are anything to go by.

But as the city expanded northwards and eastwards away from the river, and as the port of Montreal expanded along the banks, it was deemed necessary to make a new road network connecting the two.

And so the Ursulines had to go, and so did some of their buildings.

Luckily, not all was demolished. There are still some remains of the impressive buildings that are now classed as Historical Monuments.

And if you look very carefully in the roadway, you’ll see lines of granite setts – there are a couple in the photo here.

When they were doing some roadworks a while ago they came across the foundations of the old walls that had been demolished. They have marked them out on the road with the granite setts so that you can see the extent of the former buildings

As I was making my way round to the Place d’Youville I noticed this building in the distance.

Whilst the building itself is impressive, the exciting thing about it is that over the door is carved the legend “Grand Trunk”.

This was one of the earliest of the main-line railway companies that was involved in the “railway wars” in Canada at the end of the 19th Century.

This was their magnificent Head Office in the Rue McGill, built 1899-1902.

Unfortunately it didn’t last long. The Grand Trunk was one of the biggest losers in the Railway War and it was coming back from a very unsuccessful fund-raising trip in Europe in 1912 that its president, Charles Hays, was drowned on the Titanic.

The company quickly went bankrupt and was taken over by the Government, forming part of the Canadian National rail network.

Montreal these days is basically a very large island, but back in the 16th Century it was several small ones.

The original settlement was on a small island bounded by the St Lawrence River and the Riviere St Pierre.

That latter river was eventually built over, and today, it’s the Place d’Youville, named for our friend Marguerite.

When we were here in October last year, you will remember seeing the excavations that were taking place just here.

This was the site of the city’s first indoor covered market which later became the Parliament Building for the country.

However the building was destroyed in 1849 in the riots that followed the passing of an Act emancipating the rebels of the 1830s and was never rebuilt. The Government of Canada moved elsewhere, much to the chagrin of the Québecois.

A fire station was erected here in 1903 – 54 years too late to save the Parliament building unfortunately.

Today the fire brigade has moved elsewhere and the building is now a museum. I would have liked to have gone for a look around but I was rather pushed for time.

I still have quite a lot to do today and it’s late.

While I was standing by the side of the road taking photographs, I was interrupted by a street washer.

Mind you, he didn’t let me interrupt him, and carried on with whatever he was doing.

As a result, not only did I have a complimentary shoe-wash I had a complimentary ankle wash too and that certainly different. And it wasn’t just me either. Several other passers-by were in the same boat.

Further interruptions were the order of the day too.

While I was a-wandering a little further on (which is rather better than walking by St Paul’s), I heard the familiar wail of a diesel locomotive siren in the distance so I legged it rather rapidly down the street.

Not rapidly enough, as it happens. I was defeated by the pair of locomotives, 4707 and his friend, disappearing into the distance down towards the dock.

And when I return home and have access to myJane’s Train Recognition Guide I’ll tell you all about them.

Instead, I went back to the Place d’Youville and to photograph the stele. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last year when I was here it was all fenced off and it was impossible to take a proper photo.

So having done that, Bane of Britain wandered away from the site, without actually going over there to read the plaque to discover what it says.

I really don’t know why you lot pay me, honestly I don’t.

You DO pay me, don’t you? All you need to do is to click on one of the links at the side and make your next order from Amazon that way. I receive a small commission on your orders, but it costs you nothing at all.

I’m not sure at all what was going on here.

There I was, standing on the edge of the kerb and three or four fire engines pulled up, one after the other. Their blue and red flashing lights blazing away.

They performed some kind of danse macabre in the street and I’ve no idea why. There was nothing like any emergency that I could see in the vicinity and they didn’t seem to be in too much hurry.

I turned my attention to the building that I had come here to see – the old Customs House.

Ideally situated at the exit to the harbour, nothing could come into port without paying the appropriate duty to the Government and this was where they did it.

The Customs people aren’t there now- they’ve moved on down the road into a new modern building that is 10timesasbig, even though trade in the port has declined.

By now, my stomach was thinking that my throat had been cut and I needed to organise some food.

Not round here though as I still had some important things to do.

So onto the Metro at Victoria-OACI and off to Namur (the Metro station, not the town in Belgium) and the big Walmart there. But leaving the metro station was really difficult. The way that the doors are positioned there was a howling gale every time someone opened one of them and it was something of a struggle to pass through.

It all seems to have changed there. New buildings and the like and I couldn’t at first get my bearings. But there’s a Subway at the bottom end of the shopping complex so I installed myself there.

The restaurant next door had a free wifi service so I was able to patch in there and pick up the news.

It was a long hike to Walmart from there – longer than I remember it being – and it was something of a disappointment when I arrived. It seems to me that there are fewer and fewer items on the shelves these days and the place is looking rather untidy.

There weren’t all that many customers there either and I’ve no idea why.

There wasn’t as much choice as I was hoping but I managed eventually to kit myself out with the remainder of the articles that I need. Whether it’s all suitable I really don’t know, but I can’t do any better than this.

But here’s a shop that I hadn’t seen before, even though the staff tell me that they have been here for four years.

It’s called the Bulk Barn and it’s very reminiscent of the old “Weigh and Save” shops that we had in the UK in the late 70s and 80s.

And I’ll make a note of this place because they had everything in there that I could possibly use, including dehydrated vegetables for travelling purposes.

I’ll have to check to see if there are any of these places anywhere else on my route around Canada in the future.

By now it was rush hour and time for me to be heading off.

I was lucky that I was on the train because had I been in a car I would probably still be there now judging by the amount of traffic on the Boulevard Decarie.

Total gridlock and that’s the kind of thing that makes me glad that I don’t live in a city these days. How would I cope with all of this.

Back at my hotel I organised my suitcase yet again to take into account my recent purchases. This suitcase is becoming rather uncomfortably full.

There was some work that needed to be done, so I caught up with that, and then decided to go out for tea.

I walked the entire length of the rue St Catherine Est from my hotel almost all the way down to the bridge and I was not alone.

Apparently the students from McGill University are having their induction week this week and it’s party, party, party. Hordes of them freaking out all over the place.

It made me feel quite old to watch them. These days they don’t look anything like 18 year-olds at all and that’s all very confusing.

But the big surprise for me was the pizza place that was advertising vegan pizzas – yes, vegan pizzas! I’ve never ever seen vegan pizzas advertised in a mainstream pizza place before so I went in to give the place some support.

And delicious it was too.

That was me organised (such as I can be) for the day. I retreated to my hotel and decided to have an early night. I need it too after all of this.

Saturday 25th August 2018 – HIS NIBS …

… is complaining again.

I’ve been packing my suitcase and it’s almost all complete now except for the things that I have forgotten. And much to my surprise the weight of the suitcase is only 13kg and there seems to be nothing at like there usually is in there.

So I’m not quite sure why he’s getting all upset. At least I’ve remembered to take him and he’s not been forgotten at home, like when I went to Africa.

Just for a change I’d had a good night’s sleep, right the way through to when the alarms went off. And I must have gone back to sleep afterwards because it was 07:30 when I finally came round.

After the usual morning routine I started with the serious tidying up. This involved picking up all of the rubbish off the floor, the table and the worktop, cleaning the latter two objects and vacuuming the floor. No shopping today!

Of course, these days I can only work in short bursts and taking a rest in between, and while I was resting I’ve done a serious back-up of the laptop. Kt’e all stored up on one of the hard drives on the top shelf.

Furthermore, I’ve copied all of the files onto the little laptop that I take with me on my travels, so that’s up-to-date too.

Lunch was on the wall again and two lizards came to join me while I sitting was there.

Although it was quite cold out there, the sky was really clear and you could see for miles.

And so, armed with the Nikon 1 and its zoom/telephoto lens, I went round to the other side of the promontory to see what the Ile de Chausey was up to.

That wasn’t the best of it either.

Out on the horizon the Channel Islands – or Jersey anyway – were standing out really well today.

With the lens and the camera the photo came out really well. You wouldn’t think that it was 54 kilometres away.

The results were so impressive that I could cut out a bit of the image, blow it up (which I can do even today despite modern anti-terrorism legislation) and enhance it to see what comes out.

And I don’t think that you’ll ever see St Helier as good as this, especially with the equipment that I can muster up.

Like I said – it’s 54 kilometres away

Back here I carried on with the housework and so on, and on my way out to the football I washed the floor behind me so that it would be dry when I came back.

Granville were playing C-Chartres Football today, and we had a crowd of about 750 to watch the match in the lovely weather.

It was an exciting match today. The Chartres team was better-organised but the Granville team played some really good football – one 15-minute spell midway through the first half was particularly impressive.

But the problem is that despite the beautiful football, Granville don’t have the strikers to turn it all into goals. And with the Chartres team being much better-organised and far more … errr … streetwise, it was no surprise to anyone that they eventually went into the lead.

5 minutes of injury time provoked a frenetic finish. Granville finally did manage to score an equaliser, the Granville keeper was sent off for punching an opponent, and the entire Chartres technical team was sent to the stands.

But 1-1 was the correct result, although it could have been so much better for Granville if only they could find a striker from somewhere.

It was a pleasant walk back from the football.

And the rue des Juifs – the road up to here – was closed again to traffic with street entertainment and all that kind of thing going on.

It’s something of a shame that I don’t have time to enjoy it, but I have far too much to do right now.

But that’s not all the excitement going on this evening.

There’s still plenty going on out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel. We have Marité still out there entertaining the crowds

There are a couple of other sailing boats out there too, but I don’t know which ones they are.

For tea I used the last pizza base, and while my pizza was cooking I had a shower and then put the washing machine on a cycle. The pizza didn’t work very well through. The pizza base had been in the bottom of the fridge and it had been waterlogged so it didn’t unroll as well as it should. And then it took much longer to cook.

So having done some more work here, I’m redy for bed. I’m hitting the road early tomorrow.

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Saturday 18th August 2018 – THEY SELL …

… almost everything in LIDL these days, don’t they?

I’m not quite sure what the point is of it, but it’s here all the same.

I was far more interested in the grapes, at €1:99 per kilo. And yet another load of those disappeared into my shopping bag this morning. I need to stock up while the stocking is good.

I slept right through again until the alarm went off, but seeing as I had something of a late night it wasn’t really as good as it sounds.

An early start to the day followed by an early shower, and then an early trip to the shops before the grockles could get there. And quite right too. I was actually there before 09:00 and the place was fairly empty, quite a surprise for a Saturday.

My bill in there wasn’t all that excessive because I’m not buying too much just now, with plans to travel in a week’s time.

NOZ was more exciting. I turned up just as it was opening at 09:30 and had a good look round. The star of the shop was a pair of curtains. The right width but the length was a little too long. I should have brought my sewing machine back from the Auvergne I suppose but instead I’ll pin them up.

The crowds were starting to build up in Leclerc. Despite buying a pile of frozen food, the bill came to about €11:00. Again, I’m not buying much before I go away.

ON the way back home the traffic had built up and there were grockles everywhere. It took ages to return home.

Three lizards again for lunch, and this new batch of hummus that I made yesterday is just as good as the last lot.

Regular readers of this rubbish will know that I’ve been having issues with the Nikon D5000 camera. I’ve brought the other lens back from the Auvergne and took a few photos with it

It was quite a good moment to do so, because Marite was out there doing her stuff.

I don’t know where she’s been but it looks as if she is coming back.

She did a U-turn just outside the harbour and then headed into the entrance. But what disappointed me was that she didn’t do it under sail, but with what I suspect is an auxillary engine.

That’s a bit of a cheat if you ask me.

But at least she won’t be alone in the harbour.

Parked up at the quayside next to Marité’s berth is this other really fine period-looking (apart from the solar panel) yacht.

I’ve no idea who she might be, so I shall have to go for a wander down there at some point in the near future and have a look. She looks quite magnificent from here.

I should have been having visitors today but there’s a delay on the road so I’m free until tomorrow evening. So in a change to the usual routine I took this afternoon off and mooched around on the internet.

Much of the time was spent chatting to someone in Montreal and someone else in Alaska. I’m starting to become all nostalgic, especially as my social media page keeps on reminding me that I’m usually in Canada at this time of the year. I must stop being so broody.

Tea was the last of the vegan sausages with vegetables and cheese sauce. And just as delicious as the first batch too.

And later on this evening I went for a walk around. The purpose this evening is to do some more experiments with the new lens.

It’s the cheapest lens available for this camera and so I wasn’t expecting all that much. And that’s just as well because the quality is not what I would like to have.

While the lighting is correct, the quality isn’t and the photos have come out extremely grainy.

So while you admire the evening looking over the Baie de Mont St Michel and jullouville, at least it proves one thing

And that is that it’s the original lens that seems to be at fault, so it wasn’t a waste of time after all.

What I’ll have to do now is to set to and order a new decent lens like the one that failed, and see where we go from there.

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party boulevard vaufleury granville manche normandy france

Saturday 4th August 2018 – SO HAVING HAD …

… a miserable night’s sleep (which seems to be par for the course these days) tossing and turning for much of it on the sofa, I was up and about without too much effort.

It wasn’t the first time either, having had to leave my stinking pit once during the night.

But I prepared breakfast, and a little later, Alison came to join me and we had a nice cosy chat together.

Alison wanted to know what time we would be leaving, so I replied nonchalantly “about 45 minutes”.
“Gosh! I’d better get a move on!”

I’d forgotten about women, of course. For me, “getting ready” to go out involves putting my shoes on and that’s that. For women though, it’s a full military operation involving all kinds of things and can take anything up to a couple of hours.

While Alison was preparing herself I had a shower, prepared a flask of cold stuff and finally we made some sandwiches.

In the glorious, wonderful but very hazy early morning sunshine and heat, Caliburn took us along the coast road.

Through St Pair, Jullouville, Carolles and Genets, and all points south.

We stopped to take photographs along the way. After all, this is a part of the world that Alison has never visited before, and having left home rather smartish, we weren’t particularly stuck for time.

The motorway westwards was very busy and there were signs for “traffic jams ahead” – not surprising with it being the first Saturday in August, busiest day of the year on the roads.

But we weren’t long on the motorway turning off to head towards our destination for today, Mont St Michel.

Alison has never been here before, and it’s been almost 30 years since the last time that I was here.

And haven’t there been some changes in that time?

When I was here before, you used to just drive down to the water’s edge, park your car on the marshes making sure that you were above the tide line, and then walk across the causeway.

But not today, though.

There’s a huge parking complex (that costs an arm and a leg of course) a couple of miles away from the Mont, and a series of weird shuttle buses that operate a free service to the island.

There was quite a queue waiting for the buses and we had this horrible feeling that we were going to be there for hours, but these buses are really high-capacity.

The packers (you can’t really call them anything else) pack the buses like the Black Hole Of Calcutta and so within less than 10 minutes we had been whizzed on our way.

While you admire the entrance to the complex, I can set the scene by telling you about the visit to the Gentleman’s rest room.

This will give you some idea about what to expect (if you haven’t already guessed from the parking) when I tell you that a visit to the Gentleman’s rest room costs you €0:80.

Yes, over here on the island they have got you by the shorthorns.

And if that hasn’t convinced you, then the fact that the first restaurant that we came across was offering a bowl of vegetable soup for €18:00 and an omelette at €28:00 should do the trick.

But then, that’s how I remember it, and as other people have said so too.

Not for nothing did we prepare butties and a flask of cold drink before we set off.

The history of the place is quite interesting.

It’s always been a place of worship for as long as worship has known to be important.

There was quite some considerable evidence of megalithic tombs on the island where it is believed that the worship of some kind of pagan cult took place;

But Christianity arrived in 709 when a chapel in honour of the Archangel Saint Michael was erected here.

It subsequently became a centre for pilgrimages and it still continues in this role today. In fact, we encountered a group of pilgrims who had come on foot across the sands from Genets.

In 966 a Benedictine abbey was erected here, and the Dukes of Normandy became important benefactors. They gave a great deal of land to the abbey.

One of the reasons that the Ile de Chausey remains French today and didn’t become English as did the rest of the Channel Islands was that William the Conqueror gave the archipelago to the Abbey before he became King of England in 1066.

Mont St Michel has regularly changed hands between the Dukes of Normandy and the Dukes of Brittany. It’s currently in Normandy and was so during much of the 100 Years War.

But there’s an interesting little story about the island during that period.

This gateway here to the west overlooks the Breton coast. Normandy was to the south and east.

The English laid siege to the island during the Hundred Years War and hoped to starve it out. But as the tide went out, the island became accessible from the Breton side before the Normandy side.

Consequently the Bretons could nip over to the island with a load of victuals to resupply the island before the tide became low enough for the English army to cross the sands to stop them.

As a result, the island held out for so long that the English lost interest and eventually abandoned the siege.

There are a variety of ways to reach the Abbey.

The first, and probably the most interesting, way would be to be winched up by the medieval inclined ramp.

You can see the sone trackway here and right at the top are the remains of the wooden sledge to which they would attach the goods.

It would then be winched up from above until it reached the opening in the Abbey walls.

Today, there’s an electric winch and steel basket for supplying the abbey, but that doesn’t look half as exciting as the old system.

The more popular way is to climb up the steep street and then all of the stairs, following all of the visitors who take that way to the top.

But we stopped for a breather inside the church that’s half-way up, and noticed a back door out.

So we went that way and found ourselves going up a nice spiral, circular route that wasn’t anything like as steep, and with plenty of shady places to rest.

But at the Abbey, the €10:00 admission charge put me off. I would have liked to have gone in and seen the interior, especially the tombs of the Dukes of Normandy, but not at that price.

It’s good value if you are healthy though, because the admission allows you to climb right to the top of the tower where the views are stunning (or, at least, they would be if there wasn’t so much haze).

Nevertheless, the views weren’t all that bad from where we were standing.

There was certainly a good view of Avranches from where we were standing. And with a little bit of digital enhancement you can see the town quite clearly away in the distance.

Hard to think that it’s probably 10 or 12 miles away across the bay from where we are. Such are the benefits of having some decent equipment.

Alison didn’t feel like the climb either so instead we descended and went for a walk around the walls.

It’s a walled city and as far as I could tell the walls are 100% intact, as you might expect. It’s not possible to go out to the north of the island without passing through the Abbey.

The whole lot is in a remarkable state of preservation, which is hardly a surprise when you consider that this was one of the very first places to be listed when they started the Register of Historic Places in France

There’s another island a little farther out and I don’t remember seeing that from previous visits.

It looks quite inaccessible but when I blew up my photo (you can still do that kind of thing despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) I could see buildings – possibly World War II blockhouses – out there.

There were also people walking around out there, obviously taking advantage of the low tide.

And low tide it certainly was.

The tidal coefficient – the gap of the water level between high tide and low tide – was just 59 today. This meant that we weren’t going to be cut off.

The tidal coefficient can be as high as 120 and then the island is isolated from the mainland for a couple of hours. But the next one of these isn’t going to happen for quite a while, unfortunately.

We stopped on the way round where Alison took out a second mortgage on her house in order that we could have a coffee in one of the cafés here;

And on continuing our walk around the walls some obliging Asiatic guy took a photo of us both.

And Alison’s camera lived to tell the tale, which surprised me more than anything.

From there we climbed up again to a small rest area and when a place on the wall underneath the trees became free, we moved in and occupied the spot.

It was quite nice there, overlooking the causeway and the entry gates to the island, and we ate our butties in the shade as we watched the world go by.

By now it was early afternoon and the hordes were still arriving. We decided that we had seen all that we had intended to see and so we returned on the shuttle bus to Caliburn, where we were fleeced by the parking charges machine.

Since this new parking system and charges have been in operation, visitor numbers have plummeted. At one time, over 3.5 million people came here every year and there was even a railway connection to the site.

In 2013 there were just 2.2 million people and apparently numbers are continuing to fall. One of these “alternative” Tourist guides writes of “la mauvaise réputation du Mont-Saint-Michel qui fait payer cher des prestations médiocres” – “the bad reputation of Mont St Michel where the mediocre things on offer will cost a fortune”..

Still, it’s one of those places that you have to visit once in your life – preferably out of season – but you wouldn’t ever go back.

We headed off down the motorway, noticing the queues of vehicles heading west on the opposite carriageway, all heading to the Brittany coast.

It was a good idea to go out early in the morning because we missed most of that. I’d hate to be stuck in there right now.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve mentioned a couple of times the “Cabane Vauban” – the stone hut on the headland of the Pointe de Carolles.

It’s another place that has been on my list to visit since I first noticed it. We’d seen a road sign for it on the way down, and so on the way back we went there.

Despite its very isolated location, there was quite a crowd of people there and they wouldn’t move out of the way when I wanted to photograph the building.

And so they are now immortalised for posterity.

The cabin was built as a lookout point for the excise me to survey whatever cargo was being smuggled into Avranches and Mont St Michel from the Channel islands during the 17th Century;

Some say, presumably because of the name “Vauban” being associated with them, that they are defensive posts to guard the bay. But whatever kind of defence you could launch from this cabin against an 18-pounder cannon on board an English ship would surely not be very effective.

There’s a good view down as far as Mont St Michel – or, at least, there would be on any other day when there wouldn’t be a heat haze shrouding the coastline.

There was also a lot of aerial activity.

I wasn’t quick enough to take a photo of the gyrocopter that flew over the cabane, but I was certainly quick enough to take a photo of the biplane that stuttered by overhead.

And much to my surprise, when I enlarged the photo I discovered that it was a “pusher”. That’s not the usual configuration these days. Most of the aircraft are “tractors”.

And it was making such a racket that I couldn’t help thinking “Goddam the Pusher“, although it probably wasn’t a biplane that Hoyt Axton had in mind when he wrote the song.

Back at Granville Alison wanted to go for a walk around the town and visited the shops. But it was far too warm for me so I dropped her off, gave her directions back here, and then drove back to my nice cool little hidey-hole on my rock.

When she came back we went for another walk, this time around the walls where we sat in the sun for quite a while and watched the people on the beach.

For tea, I had organised some gluten-free burgers which went down very well, and then once it became dark, we went back out.

it was the Nuit des Souders, when all of the blacksmiths in the area set up little stands all over the town and the port to demonstrate their skills.

There was even one ‘neath the spreading chestnut tree, but I couldn’t tell if “the muscles of his brawny arms are strong as iron bands”.

The music was unfortunately pretty poor, especially after last year’s exciting Russian rock group, even though they didn’t have the dancers from “Hellzapoppin'” with them on stage .

In the end, rather than listen to the music we went for a really long walk around the harbour and fell in with a couple of fishermen … “fisherPERSONS” – ed …fishing by the moonlight.

On the way back we called off at some of the galleries that were still open. But the only thing that caught my eye was, as usual, the most expensive thing on offer.

There were also a few of the soudeurs dotted about here and there along the hill too, so we had a good look at some of them too.

But nothing at all really exciting.

It had been a really long day so I wasn’t disappointed to return to my apartment.

We were both pretty tired – after all, it had been a really long day – so we called it a night.

Sunday morning tomorrow, and so a lie in.

At least, I hope so.

And I have plenty more photos of Mont St Michel so I’ll probably put them all on a separate page one of these days.

pointe de carolles granville manche normandy france

fishermen zodiac baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

fete des soudeurs granville manche normandy france

Saturday 21st July 2018 – FOR THE FIRST TIME …

… in several weeks I actually managed three meals today. I’m not sure why, but this evening I could have eaten a scabby horse, and then gone back for the rider.

But overall, the day wasn’t quite so impressive. As I said yesterday, I was going back to my desk in the evening to carry on working. And I did too, and I certainly didn’t expect to be still hard at it at 03:35 either It is getting just like old times again, isn’t it?

The alarms went off at 06:20 and 06:30, and I did here them too. But it was round about 07:35 when something in the street really woke me up. And that was enough for me to crawl out of bed.

A friend of mine has had some devastating news this last week and is receiving no help – in fact quite the reverse – from her husband. We’ve been chatting on and off for the last few days and she was on-line again. But at least she’s cheered herself up a bit now and things don’t look quite so gloomy.

And then another friend was on-line too and decided to tell me all about her bowel disorder just as I was sitting down to breakfast. Thanks very much!

I had a shower and a general clean-up and then headed off to the shops, negotiating the new barrier to the car park now that they seem to have that working.

LIDL came up with nothing special, but then it was off to the dechetterie to unload the European Cardboard Box Mountain. Caliburn moves around quite quicker now.

NOZ came up with, apart from the usual stuff, a new rucksack. Mine is really good quality but it’s too small and awkwardly packed. There were some big 60-litre rucksacks in there today, waterproof too, at just €19:95. It doesn’t have the useful pockets that the other one has, but it’s the size that counts and how the stuff is prportioned. The rest I can invent.

LeClerc didn’t have too much special either, although I did buy a new decent set of nail scissors. The ones that I have are about 30 years old and slowly giving up the ghost. These new ones are great.

But the media centre there came up with the goods. They were selling 32gb micro-SD cards for just €11:99 so I bought another three. And a good computer mouse too so that the really good one can go into the office and I can use the new one in the laptop on the sofa.

I was so enthralled by the micro-SD cards that I totally forgot that I’d gone in there to buy a new SD card for the big Nikon. I’ll have to do that next week.

Back here I made mu butties and then went to sit on my wall in the sun, with my book and not one, not two but three lizards now for company. I’ll have my own herd by the end of the summer won’t I?

There was a load of excitement too in the port.

The company that runs the ferries to the Ile de Chausey has two ships, one of which sometimes goes off on tours of the bay.

And with it being summer, we have one going out on a voyage while the other one is on its way itno port.

And then some tidying up. And the place does look different too now after that. I shall have to press on next week and make even more improvements.

I started some work too but, shame as it is to admit it, it wasn’t long before I was laid out on the bed fast asleep. For a good couple of hours too, and I would probably still be there now had I not had two really wicked attacks of cramp.

But when I awoke I was starving, hence the meal. Stuffed pepper with spicy rice. And it’s nice to have some proper hot food for a change.

Now, I’ll go back to working again. But not until 03:35. At least – I hope not.

Friday 13th July 2018 – I THINK THAT I WAS …

… right last night about the tides. When I went out for my butties, the tide was as far out as I have ever seen it.

There were quite a few people out there too, presumably having a root around in the sand for the shellfish.

Which, they would presumably share with their friends because, as I have said before … "on many occasions" – ed … you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

Going to bed last night was at something of a much-more respectable hour, and I managed to sleep almost until the alarm went off, with a little hiccup at about 04:00 or something like that. I tried my best to ignore the alarm but I couldn’t go back off to sleep and it was about 07:00 when I left the bed.

We had the usual morning performance, but breakfast ended up being quite late. And I forgot my coffee too.

First task was to assemble the two small trolleys that I had bought from IKEA the other day. And now I have a vegetable trolley and a cooking utensil trolley and they are both very handy. And then I had a little tidy-up, much to my own surprise.

Lunch was quite late after all of that, and on the way back in I started to unload Caliburn. I’ve brought quite a bit of stuff up here now, but there’s still plenty to go. I reckon that tomorrow I’ll have to start to unpack things and do some washing.

Another thing that I did was to crack on with my 3D program that I have neglected of late. Especially as a few things that I wanted were in a “50% off” sale today only.

There was also a visit into town. The mixed dried fruit sold in the supermarkets that I frequent is pretty much rubbish but the Super U has some good stuff. I need it for my muesli so I went for a walk down there in the heat, and treated myself to a sorbet on the way back.

On the way back up the hill I observed all of the boats outside the harbour.

The tide was on its way in by now and the smaller craft could make their way to the quayside to unload their catch. The larger boats would have to wait for the tide to come further in before they could come in and unload.

But you can see the effect that dredging out that strip by the quay in the winter has had. Smaller ships can come in earlier to unload and this increases the available capacity at the fish processing plant.

No tea tonight either. My appetite seems to have disappeared. Not quite like it did over Christmas but nevertheless. But it’s not really a worry, because I have quite a bit of weight that I could do with losing, what with this water retention issue.

But it was a pleasant walk around the headland this evening anyway.

So back here and listening to Marillion again. I have a couple of tracks – The Web and Garden Party – going round on a continual loop for some reason. I can’t shift them out of my head.

Marillion is a magnificent band but they always send me into a deep depression and I’ve no idea why. Still, I’ve plenty of time to cheer myself up, haven’t I?

Monday 9th July 2018 – NOT ONLY DID I …

… make it to Canada today, I was actually in Newfoundland and Labrador too!

But more of that anon.

With something of a very disturbed sleep (and I’ve no idea why) I finally crawled out of bed at some time rather later than the alarm.

There was plenty of work to be done this morning but for some reason or other I wasn’t really in the mood enough to do it. I don’t know where my energy seems to have gone to at all.

Anyway, at 09:00 and the morning rush-hour gone, I went outside and hit the streets. First stop was to load up with food as the lunchtime stuff is getting low, but would you believe that I drove all of the 45 kilometres to Serre, all the way through the city of Arras and several other small towns, and didn’t even find a single supermarket?

Serre was one of the vital points on the Somme front line that needed to be taken, but the attack had bogged down long before the village had been reached. The “Accrington Pals” who had attacked the village had been decimated.

All around the area are several cemeteries that contain the bodies of the fallen that were recovered from the barbed wire when the battlefield was cleared after the German retreat in early 1917 and were still being recovered in the 1920s.

One piece of land that had been part of the front line had been given to the City of Sheffield and it’s known as Sheffield Park. Tile has worn away many of the features but you can still see the trenches and the shell holes quite clearly.

Narrowly avoiding being squidged by a French lorry driver who was speeding and not paying attention, I visited a few other cemeteries of note and then headed for the Hawthorn Redoubt.

This was a prominent hill overlooking the front line and the British Army dealt with it by the simple expedient of tunneling underneath it and packing the tunnel full of explosives. The explosion of the mine at 07:28 was the signal for the attack to begin.

The crater is certainly impressive – it has to be seen to be believed, but it’s by no means the largest that was exploded on that day. It is famous however as its detonation was actually captured on film.

Down the road from there I entered Newfoundland and Labrador. This is another corner of a foreign field that is forever Canada, although I can’t claim asylum there (I did ask).

It’s where the Newfoundland Regiment, all 800 of them, were ordered into attack but due to a misunderstanding, instead of going through the communication trench to the front line, they left their trenches in the rear and advanced in the open, in full view of a couple of German heavy machine guns.

It has to be said that there were a couple of hundred German machine gunners on the Somme front line, and they alone counted for a very large proportion of the 60,000 or so British casualties on the 1st July.

By the time the Newfoundlanders reached the front line, there were just 95 left. They probably hadn’t even wounded a single German.

I ended up having quite a chat with a nice Canadian girl from St Johns who told me that her great grandfather’s brother is still lying somewhere out there on the battlefield.

Here we were interrupted by a band of pseudo-Scottish pipers who insisted on attempting to play Scotland the Brave and Cock o’ the North and were most unimpressed when I suggested that they went to practise a Highland Fling on the field containing the unexploded ordnance.

Next stop was the Thiepval Ridge and its massive memorial to the missing. Over 75,000 soldiers who lost their lives on the Somme have no known grave and when you see the size of the shell holes that remain, it’s hardly surprising.

Their names are all recorded here,but you’ll see several gaps that are clearly where names have been filled with cement. Bodies are regularly discovered even today on the battlefield and if they are identified, their names are removed from the memorial.

And there are several cases of the “missing” subsequently coming to light, having gone to ground in rural France.

The leader of the pipe band and his acolyte came over to me here (they had been going from memorial to memorial trying to play the pipes) and demanded an explanation of my earlier comments. This led to quite a heated and animated discussion, particularly when I suggested how he could obtain a better sound from his pipes (a method which involves eating several plates of baked beans).

It seems that all of these Scots pipe bands who died for freedom only died so that Scots pipe bands can express their freedom and no-one else is allowed to have any freedom of expression if it disagrees with the opinions of the Scots pipe bands. But I put him right on that score and he slunk off with a flea in his ear.

A good pipe band is a magnificent thing, but a poor pipe band is one of the worst things in the world to have to suffer to hear. It’s even worse than a mouth organ, and regular readers of this rubbish willknow my opinion about that.

The sky had clouded over by now, but I carried on, visiting Sausage and Mash valleys, where a couple of machine guns on a spur of high land in between them decimated the attacking soldiers.

It’s here thuugh that we have the Lochnagar Crater. This was the largest mine exploded on the day and you can tell that by the size of the crater.

Cecil Lewis, an RFC pilot who was flying over it on the day, gives a vivid description of it in his autobiography Sagittarius Rising.

Back 40-odd years ago there were plans to fill in and redevelop the crater, as has happened with a couple of others, but a British person bought the land to preserve its integrity and he’s made quite a passable job of a tourist attraction of it.

But from the top of it, you can certainly see the futility of attacking up “Sausage” and “Mash” valleys.

It was already 19:00 by this time and so I shot off back to Lens. I’d had no food at all during the day, so I was well-pleased in stumbling across a LeClerc supermarket where I could grab some stuff to make a butty – just before they closed the doors too.

And back here in the heat I had a shower and washed my clothes before eating it too.

But 143% of my day’s activity on the fitbit told its own story. By 21:30 I was tucked up in bed and I’ll do the rest tomorrow.

Thursday 5th July – WHAT A DEPRESSING DAY!

But let’s not go getting ahead of ourselves.

Last night was weird. I crashed out as soon as my head hit the pillow, woke up again after about half an hour, and then crashed out for good until about 04:30.

And then of course, I dozed off again just a couple of minutes before the alarm went off.

Consequently it was a very tired and weary me that hauled itself out of the stinking pit, and even a shower couldn’t really bring me round. I was feeling awful and for two pins I would have gone back to bed.

But I have things to do, and so I staggered downstairs to the van.

On the car park I met Hans who was loading up his van ready to leave, so we wished each other a good trip and like the Knights Of The Round Table, we each went our separate ways.

There wasn’t all that much traffic on the motorway given the time of morning, so I made it to Leuven in good time. And it seems that my parking spec has been taken by someone else. So I parked in an empty spec and anticipated a row when I returned.

The walk from there up the hill to the hospital was a long, weary walk and I almost didn’t make it. “I’m definitely not feeling myself today” I said, and just as well too because it’s a disgusting habit.

At the hospital I was early so I had to wait around for a while. And the first lot of bad news is that my weight has gone up by 3kg. Hardly a surprise seeing as I’ve been without my tablets for 12 days.

Plugged in and switched on, I slept for most of the day. With just the occasional awakening from the medical staff. And it was during one of those awakenings that I had some even more bad news.

The protein loss has doubled to just over 2.0 and the red blood count has collapsed to 8.8. No wonder I’ve been feeling so ill today.

They are totally dismayed by that and they want to bring me forward to three-weekly visits. That is out of the question for the next visit so we agreed on Monday August 6th – which means that I’ll be travelling back to Belgium with Alison.

And the one after that will be on August 27th, which is also bad news and rules out any possibility of going to North America.

Eventually they threw me out and I headed for Caliburn. Loads of things that I wanted to do but I just wasn’t up to any of them. No-one had said anything about Caliburn being in the wrong place, so we all came back to Liège, stopping off at Bio Planet for some vegan cheese and vegan sausages.

The traffic in Liège was horrendous yet again and it took ages to reach the hotel. By now I was thoroughly and completely tired and fed up so I went straight to bed and that was that.

It’s been a very bad day.

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 – WHERE’S THAT CONFOUNDED BRIDGE?

Yes, I’ve been on my travels again through the western Germany countryside, haven’t I?

And finding a certain bridge (or, rather, what remains of a certain bridge) is not easy when you don’t use your head.

But first, let’s return to the Hotel From Hell. Because it really was a bad night and I regret every moment that I spent there.

Yes, I’ve bombed spectacularly with this place.

Never mind checking the area to see about railway lines – this is the old station building that’s been converted into a guest house. So it’s right by a busy main-line railway.

And the shunting in the yard starts up at 04:00 in the morning, along with the accompanying warning sirens. If you’re a light sleeper like me, you can forget any notion whatever of having a decent sleep.

Closing the window didn’t help matters either because 5 minutes later the room was like an oven. And that was a shame because the room itself wasn’t too bad as budget rooms go.

But I did manage to go off on a few travels regardless.

We started off back at the taxi place where I have the Cortina LND9P. It was Sunday evening and I was awaiting the arrival of the radio operator – none other than our old friend TOTGA. And looking through the books I could see that we hadn’t turned a wheel since the previous Sunday when she was here. So I hoped that things would be better and pick up, or else I may as well close down.
Later, I was off to Stoke on Trent on a Saturday afternoon, with the plan being to visit a scrapyard. Saturday afternoons, as everyone knows, are really busy in scrapyards but this one was empty, no-one was about and all of the cars were overgrown with weeds. Of course, fewer and fewer people repair their own cars these days, and tighter pollution controls means that cars head off to the scrapyards themselves long before they are in need of any major repair.
Later still, we were on a big double-decker coach coming out of a French port, and up a steep hill on a gravel road. Our route took us up past a big camp site and then we disappeared into the rolling hills. At a certain moment we all alighted and the driver disappeared off with the bus. That gave us an opportunity to explore the area on foot. A crowd of us went through into some cave-type of places that were old lime-kilns and were stuffed with old French cars lying around abandoned and derelict. After we’d been talking for a while I drew the attention of someone in our party, a car enthusiast, to one kiln where there was a pale green Peugeot 403. He was so keen that I decided not to disappoint him by telling him of the even better ones he had missed. Two of us ended up walking in the hills and this was tiring me out. But the bus driver came to fetch me as he was having an argument in a garage and the proprietor didn’t understand him. He told me that the proprietor wanted to charge him for a whole ruck of repairs on the steering, but the driver had said that he had greased and oiled it himself and it was only minor adjustments that the garage had done. The proprietor said that the bill related to earlier work, and that rang a bell with me as I remembered the bus having to be suspended-towed in to the garage some time previously. And while we were discussing things, I went out for some fresh air and a walk, and there was another bus and an accident-damaged small lorry being towed into the garage.

Once the alarms went off I had a shower and settled down to write up last night’s note, but for one reason or another the hotel’s internet system wouldn’t accept the *.ftp procedures to upload the photos.

and my heart wasn’t much in it either after the bad night. 10:00 was checking-out time and the cleaner was knocking on the door to “encourage” me to leave.

Outside, not only was Caliburn still there but no-one had stolen his wheels. That’s one thing to be thankful for, I suppose. I was rather worried about that.

First stop was the river to see what was going on, driving past a B&B Hotel not 500 yards from where I stayed.

And you’ve no idea just how difficult it was to find my way down here too. There were roadworks everywhere and I couldn’t get to where I needed to be.

In the end I had to improvise something, and I ended up eventually on the industrial estate.

Here, I was treated to a nautical danse macabre by several barges.

You’ve no idea just how busy the Rhine is, and the amount of commercial traffic that’s flowing up and down it.

The UK’s only navigable commercial inland waterway, the Manchester Ship Canal, was closed down and a Shopping Centre built on Pomona Docks, but here in Germany, water transport plays a vital role in the economy.

The assemblies of delegates of the Holy Roman Empire were called “Diets” and several of those took place in the town of Worms which is just up the road from here.

The most famous Diet of Worms took place in 1521, when Martin Luther was summoned before the Assembly to defend several of his works that Pope Leo X

The Assembly ended with him being denounced as a dangerous heretic, but his demeanour at the Diet won him some very influential friends.

This gorgeous stone building here in the background is actually a gatehouse for the bridge that crosses the Rhine here.

Its style and immense size gives you some idea of the wealth and importance of the city in Medieval times.

It was a Free City of the Holy Roman Empire, its ruling Council being directly subordinate to the Emperor himself.

And river traffic is quite intense here too, with an endless stream of barges passing up and down the river.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a Ship Of The Day of course, but this would qualify as a Barge of the Day in anyone’s reckoning.

It’s loaded up with scrap and is pushing a lighter down in front of it which is likewise loaded. There can’t be much less than 1,000 tonnes on there – the equivalent of 30-odd lorries.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous incarnations will recall that we once went for a train ride up through the Ruhr, and noticed how all of the land at the side of the railway was still flattened and overgrown following the devastation of the allied bombing during World War II

Worms was a fortified stronghold of the German Army and as well as suffering from Harris’s indiscriminate bombing, was attacked twice in early 1945 by massive fleets of bombers in an attempt to force out the defenders.

In one attack, on 21st February, 334 bombers dropped an estimated 1100 tonnes of bombs on the city in just a couple of minutes.

It didn’t work, and the city didn’t fall until it was outflanked after the Crossing of the Rhine.

And just as in the Ruhr, I bet that this area around the cathedral looked totally different prior to the bombing.

The post-war Strategic Bombing Survey suggested that almost 40% of the city had been destroyed in the air attacks of 1945. Nearly 6500 buildings had been damaged or totally destroyed and several hundred civilians killed.

I stopped at the kaufland supermarket on the edge of Oppenheim to do some shopping, and back on the road I was held up at a level crossing.

It’s not easy photographing a moving target with the little Nikon as the lapse time is longer than i ought to be, but I managed to photograph some of an electric multiple unit on its way to Mainz.

And when I’m reunited with my Jane’s Train Recognition Guide I can tell you all about it

Now, have you any idea just how difficult it is to drive around Mainz?

Mainz is like three cities merged into one and if you forget in which order they are, you can drive aroundfor ever in an eternal loop.

What doesn’t help of course is The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav who has difficulty in understanding grade-separated junctions, and a new fault that she seems to have developed in that she doesn’t know her Cardinal Points.

Here I was with the river on my right-hand side and the sun behind me, so clearly heading north-ish, and she telling me that I’m going south-west.

After a while, I gave up and finding a little quiet corner down by the river, stopped for lunch.

Back on the road, after she had tried to send me down a public footpath and then three times round the same corner of the city while I tried to work my own way round a grade-separated junction, I did what I should have done first rather than last.

I picked up a road sign for Koblenz, which is on the river north of Mainz, and drove 10 miles down the motorway, making sure that the distance to Koblenz was decreasing, and then pulled off the motorway to find the river.

And the interchange was exciting too.

Remember me talking the other day about castle ruins in the middle of Germany? Here’s another not-quite-a-ruin just at the side of the motorway exit.

We’re now in the Rhine valley – the Gateway to Central Europe – and this area was fought over almost as much as Flanders and North-East France

Having rejoined the Rhine at Bingen am Rhein, we end up in the quaintly-named town of Bacharach.

We’ve seen all of the vines and grapes growing in the Rhine Valley, and just as in France, there are plenty of Chateaux here and there, just as in Bacharach, which are presumably the domains of the owners;

But I’m not keen on the colours of the parasols, I’ll tell you that.

It’s round about Bacharach that we start to meet the typical Rhine scenery too as the river begins to cut its course through the mountains.

This is the kind of view that you’ll see on any picture postcard of the Rhine, despite the fact that probably only 100 kms of its route passes through this sort of terrain.

You won’t ever see a picture postcard view of the docks at Ludwigshafen, that’s for sure.

We mentioned fortifications just now, and also the fact that the Rhine is the gateway to Central Europe.

It was consequently heavily-defended during the Middle Ages and castles and the like were erected at every conceivable strategic location to control the passage up the river.

One of the best has to be the castle that was built here on this island in the middle of the river near St Goar. No commercial traffic could pass up here without being within primitive cannon-range of the castle.

And that’s not the only castle here too.

There’s a fortified castle at the same location but in the hills on the western side of the river overlooking one of the meanders.

From this kind of viewpoint you can see for miles any traffic coming up and down the river and have your rowing boat ready to nip out and collect the tolls.

Being a landowner with a castle on the banks of the Rhine was a very profitable occupation, although it did usually attract the ire of the inhabitants of the towns situated up- and down-stream, often with exciting results.

And talking of excitement, we had some excitement in St Goar. A bunch of grockles decided that they would amble across the road at their own pace right in front of Caliburn, doubtless too busy listening for the Loreley than to pay attention tp oncoming traffic, and were most upset when I gave them “Hail Columbia” on Caliburn’s horn.

And during the resultant discussion, I never realised just how good my German actually was. It’s a long time since I’ve had to remind people just who lost the war and they should get out of the way of the victors.

Not that it’s the kind of thing that I usually do, but it’s much more pointed than telling them to **** off.

I blinked and missed Boppard – a horrible nasty place full of even more grockles, and continued northwards.

My journey brought me to the town of Rhens, of which the chief claim to fame is that it’s twinned with Barnsley in Yorkshire, for which I apologise.

It was also a fortified city in the Middle Ages and despite the warfare that has ravaged the area over the centuries, not the least of which was in March 1945, there are still some vestiges remaining.

There was also an old GPO red telephone box here too. everyone wants them except the Brits, it seems.

Koblenz received the same treatment as Boppard, mainly for the same reason but also due to the fact that it was now rush-hour.

Instead, I headed straight for my next destination, Remagen and the remains of its famous bridge.

For some reason, the bridge was quite difficult to find – as if a street called something like the “allee den Alten Rheinbruck” wouldn’t give me a clue.

In the end, I had to park up on the outskirts of the town and do some research.

But eventually I tracked down what remains of the bridge.

In World War II all of the bridges over the Rhine were packed with dynamite to demolish them should the need arise.

But following the premature explosion of another bridge when it was hit by a bomb and the subsequent court-martial of the officers commanding, the dynamite was removed, to be replaced when any enemy advance threatened the bridge.

By the time the Americans threatened the bridge, the only dynamite available was very substandard and not powerful enough to demolish the bridge. And in any case; some of the charges failed to explode.

And so it was still standing when the Americans arrived.

It didn’t fall until many days later, and then only due to the fanatical attacks by Luftwaffe bombing attacks and rocket barrages. But by then a pontoon bridge had been erected across the river.

Until the 1950s the pillars were still standing in the middle of the river but they were hazardous to shipping and were removed.

Its building had been proposed as part of the Schlieffen Plan for a rapid attack on France.

Linking the railways on the eastern bank of the Rhine with those on the western bank could speed up the deployment of troops and supplies.

And if you look very carefully, you can see the tunnel in the rock into which the railway disappeared.

Building took place between 1916 and 1919, too late to be of any real use in World War I

Bonn seemed to be the obvious choice for a place to stay, but I was wary after the budget hotel that I had had in Ludwigshafen.

So looking further afield I found much to my surprise that a hotel that I had seen earlier in Kripp, about 5 miles south of here and right on the banks of the Rhine, had a room with breakfast at just €53:00.

I’d been impressed by the look of that place, and so I reserved a room

On my way down back south we noticed another “Barge of the Day”

We’ve seen some impressively big container ships in our time, and although you won’t ever get them up the Rhine, this barge is impressive enough and shows you another example of the kind of freight that sails … “diesels” – ed … up here.

Having seen what I have seen of Germany’s economy and industry along the Rhine, long before we get to the Ruhr of course, it really is unstoppable and people living in the UK, where factories are being demolished and replaced by supermarkets selling imported goods, who think that they can compete with this are really totally out of their minds.

So now I’m esconsed in my little room. Small, and probably more at home in the 1970s (but then again, so am I) but there’s everything that I need just here and I even have a side-on view of the Rhine.

What more can any man desire – apart from Kate Bush and Jenny Agutter of course?

It was such a nice evening that I went for a walk outside later on.

Across the Rhine just here is the town of Linz and if you had been here in late March 1945 you would have had a completely different view than today.

Never mind the bomb and artillery damage – when the US engineers inspected the Ludendorf Bridge and declared it potentially unsafe, they constructed a pontoon bridge across the river at this point.

What we have today though is a car ferry, and that’s always going to be exciting news.

However, it’s not usually good news for Caliburn, Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly to see a car ferry, though.

We usually all end up in a bad mood, because a car ferry is that kind of thing that always makes us cross.

But we can see about that tomorrow. It’s bed-time right now.

Sunday 24th June 2018 – I’M NOT ANGRY.

Neither am I annoyed. And neither am I furious.

I’ve gone waaaaaaayyyyy beyond that into the stratosphere .

It’s the last time that I ever do anyone a favour ever again. If anyone ever wants something from me ever again they can pay full price for it. and if I ever want anything off anyone, I’ll pay full price for it too.

That way, it avoids all disappointments.

I must have MUG tattooed on my forehead in letters two feet high.

despite what I said about the hotel last night (well, it is rather overpriced and very tired, but it was the cheapest that I could find when I was tired) I had a really good sleep.

And it would have been even better had I not had a severe attack of cramp during the night – so severe that I had to get out of bed and stand up to ease the muscles;

Back in bed though, I was off on my travels and with no dictaphone handy I had to try my best to remember it.

But basically, I decided that I would like to learn a new language, so off I trotted to the night school.And who should be giving the course but TOTGA. Of course, I sat at the front of the class (my body might have given out but my mind certainly hasn’t). The end wall of the classroom sloped in at 45° so the white board attached to it was over the heads of the students at the front. And TOTGA needed to clean it. But whatever had been written on it had been written on it a long time ago and it had dried pretty hard so it took some scrubbing. So of course I volunteered to help, to the ribald remarks of my fellow classmates.

Back in the Land of the Living again, I had set the alarm for 08:45, even if it is a Sunday, but I didn’t need it because I was wide awake at 08:00. And amongst the (many) things that I have forgotten to bring with me (as usual, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) are my pills and medicines.

I shall be like nothing on earth by the time that I get to Leuven – but then it’s not as if that’s anything new is it?

After breakfast I hit the road and headed south. I fuelled up Caliburn, tight to the brim and continued on my way.

A short while later, I picked up a hitch-hiker … "well, you shouldn’t have knoched him down" – ed. A Prisoner On The White Lines Of The Freeway, as Joni Mitchell would have us believe.

I’ve hitch-hiked all over the UK and North-West Europe in my youth (and not-so-youth) and been grateful for everyone who has stopped for me. Now that I have an empty and tidy Caliburn following my efforts of the other week, I’m not ashamed to stop for casual strangers.

“You wouldn’t by any chance be going anywhere near Tours, would you?” which is about 125 kms away.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I am” I replied.
And so we drove all the way round past Le Mans, down the Mulsanne Straight (without, unfortunately stopping to take a photo) and on into the suburbs of Tours where I dropped off my companion.

Regular Readers of This Rubbish will recall that I don’t like company, but it makes the journey pass that little bit more quickly when there’s someone else there.

Having picked up a baguette on the way, I stopped at the car park by the river in Loches for lunch.

And there in the shade of some kind of tree I made myself a butty and had a quiet repose.

Another thing that I did was to have half an hour on the guitar. My Vox amPlug has an input socket as well as a headphone socket, so I can run tunes off my laptop into it. As a result, I can play along to the tracks that I’m learning even in the middle of a car park and that’s impressive.

I must keep up with things.

Talking about keeping up with things, there won’t be much difficulty keeping up with this, because the insurance ran out a few months ago and it doesn’t look as if it has moved since.

I bet that you are all wondering what’s so exciting about this Daihatsu Hijet and the answer is that it’s not actually a Daihatsu HiJet at all but a Piaggio Porter.

And even more excitingly, if you peer through the grime and dust, you can see that this vehicle once bore the livery of “La Poste”. And that’s really interesting because it’s not very often that you see “la Poste” driving around in vehicles that weren’tmade in France.

Actually, you might say that it’s a Daihatsu, because it’s part of a project that Daihatsu and the Italian manufacturer Piaggio had on the go between them.

Daihatsu did drop out of the project when that company was taken over by Toyota and Piaggio carried on alone.

There are three versions of this, and I think that this might be a Version II, that dates it sometime between 1998 and 2011.

One version of this that I would really like to see is the Italian Military version that is fitted with a machine-gun. Contrary to rumours, it does NOT have one forward gear and five reverse.

A little later I did have a spell of fatigue. I did think that this trip might be too much for me, but I pressed on all the same.

And then we had the disappointment back at my house. I imagine that you all guessed that it was there.

Instead of staying there for a couple of nights, which was the plan, I went for a coffee and a chat with Rob and Nicolette, and then hit the road yet again. By now I’d found my second wind and i was ready to drive all night, but one has to be sensible about these things.

There’s a B&B hotel just on the edge of Moulins and I’m here tonight. Two nights of additional expense and 150 miles out of my way. I could have stayed at home until Monday had I known how thing were going to turn out.

I’m now running ahead of my plans at much greater expense than imagined and I’m one extremely unhappy bunny.

Let’s hope that tomorrow cheers me up.

Friday 22nd June 2018 – GUESS WHAT …

… arrived in this box at my apartment this morning in this box.

To give you some idea, the dimensions of the box are 50cms by 37cms by 17cms – in other words – it’s a pretty big box

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m expecting a clothing delivery (that also came this afternoon) but that was in a bigger, heavier box. This box was quite light.

This is the answer.

Something else that I was expecting today was the repaired lens for the Nikon 1 J5 camera – the one that was repaired on a factory recall.

That lens is 3cms deep and has a diameter of 5.8cms, and sure enough, they had sent it back to me in that enormous box.

I really don’t know what must go through the minds of some people. I really don’t.

Just for a change just recently, I’d had a really good sleep and was awake bright-eyed and bushy-tailed long before the alarm. I even managed to beat the second alarm.

And after breakfast and a little relax, I made a start on unloading Caliburn.

But there were several interruptions.

We’ve seen several buses try to force their way through the tight corner into the Place d’Armes, but today we really touched rock-bottom.

The Place d’Armes now seems to be a destination to HGV learner-drivers. We had one of those here this morning doing his best to negotiated the very tight corner.

Luckily he made it without demolishing anything, but if this is goinf to become a learner-route, it won’t be long before the wall disappears underneath an errant lorry.

The second interruption was telephoning the bank. It took them a while to answer but not anything like 25 minutes. And the matter was resolved in minutes, although the person to whom I spoke had to put his head in the fridge to stop his ears burning.

And a series of e-mails has arrived that seems to indicate to me that the transfer has indeed taken place. So watch this space.

Once that was out of the way, I started to bring the furniture out of Caliburn and assemble it.

I now have a kitchen trolley for the kettle and coffee machine etc, a larger kitchen trolley for a work surface (the table can return to being a table), several shelf units for CDs and DVDs, a set of shelves in the bathroom and a cupboard underneath the sink.

The bedroom and office furniture isn’t unloaded yet, but I might have a go at some of that tomorrow morning if I can. This place is slowly looking like it might be a home.

This afternoon I went for my walk around the headland, and there was Marité, back in her berth in the harbour.

This photo here was taken with the repaired lens. I wanted to see if it’s working – and working properly ytoo, because it’s going to be playing a very important role in a little project that I have in mind.

It mustn’t fail when I’m off on my travels or I will be upset.

Having taken a photo with the repaired lens, I took a photograph of the same scene with the telephoto lens.

It’s been cropped and enlarged to bring out the best in Marité.

But comparing the two different original photos taken with the different lenses will show me whether or not there’s a discrepancy between the images, but they look pretty good to me.

There is a difference, but it’s not big enough to worry me too much.

Later that evening, I was outside socialising. And that’s not like me is it?

A mysterious notice appeared on our door announcing a get-together for the inhabitants of the building, and I need to be much more sociable than I am.

So I made one of my lentil, onion and rice curries (not too spicy for the French palate of course) in the slow cooker while I had a chat to Rosemary on the phone. And then I went off downstairs with my food.

I was there for two hours too, and I wasn’t the first to leave. I’m definitely not feeling myself, am I? And just as well for it’s a disgusting habit anyway.

Now I really will have to have an early night. There’s so much to do tomorrow. So an early night is called for. I’ve not crashed out today, with being so busy.

But my apartment is starting to look nice now. It’s about time too.

Tuesday 19th June 2018 – THE ONE THING THAT I LIKE …

… about my blog, and one of the (many) reasons why I keep it, is so that when I have an altercation with someone, I have it chapter and verse about when and where it took place, and what was said.

So that way, whenever I’m having an argument with a semi-official body, I have the notes to prove my point.

But let’s not get ahead of ouselves.

Last night after having done almost everything that there was to do, I sat down and watched a DVD, something that i haven’t done for quite some time. Last night’s entertainment (if that’s the correct word) was Batman (the Movie). A totally absurd, incredibly camp film that is so bad that it’s good.

And what is probably the funniest part of the film is Adam West trying so hard not to laugh at some of the lines. Brings back many happy memories of the 1960s.

Despite the early night it was a struggle to come up for air this morning and I was a little later than usual leaving the stinking pit. But a breakfast and a hot shower brought me sort-of into the Land of the Living.

First thing was to put the bathroom back together and then to attack the living room. Do it while I’m in the mood. So that’s something like, stuff is sorted out, more stuff has been found (including my missing 32GB memory stick) and more stuff thrown away. And it was quite profitable too, because I found €1:03 too.

Spend, spend, spend!

And I’m glad that I did it too then and there because I didn’t have time after that.

Looking through the e-mails that had come in through the night, there were two that were very important and needed to be dealt with on the spot. And that involved a phone call to my bankers in the UK.

I’d tried a few weeks ago to set up an on-line banking service, but it had spectacularly failed, so I put it out of my mind. That was the first thing.

And despite what they told me, they had indeed been notified of my new telephone number. It’s there in black-and-white in my letter of 19th January, and when I had an argument with the bank’s customer service, they telephoned me back on that number on 6th February.

And since then, they’ve been sending me security codes when I’ve been using my UK credit card.

The second thing though is that I need to make a substantial payment to North America, and make it quickly. And I can’t do it by telephone despite whatever pleading I can use. It needs to be done in writing, although a fax machine is acceptable.

I threw away my old fax machine in 2011 so this meant a good hunting down of a fax machine in Granville.

First thing was to type out a letter, and while I was at it to deal with some more post that needed answering. That took me all the way up to 13:45. And then into town to search for a fax machine.

No go at the library. The Tourist Information Office was closed, the Mairie didn’t have one, and neither did the Post Office. But the Post office sent me across the road to the newspaper offices. They had a fax machine, but it was private.

But the newspaper shop next door advertised photocopies and photo-scanning, so I went in there. And sure enough, a very friendly newspaper shop owner had a public fax machine, so that was that.

I picked up one of my favourite baguettes and came back.

Lunch was exceptionally late and I was joined by no one but two lizards who spent more time fighting over a lump of pear than they did actually eating it. And that was surprising because there was more than enough for two.

Having had a lengthy walk just now, I abandoned the idea of going out this afternoon.

And so I was in my apartment to notice one of the school buses take the wrong turning up to the High School and get stuck in the gateway to the Place d’Armes.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw a couple of buses do that earlier this year, but at least there was much less drama associated with this one. With a couple of bits of shunting he managed to get round quite comfortably.

Instead of my walk I sat down on the sofa with a cold drink, and the efforts of earlier were clearly far too much for me because I was out like a light for a good half-hour. This isn’t doing me any good at all.

But I managed to fit in my guitar practice, and then made tea. A burger in a bap with baked potato. And remind me next time that when I go to defrost the burger in the microwave, to take it out of the plastic bag first.

It was an absolutely beautiful evening, and the view across to Jersey was one of the clearest that I have ever had.

If you notice the radio mast over there, it’s really hard to believe that that is 34 miles away from here. But it is.

There was no-one about so i had another run. 110 paces tonight. But I was disappointed that the last two runs haven’t shown up on my fitbit. It’s disappointing to say the least. I’m clearly not going fast enough, but you can’t run before you’ve learnt to walk, can you?

Round the other side of the headland I could see that we’ve had a whole pile of deliveries to the gravel bins.

There’s gravel all over the place again, and even a couple of hundred tonnes of sand.

Does this mean that we’re going to have another gravel boat some time soon? I shall have to pay much more attention that I’m doing, otherwise I’ll miss it.

Tonight I think that I’ll watch another film. I’m becoming quite bourgeois in my sentiments these days. I’m going to have to snap out of that.

But one thing that I did during the odd period here and there of lucidity was to finally finish the blog entry for one day of my trip to the desert. And never mind finishing it, it almost finished me.

It still needs to be poof-read, have the tpying examined and have a spelchek, but it’s all of 5645 words, a new record and by an enormous margin too. You can read it at your leisure.

I deserve a medal.

Sunday 17th June 2017 – JUST WHEN I WAS THINKING …

… that we haven’t had a gravel boat here in Granville since before they replaced the harbour gates, here into the harbour Neptune comes sailing … "dieseling" – ed … in.

And for those of you who are thinking, as indeed I was, that she looks rather familiar, she is in fact our old friend Islay Trader but with a new name.

She’s arrived in port having come from Ramsgate in Kent, where she left yesterday morning at 10:15.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned a good few weeks ago that the heaps of gravel were building up.

But I never expected that it would have taken this long for someone to come along and take it all away.

And it’s going to annoy more than a few mobile-home dwellers who have moved in to occupy the loading bay, seeing as the mobile home park down the road here is full to overflowing. If they don’t move, and move pretty quickly, they’ll find a few hundred tonnes of gravel dropping onto their heads

So what was I doing down on the harbour then so that I noticed all of the itinerant holidaymakers?

The answer was that I noticed that the sailing boat that we saw yesterday was still at anchor down there, and seeing as I was out and about? I went for a look.

She’s called the Charles-Marie and she’s available for private hires and parties, either moored or at sea. And there was one such party taking place on board as I was down there, complete with musicians.

She advertises a few tours too, including one up near Greenland and that has got me thinking. I shall have to make further enquiries about that.

But here’s a thing.

While I was walking back from the quayside, I heard a “SPLATTTT” behind me so I turned round.

And there was a seagull, with some kind of shellfish which it had clearly carried in its beak and then dropped from a great height onto the asphalt and concrete roadbed.

And with the crustacean’s shell having been well-and-truly shattered by the hard landing, the gull was now quite happily picking away at the exposed flesh.

I was totally fascinated by this, but dismayed that it never offered any to me. After all, you shouldn’t be selfish with your shellfish..

Last night was a reasonably-comfortable sleep, although being awake at 06:25 was not what I was wanting. But being awake and being out of bed are two different things, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

09:25 is a much-more respectable time on a Sunday. A late breakfast, most of the time of which was spent clearing up the glass of orange juice that I had thrown all over the table and floor.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall me sayig that I had made a significant purchase at GIFI yesterday.

So abandoning all traditions, I did some work this morning and here you can see my toilet shelf unit all assembled and in its glory.

Storage in this place is non-existent and one has to be inventive. So when I saw this I thought to myself that all of the stuff that is lying about on the floor and in the way will now have a place to go.

Unfortunately there’s a design fault in it, in that it’s just two inches too low to clear the toilet seat. But I can invent something for that in due course.

But it’s not like me to be working on a Sunday, is it?

Lunch was on my wall as usual, with my book but not my lizard friend. I wonder where he got to. And on the way back I met Gribouille and his mum.

That was the cue to go for a stroll.

A quick lap around the walls of the Medieval Town to see what was going on, and down on the beach I noticed these two swimmers leaving the water.

I had to admire their resilience. You wouldn’t have got me into the briny in this kind of weather, that’s for sure. Or in any kind of weather at all these days.

There’s a craft fair and artists’ open-air exhibition in the old town today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I missed the one last year due to having to go to Leuven for a hospital appointment, I was keen to go this year.

It would be nice to find an original seascape to hang on my wall here to decorate the place a little. Maybe not “The Fighting Temeraire” but something similar that would appeal to me.

But there will be nothing whatever going on my wall from this exhibition.

I mean – would you put something like any of these … errr … paintings on YOUR wall? I wouldn’t even embarrass myself by exhibiting stuff like this.

And if anyone fears that I am singling out this stallholder, then they may rest easy because all of the offerings on show where of this kind of quality, to a greater or lesser extent.

And all of the stuff was outrageously expensive too. I was reminded of Ruskin’s comment on Whistler’s painting ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold – “(I) never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”.

There was a house clearance sale going on at the same time, so I stuck my head in for a look. A woman inside asked me “would you like to go upstairs?” to which I replied that that was the best offer that I have had for quite some considerable time.

On my way back from the harbour, I noticed that there was a brocante in the town centre, so I headed in that direction.

And it was another one of these brocantes where the stuff was nothing but overpriced nonsense. There were some paintings on offer that were marginally better than those up in the medieval walled city, but at €3,000 apiece, they weren’t that nice.

But I found a guy selling CDs at €2:00 each and I ended up with a copy of Spyrogyra’a Alternating Currents and a copy of Gargantua by Gentle Giant, a live recording from Germany in 1971.

And what is exciting about the latter album is that although recognised as an official Gentle Giant album, it’s a album that was copied from a tape and only ever released in Italy.

And it’s so obscure that even the Gentle Giant website has the musicians listed incorrectly. According to them, the drummer is Malcolm Mortimore but the date of the recording suggests that Martin Smith was still the drummer at that point.

On the way back up the hill I noticed that our old friend the CF Bedford is back again.

And isn’t this much more like a CF Bedford? And engine crane and two guys busily lifting the engine out by the roadside?

I’m not sure what it was that they were doing, but by the time that I went out for my evening walk, they seemed to have finished it.

We’ve seen this machine before too.

This was one of the floats for the carnival back in February, and I’ve no idea why they have resurrected it and brought it up here this afternoon.

It’s certainly “art”, that’s for sure, but not the kind of art that you would expect to see at an event like this. But nevertheless, it’s much better than anything that I sa there.

Round the other side of the vehicle I noticed that there were several people, including the owners I imagine, tucking into lunch.

A rather late lunch, but then again I suppose that they have been preoccupied. It seemed to be such a social thing to do, out on the street on an afternoon like this.

They should have been selling a few tickets and inviting passers-by for a butty or two.

But I came back here instead and went to Caliburn and took out my battery-powered bass amp to clean it up.

And much to my surprise, there was still some life left in the batteries. And so by way of a change, I had half an hour on the bass with it running through the amp instead of the Amplug. And that made a pleasant change. It wasn’t too loud either.

And using the diagrams that I have been making, I’ve been running through a few numbers and it’s amazing how much it seems to all come back.

Another thing that I did this afternoon, shame as it is to admit it, is to have crashed out. And not once but twice. How sad is that?

Tea was a pizza of course, and then my walk where I met Neptune. And not just walk either. For reasons that I shall explain in due course, I forced myself to run. And I found that I could manage about 100 metres before I gave up, totally exhausted. But the first time in almost three years.

So bed in a second, rather later than usual, because today’s entry as well as containing dozens of photos contains 1460 words and it’s taken ages to write out.

It’s hardly surprising that I’m so exhausted these days.

Saturday 16th June 2018 – AND THERE I WAS …

… last night crowing about how i hadn’t crashed out yesterday.

Well, pride comes before a fall as we all know, and so this afternoon, I crashed out for today, yesterday and for the whole of next week too. A good 90 minutes in total, I reckon. Well away with the fairies.

I did say, didn’t I, that I would pay for yesterday.

It wasn’t as if I’d had a late night either. Well, not by my standards anyway. Mind you, there was a firework display somewhere in teh vicinity so I didn’t go to bed until after it had finished. And I awoke under my own steam too before the alarm went off.

After the usual morning performance there, I had a shower, a change of clothes and all of that lark and then headed to the shops. And they were all packed to the gunwales too.

LIDL had nothing exciting, but there were a few things in NOZ that were noteworthy, including jars of tahini at just €1:49 which is for nothing. I use a lot of it in my hummus, so I bought 4 jars and Liz asked me (because I sent her a text) if she could have one of them. Not a problem.

At LeClerc I bit the bullet. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have carrot issues. For a reason that I can’t understand, they don’t seem to last more than thre or four days here. I don’t like frozen carrots at all but I can’t see an alternative so I bought a packet. 1kg at €0:79 – even cheaper than fresh and will last a darn sight longer too.

But I did spend some money in GIFI. Something caught my eye when I was in there the other day so I went there to see if they still had one, which they did. And tomorrow, when I’ve assembled it, I’ll show you what it is.

Back here I put everything away and then managed to configure my laptop to watch French television and settled down to watch the football, France v Australia.

But I switched off in disgust shortly after half-time. It seems now that they can stop the game so that the referee can look at the TV and the action replays and reverse his previous decisions.

That, of course, is a total nonsense. It’s bad enough, this stop-start football these days, without bringing this into the game. Soon, they’ll be stopping the game to decide on throw-ins and the like, and presumably running commercial breaks while they do it too.

It’s the death-knell for football as far as I’m concerned. Since time-immemorial part of the whole football experience for the fans includes having a good old moan at the referee. Take that away and you lose half of the excitement.

Instead, I made my butties and went to sit on the wall with my book and my lizard.

I was however distracted by something in the distance.

But with the big telephoto zoom lens that I have, I can photograph it and then crop and enlarge the image for a closer look. And it turns out to be some kind of small motor boat, like a customs launch or something.

And if you think that the photo is blurred, you need to remember that the coast over there is over 18 miles away so the boat is probably 14 miles away. It’s not oo bad in th circumstances and I would have to pay a lot of money to have anything better.

Back here I had a few things to do and then I crashed out as I mentioned earlier. But once I revived myself I went for a walk around the headland in the hordes of people who were out taking the air, stopping to give Gribouille a pick-up and stroke on the way out.

Liz was on-line later so we had a little chat and then just for a change I sat down and watched a film on the DVD. Austin Powers in The Spy Who Shagged Me. It took ages to get it to play, but fired up in a matter of seconds once I switched the remote control over from “record” to “play”.

Tea was out of a tin tonight (it’s Saturday) and then I went for my evening stroll.

First thing that I noticed was yet more objects way out offshore so this was another job for the big zoom lens.

It turns out that they weren’t ships at all but a couple of islands out to sea, and I realised that I have made this mistake once before.

Still, you can’t win a coconut every time. We did once catch a ship out there with a speculative shot, you may remember.

THis isn’t a speculative shot, by the way, even though you might think so.

Up in that tree is a large tortoiseshell cat.

The tree is growing from the ditch at the town end of the fortifications and the upper branches are leaning against the top of the wall. And this seems to be the favourite route of the aforementioned El Moggo.

She (for I imagine it’s a female) was quite adept at getting up and down there too.

And that sailing boat that we saw coming in to the harbour back three or so weeks ago, it’s coming back in this evening too.

One of these days I’ll wander down to the harbour and find out its name. I’m sure I must have known it at one time.

But I’m very disappointed that it’s not actually sailing, but dieseling into the harbour. I’d be much more impressed to see some real seamanship with it coming in under the power of the wind in its sails.

Talking about wind and sails though, Marité isn’t in the harbour today. I wonder where she has got to. The people who run that have disappointed me too, on several occasions too, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Narrowly avoiding being run down by a motorist going up a one-way street the wrong way, I stopped to take a photo of a little street party in the Place Cambernon.

It seems that the gallery which I mentioned the other week is having an “open day”, or open evening more like. But as I said at the time, the prices of the objects in there are enough to put anyone off.

Instead, I came back home and settled down.

Sunday tomorrow, and a lie-in. And I reckon that I’ve earned it. I’ve had a hard week and I’m feeling the strain. There’s a jazz concert in town this evening, but I’m just not up to going unfortunately.

EPIC HALL

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