Tag Archives: eric hall

Thursday 15th May 2014 – I KNOW THAT IT ISN’T MUCH TO WRITE HOME ABOUT …

… but my home is my home and I didn’t realise just how comfortable I am here.

I had a little something of a late night last night and what with having switched off the alarms it was 11:10 when I surfaced this morning. And ask me if I care?

But I was out and about on my travels last night. I was living in a room in a large house in Margate with some other people and I was offered the chance to have one of two self-contained units in a converted shop right on the sea front at Cliffsend, with 220 metres of private beach. Even though residential permission was not yet accorded, I slung my hook and slunk off there and installed myself. Getting to my private beach wasn’t easy but it was my private beach all the same.

A friend then telephoned to tell me that the company that made the shingles for the roof hand just gone into liquidation and we would not be likely to be able to obtain any more, but it seemed that the owners had anticipated something like this for there as a huge pile of shingles at the back of one of the rooms so we were assured for every eventuality.

So when I finally did raise myself from the dead I had breakfast and caught up with a huge load of things that had been building up on the laptop, seeing as how I’d been without internet access for a week – this blog being one of them.

Huge reams of photos to upload too – about 400 from over the last 7 days, and many of them needed editing too.

I didn manage to go outside – in fact I nipped into Pionsat for some bread and one or two other little things.

But that’s about all really. I’m never at my best the first day or two back home as you know. I’ll have another lie in tomorrow and see hw I feel after that.

Wednesday 14th May 2014 – ISN’T IT JUST LIKE HOME?

Here I am at one of my regular overnight specs at Clamecy and I woke up this morning to find ourselves (well, myself, for I was alone here apart from Strawberry Moose) swathed in a hanging cloud. It’s just typical of my adventures.

All I need now is a snowstorm and I will be fine.

In the night, though, I was in prison. I’m not sure why but anyway there I was. And it was something of an Open prison too for we were allowed out without surveillance to go to operas and dinners and so on. Bizarre. And then we learnt that Prince Harry had died – quite gruesomely it appeared, blown up in some kind of terrorist attack.

First stop on our travels this morning was the town of Clamecy. That’s always been one of my favourites – a real medieval planned town that was a nightmare to drive around before they put in the by-pass 12 or so years ago.

I had a good hour there for a good explore around and I have to say that it lived up to my expectations in every respect. I wasn’t disappointed at all.

The only downside of my visit was that I’d picked one of the two days when they were digging up some of the streets to replace the electric cables. Almost every photograph has a couple of workmen and a pile of building materials in it.

Such is life.

Varzy is the next town along the road. There’s a by-pass of sorts here, with several sharp turns in it that are quite challenging to a modern lorry, that is shown on a map of the area that I have that was dated from the 1930s.

It was therefore no surprise for me to find another one of these quiet, abandoned Medieval towns off the beaten track.

There’s much more to Varzy too than you would think at first glance and I spent a good hour or so here prowling around.

There wasn’t however anything particular to discover although I did make a little comment to myself that I don’t think that I have seen so many cats in one place than I have here. There was even one on the roof of an abandoned building.

After lunch I carried on along the road and discovered a ruined chateau, a neolithic hill fort with the remains of a medieval castle therein and a few other things like that, and this brought me to the town of Prémery.

That’s another town that has been by-passed a good while ago although the main road through it is certainly not as tight as many other places that have to date been overlooked.

Prémery has always been a town that has aroused my curiosity although, now having visited it, I can’t see why because there is nothing special of any note. It has a medieval chateau but then so do many other towns.

The chateau at Guérigny is a little different however. That was built at the time of the Renaissance by the looks of things and by the time that the Revolution put an end to things like this, it still hadn’t been finished. It became the offices for the iron and steel foundry in the town – a foundry that was contracted to the French Navy to supply all of the ironwork, including anchors and the like, for the ships.

The foundry closed down in 1971 and now the chateau is abandoned and overgrown.

Here, the rain that had been threatening for much of the afternoon finally burst into action and for about 45 minutes moving around was impossible. I managed however to fit in a couple of other things and was finally back home by 20:00 this evening – a day or so ahead of schedule.

And, as Golden Earring once famously said, “it’s good to be Back Home”

-2

Tuesday 13th May 2014 – I WOKE UP THIS MORNING …

… "da dah, da da dah" – ed … to find myself abandoned once again by my companions of the night. And there were quite a few of us too at one time.

Mind you, I’d had plenty of companions during the night. I had to meet a friend of mine at the new airport in North-West England, called Skipton although God knows why as it’s miles away from Skipton and much closer to other places, and I didn’t know if he was coming or going, if you know what I mean, so I had to watch both terminals. I ended up talking to someone who was telling me about this most circuitous route he was having to take to go to Frankfurt and it wasn’t until after he left that I realised that he was in fact an airline pilot.

A group of us stopped off at a pub that I knew to do something and then set off back to the airport and on the way back I noticed that the whole bus was littered with frozen food all thawing. It seems that an airline stewardess coming back from Spain had been disciplined for something and so to revenge herself she had emptied all of the frozen food cabinets. I said that it was a pity that no-one had said when we were at the pub because they had a huge frozen food chamber and it could all have gone in that.

Bak at the airport I wondered if I had time to go and sit on the beach (Skipton is a wild place) before my flight and so I telephoned the hotel, that had all the details of flights, but some Australian woman answered the phone, answered me in the rudest of terms and then hung up. So I stormed off to the hotel to register a complaint.

Back in the land of the living (or, at least, the undead), I’ve been wandering around Burgundian towns and villages today – ones through which I have often hurried and never stopped.

We had St Florentin perched on its lofty bluff overlooking the valley in which the road between Auxerre and Troyes has run since long before Roman times. This has been a very rich town at one time as you might expect – on the border between the land of the Dukes of Burgundy and the Counts of Champagne and all of the tribute and tolls that must have flowed through here.

There’s evidence of a great deal of wealth in the past but today the old part of the town is semi-derelict

Pontigny is another place I visited. That is famous for its Cistercian Abbey which is remarkably intact despite the best efforts of the Wars of Religion and the Revolutionary Terror.

Its major claim to fame is that it was the refuge of Thomas A’Beckett and Stephen Langton after they fled into exile having upset the king. Another Archbishop of Canterbury, St Edmund, who served between 1233 and 1240, he is buried here after having died nearby on his way to the Vatican to see the Pope

I was disappointed with Auxerre, despite all of my hopes of the place and despite how nice it looks from across the river.

But then again, it’s probably a very bad idea to come and see anything or anywhere while Troyes is still running around inside my head. Troyes was certainly one of the most beautiful and interesting places that I have ever visited in recent times.

Auxerre does have a lot going for it of course – its river, its churches and abbeys, the vestiges of its walls and its famous clock dating from 1484, but the integration between modern and historical isn’t anything like as well-done as Troyes, and many of the narrow Medieval alleys have been swept away and for no good reason too if you ask me.

And to prove that my stories about fires ravaging the whole of Quebec are… well, not exaggerated but, shall we say, over-emphasised, Auxerre has had its share of fires too. 900, 950, 1023, 1825, to name just 4.

There are some little gems too along the road. One such is the town of Coulanges sur Yonne. This is another place that has been by-passed by the modern road so travellers don’t get to visit it but for a little place of some few hundred inhabitants, it’s gorgeous and you can imagine what many modern cities of today must have looked like 1000 years ago simply by walking around here.

A word has to be said too about its setting. Here at the foot of a steep valley alongside the River Yonne with the high hills and plateau in the background, no wonder it has been left behind in the mists of time.

But anyway, it’s late – later than I was hoping but I needed to push on or otherwise I won’t ever get here. Now I’m off to find some food – at Clamecy more likely – as I have no gas and I’m not paying … … €54:00 to fill up one of my little gas bottles – it’s cheaper to eat out for the last couple of days.

-1

Monday 12th May 2014 – I DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING …

… like as good a night’s sleep last night. But that’s because the bed collapsed in the middle of the night. I thought that it was all too good to be true. I carried out a few hasty repairs and we’ll have to see what that gives. I hope I can make it home without too much trouble – much as I love Caliburn, I don’t want to sleep for the next few nights in his cab.

So after breakfast I headed off to Troyes again and lost my way again. But in the end I did manage to work out how come. Troyes is actually two centres – the old original centre and the newer Medieval centre, and they each have a ring road and so it’s like a figure 8 – and that’s what makes it so complicated.

After much ado, I ended up back where I had left Caliburn yesterday as parking there is free, so another motorist told me. I may just as well have stayed there last night for all the good my meaderings did me.

And what a beautiful place it would have been to stay, too. If this is the kind of thing that you see at a free car park, just imagine what it’s going to be like in the touristy bit.

And if they call Chalons the “Venice of Champagne”, what on earth do they call Troyes? Because it has 10 times as many water courses flowing through it and they are all much more impressive than what you see at Chalons.

Where I parked Caliburn was right by a canal of course, and this view , the quai de la Prefecture, is only a few hundred metres away

Troyes though is a fascinating city and it’s probably one of the prettiest places to visit if you are, like me, a fan of medieval architecture.

There’s all kinds of wooden wattle-and-daub half-timbered houses here and it’s very easy to picture Coventry as looking like this in the 1920s before the planners and the Luftwaffe started to become involved in Coventry’s development.

But as you see, the presence of old medieval architecture hasn’t interrupted the modern progress of Troyes, despite what Donald Gibson (ptah!) might have told us.

What Gibson and his planners did to Coventry in the name of “progress” was nothing short of criminal when you consider how other cities have successfully integrated their historic buildings into modern 20th-Century lifestyles.

As well as the Cathedral, Troyes has dozens of other churches including this one, the Basilique de St Urbain.

The Urbain in question is he who went on to be Pope Urban IV. He was born here – not in the church but in a house on the site of the church. His remains were brought back here in the 1930s and interred in the choir but I couldn’t find any trace of this, and the woman who was on duty here knew nothing, and gave the impression that she didn’t really care either – much more interested in her book.

But just a word here. You’ve seen three or four photos of Troyes. I took about 60 and I could easily have taked three or four hundred. For a lover of medieval architecture and half-timbered buildings, the city of Troyes is a paradise and should not be missed for any reason at all.

Not too far out of Troyes at the village of Souligny is a sign for the site de Montaigu. Montaigu is French for “steep hill” and they weren’t joking either because it was. It’s another oppidum and castle and although the earthworks are well-preserved, there’s nothing left of any building.

Even more annoying, there isn’t anything in the way of interpretive sign to tell you what it was that was here and you are left to resort to guesswork.

There’s something else to add to our list of accomplishments on this journey.

Here at Le Cheminot, a Macedonian living in Italy had a flat battery on his Bulgarian lorry that was towing a Belgian trailer through France (so hooray for globalisation) and so Caliburn and I had to give him a jump start. Good old Caliburn.

But while all of this was going on, we talked about life in Macedonia. He told me that things were much better under Tito – there was work and everyone had some money and some kind of future but now, rampant capitalism has taken over, there’s an immensely rich minority in the country and everyone else is poor and there’s a pile of unemployment. Life in Macedonia is bad. He’s not the first to say this kind of thing to me, and I’ve seen much of this with my own eyes. Communism had its good points as I have said before, just as I have said that Capitalism can in many cases be evil.

And I’m having an early night tonight. The flaming gas has run out halfway through cooking tea.

-1

Sunday 11th May 2014 – I FEEL A HUNDRED …

… times better when I’ve had a decent shower and so you can imagine that this morning I’m feeling on top of the world (so just watch someone come along and spoil it) after the shower that I have just had at the truckstop on the edge of Chalons sur Marne. In fact I can safely say that the shower was better than the sleep that I had – but only just, because that was really good as well.

I made a coffee and then piddled off into town, finding an Intermarche open on the way so that I could do some shopping there and have something to eat at lunchtime, and from there I went into Chalons.

Chalons is a very interesting city, and a very old one too. It came into existence in early Roman days, being situated where the Roman Via Agrippa, that ran from Milan to Boulogne, crossed the Marne. There’s nothing left from those days but you can trace the outlines of all three of the defensive walls that ringed the city at one time or another.

This is the site of the Porte de Marne where the Via Agrippa leaves the city and arrives at the river.

There’s plenty that remains from the apogee of the town’s fortunes in the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries but if you peer through the window-dressing you’ll notice that it’s all in a very poor state of repair indeed and whatever it is that they are spending the town’s money on, it isn’t on the historic monuments and artefacts, that’s for sure.

One important church here in the town fell down in 1157, and it looks as if a couple of others are on their way to join it.

When I used to regularly use the N77 I remember them building the new airport at Varzy. One of the things today was to go for a wander around and look at it.

Its official title is the Aeroport Paris-Varzy, even though it is miles and miles away from Paris and ss you might expect, knowing my luck, it’s closed on a Sunday (which I find rather strange) so I couldn’t go inside. However I didn’t miss much as there wasn’t much to miss. It’s a little, well, basic despite the modern buildings.

There were a couple of bus stops here, one of which advertised a service to Euro-Disney, but all of them bore the same depressing notice – “as of 28 October 2012 the shuttle service is suspended” and gave a list of local taxi numbers, implying that not even taxis wait at the airport. A brand new railway link has been built to the airport but that goes to the freight terminals and doesn’t continue on to the passenger terminal.

All of this implies that a passenger service does not figure highly on the airport’s list of priorities. So if you are offered a flight to Paris-Varzy, bring a good book with you – preferably War and Peace. There isn’t even a hotel for you to go and have a kip.

There were plenty of other things to see along the route – none of which you might find particularly interesting – but a word does have to be said about the little village of Aubeterre. Its claim to fame is that during World War II a Lancaster bomber flying overhead exploded and the bits fell to earth. The rear gunner was trapped in his turret and that fell as one piece, all of about 16,000 feet.

Then, incredibly, the turret found some high-tension cables in a field. It bounced onto the cables, which interrupted its fall and then fell to earth. The rear gunner walked away from the wreckage.

A mere cockstride away from Aubeterre is the historic city of Troyes. This was somewhere that was high on my list of places to visit.

I just meant to have a brief hour or so around the city, but the more that I saw of the place, the more that I explored. I could easily spend a couple of days here.

So I’ve parked up for the night just outside the city and I’ll be back in the morning.

Before I clear off though, I’ll have to post this photo because this building is something for which I came especially to Troyes

A couple of people who figure quite often in these pages, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, are Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve and Marguerite Bourgeoys. The former was the person probably most responsible for the founding of Montréal and the latter was someone who, having been a friend of the sister of the former, was inspired by him to go to the New World.

Following her arrival in 1653 she devoted her life to Good Works especially amongst the female population of the city and the filles du roi, the young girls from the orphanages who were sent to Nouvelle France to become wives for the soldiers who, on the expiry of their period of engagement, opted to remain behind.

For her devotion, she was canonised in 1982, the first female saint of Canada.

Before leaving for Nouvelle France she stayed for a while with Chomedey de Maisonneuve and his sister in their family home. And this building is it.

-3

Saturday 10th May 2014 – ANOTHER GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP …

… here at Blanc Mont and I woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

I wasn’t alone here either despite what it looks like in the photo. Discreetly hidden in the bushes is a French Army radio post and they were most surprised when I stumbled upon them last night when I went for a walk. I had a feeling that they wanted me to clear off but not much chance of that.

Of all of the villages around here, there’s not much to see. Not for me anyway as there is nothing much of historical importance. Well, not for me anyway as everything was obliterated during the fighting of 1914-18. You can see in the odd church some kind of vestige of original stonework, badly damaged by the shelling, but rebuilt with modern techniques and modern materials.

Still, the emphasis here in 1919 was on time, not on aesthetics, and you can’t blame them for that.

This is Navarin Farm on another high point of a Marne ridge. This is a monument raised by public subscription to remember the dead of the Battles of the Marne and is an ossuary where the bones of unknown soldiers recovered from the battlefield in modern times are laid to rest. Even 100 years on, they are still recovering soldiers from the fields.

It’s possible to go in for a visit, but not for me because, with my usual luck, it’s closed.

Outside the ossuary, the ground, in public ownership, has been left exactly as it was at the end of the war. You can see a couple of trench systems here, a concrete pillbox, and thousands of shell holes littering the site.

Just add to this a few feet of water – not hard to do as it was pouring down on an off all through the day, and you can imagine what a nightmare it must have been to have lived in these trenches for 4 years.

Suippes has not much to celebrate as it’s another largely-reconstructed town. Its claim to fame is that during World War II it suffered something of a massacre of its civilian population as you can see from this commemmorative plaque.

It’s quite easy for many people to criticise the French civilians in respect of what some see as a lack of resolution towards the German occupying forces but as I have said before, the critics have never had to run the risk of four years of bombing and four years of Gestapo activity, and never had to stare arbitrary death in the face.

Another dark claim to fame, or maybe infamy, is an event that took place here in 1915. A Division of French soldiers was ordered “over the top” to attack the enemy but having been shelled all through the night by their own artillery which had incorrectly calculated the range, the survivors were reluctant to leave their trenches once the barrage had moved on.

The French military authorities were not impressed and picked at random 25 soldiers and tried them for cowardice. All were found guilty in a summary drum-head court martial and the 4 NCOs were stood up against a wall and shot. It was the inspiration for the Kirk Douglas film Paths Of Glory.

There’s also a museum here and I had a little argument with them about their notices and descriptions – everywhere they talk about Angleterre and the Anglais. I had to remind them, most insistently, that the country is called Royaume-Uni and its inhabitants are called Britanniques.

In the driving rainstorm I paid a brief – but only a brief – visit to a French military cemetery – the Suippes Farm cemetery.

It’s interesting here to notice that many of the headstones are not crosses but a more traditional design with Arabic writing. It’s quite often forgotten that the Arabic colonies of France supplied a huge proportion of soldiers to the French Army and they died for France in the same way that the soldiers of Metropolitan France did. And as soldiers from West Africa did too.

A short drive down the road at La Cheppe, there’s the Camp d’Attila. That’s a Gaulish oppidum of, would you believe, 22 hectares surrounded by twin earthen banks and this is surprisingly complete too. It’s very impressive to go for a wander around the ramparts in the rain – I was certainly having no luck at all with the weather. There’s even a Roman road that passes right by the camp. It’s the kind of place that has everything.

So now I’m off to spend the night on the edge of Chalons. I don’t care what they call it today, or what they will call it in the future. To me, it always has been and always will be Chalons-sur-Marne.

-2

Friday 9th May 2014 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about the sleep issues last night – but not by very much. Although it did take a while to get off to sleep, once I did finally drop off I remember nothing whatsoever until about 07:15 when I woke upto find my little spec here as deserted as the Mary Celeste.

Mind you, it’s not quite true that I remember nothing. In fact I was being interviewed by the local tax inspector who professed total astonishment that my outgoings were exactly the same as my incomings, before any allowance for food and other such personal expenses. I had to explain that some of the outgoings were notional outgoings, that quite often I was fed at work, and that I really was living on the breadline, giving them a tour of my apartment in Jette and showing them the repairs.

So on with the motley today and this is where I start work.

The road between the Belgian border here near Rocroi and Nevers in the Bourgogne is one of the best in the world. It has everything, except the St Lawrence of course, but it also has loads of history and we pass through one of the most devastating battlefields of the war. Not the Somme, or Ieper, or Verdun, but the Marne where the French held off the Germans for four years.

It also has abandoned motorways.

Well, not really abandoned, but in the late 1990s the French built this superb 10-km stretch of motorway to bypass Rocroi and brought it all the way to the Belgian border, and here it sits because the Belgians won’t extend it.

It really is the Road to Nowhere.

The town of Rocroi is interesting, though.

This part of France has always been the cockpit of Europe with invading armies from everywhere crossing back and forth. Many of the nobles fortified their houses and the local churches and even a few hills, and so the King of France ordered a fortified city to be built here.

It’s a typical star-shaped fortress and contrary to what people might think, it’s not a Vauban fortress because it was built in the mid 16th Century, over 100 years before he was born. Nevertheless, he did come here and make a few improvements to the original design.

The fortifications are still almost complete today, and that’s quite astonishing. Some has fallen down and a couple of modern gateways have been pierced through, but nothing, apart from the original narrow gates, seems to have been demolished.

About 10 kms outside the town, the main road passes over a culvert that I have always been convinced was a former railway line.

One of the tasks of today was to track it down and sure enough, here it is. A local yokel (who was not a very vocal local yokel unfortunately) told me that it ran to Rimogne where there were important slate quarries. He remembers it as a boy but it’s been closed for years now.

Winding my way through the Ardennes I come to the town of Rethel.

This is a beautiful little town on the banks of the Aisne with plenty of history. And you might think that the history is reflected in the old buildings here. But in many cases you might be wrong because much of the town and some of the “historic” buildings date from no earlier than 1920, and some from 1945.

The town hall here for example, is from the early 1930s

In 1914 at the start of World War I the town was burnt down (it’s not just in Canada that this happens) and the invading German soldiers did the rest. Rethel was one of the major German garrison towns behind the front line of the Marne battlefields.

In 1940 the town was smashed by General Guderian’s Panzers who passed this way on their race to the coast and then to the Swiss frontier.

The high Champagne plateau is famous for its sugar beet and its wind turbines. There are dozens of each all over the place, and here is one of the bigger sugar beet plants. It’s owned by CADSAR EUROLUZ, whoever they might be, and you can see some wind turbines in the background.

It makes quite an impressive photograph, which is no surprise, as it’s an impressive building in quite an impressive setting.

You’ll all know of this roundabout because I’ve talked about this quite often. It’s on what is the highest point of the plateau and 6 roads come into it. It’s here that we turn south, direction Chalons.

What is remarkable about it is that it is here that the air changes. Standing up on the top here you can feel the difference in the air – to the north and west it’s all claggy and oppressive but to the south it’s a lost fresher and a lot more inspiring in the same way that the air in North America is. It’s something that I can’t explain.

Final stop is one of the biggest German war cemeteries in Northern France. Over 12,000 soldiers, and more arrive each year as they are exhumed from farmland, are in here, four to a grave. There are quite a few Jewish graves and also quite a few soldiers with Polish names because, don’t forget, Poland didn’t exist at this period and was partitioned between German, Austria and Russia

There are probably a few French names in here too because Alsace-Lorraine was part of Germany at this time and soldiers from there were conscripted into the German army.

So tonight I’m at the American war memorial at Blanc Mont. This is one of the highest points on the Marne front line and was heavily fortified by the Germans. There are still the remains of trenches here. The hill was stormed by the Americans under Pershing at the beginning of October 1918 and the Germans pushed back.

And as you might expect, the monument is closed for repair so it can’t be visited. No surprise there, is there?

-1

Thursday 8th May 2014 – I HAD THE BEST …

… night’s sleep that I have ever had in Caliburn, to be sure. I was late dozing off – round about midnight I reckon, but I remember nothing else until the alarm went off at 07:30. Even the morning’s heavy traffic didn’t wake me up. I’ll remember this spec – down at Boisfort on the road out towards the motorway and tucked behind a hedge on the road at the side – for another time.

So once I was organised, I went to park Caliburn on the hypermarket car park and I was off on the Metro once I found the entrance to the station.

First stop was the Troc. All of Marianne’s possessions have been sold, so it seems, and her account cleared. Similar news at the Bank too – the notaire has done the necessary there.

One of the things that I needed to do was to make my annual report to Marianne and check on her grave now that her gravestone has been installed.

The gravestone contains several errors that need to be corrected and so I’ll have to get on to that pretty smart-ish. But at least an all-over stone means that no work is required to maintain her grave. That was always going to be my biggest headache.

Anyway, it’s hard to believe that a year has gone past since she went to meet her maker, and I hope that she is happy wherever she might be.

After that, I turned my attention to happier things and WHA…HEY! I’ve booked my annual journey to Canada. Leaving 28 August and returning 8th October (actually 9th October as it’s a night flight). And with booking so far in advance and not travelling at a weekend the flight works out even cheaper than my previous two flights there, which is excellent news. Just €580 including taxes (which are more than the base price of the flight, would you believe?)

That’s not the best of it either. Had I wanted to go via Air Transat it would have cost me €50 less, if that were possible, but I’m flying Air Canada – a flagship airline too at that price – direct on the outbound flight and via Brussels on the return. I’m quite pleased with that deal, as you might guess, and I’m pleased that Connections, my travel agents, came up with the goods.

I’ve booked 4 nights at that hotel at the Cote de Liesse on the edge of Montreal where I stayed last year. That gives me plenty of opportunity to continue my exploration of the city so I need to make a list of things that I would like to see. I need to focus myself much more positively this year.

I’ve booked another big Dodge too and I do hope that I get one – I’ve heard a nasty rumour that Avis are planning to change over to Fords and the Ford Flex isn’t half as versatile as a Grand Caravan. That was a good deal too, better than last year.

The plan is to explore Montreal, then do the Richelieu Valley in the reverse direction (I hope that they have good mirrors on the car) then go to the Maine State Fair and tractor pull at Clinton. From there to the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival at Fredericton and then I’ll be off to Cape Breton, Newfoundland and then back to Labrador ro complete my visit of Highway 138 and then retrace my steps along the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Such is the plan but as we all know, “the best-laid plans of mice and men” etc etc.

One final task before I leave Brussels. They’ve fitted new brake shoes at the rear of Caliburn but I clearly interrupted them when I arrived to pick him up yesterday, for they had of course slackened off the handbrake cable to remove the brake pads but in the confusion they forgot to tighten it up so I had no rear brakes and no handbrake to speak of when I left the garage.

Now we are all happy again.

Leaving Brussels in a rainstorm, with traffic queues and roadworks all the way beyond Charleroi and I’m now in a lay-by with a couple of lorries in the foothills of the Ardennes near Couvin. Still not out of Belgium, but as my adventure starts at the frontier just up the road, I don’t want to do it in the rain and the gloom of the evening. Who knows? It might brighten up in the morning.

But I won’t have the sleep that I had last night anyway – the rain is bouncing off Caliburn’s roof and it sounds like a drum in the back.

-2

Wednesday 7th May 2014 – I MUST HAVE HAD A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP …

… despie the howling gale that was blowing in around the badly-fitted double glazing units.

During the night, I was back in the UK (well, it’s not all that far from here and you don’t need a ferry for your nocturnal perambulations anyway) with the long-suffering Nerina and I couldn’t take her somewhere on the following day (a Monday) as I’d promised Maria, a Greek girl with whom I was quite friendly when I worked at the EU, that I would do something for her at some place that she had told me and which I knew, but which has now gone out of my head once I woke up.

Nerina wanted to know what it was, and I thought that it was a motorway service area and so probably I had to pick her up off a coach or something. Anyway, our phone wasn’t working properly – when people called us, the phone didn’t ring – so one of us had to stay by the phone (nothing in your dreams is logical, is it?) and I had promised to take Zero to the adventure circus on the Sunday night, so poor Nerina drew the short straw, again.

I took Zero to the circus and right at the end they opened the mudbath for the children. After a couple of minutes of vacillation, one girl leapt in fully clothed, up to her knees, and once she was in, all the others followed suit.

I was then interrupted by another friend, someone from waaayyyyyy back, asking me why I hadn’t done the shopping, to which I replied that I was booked up until Tuesday morning, and what did he need that we didn’t have? He replied “well, wine, of course” – something that brought a smile to my face.

Meanwhile I had lost sight of my charge and had to chase around looking for her and eventually I found her all cold wet and muddy, wrapped in a big fluffy white towel. I had to wash her and shower her off to get her nice, warm and clean again.

So despite all of the excitement of the night, I was once more awake before the alarm went off so I managed to have a good hour or so on the computer before breakfast. Downstairs at breakfast though, I was joined by a coach-load of British tourists and I had forgotten how much I hate the “little England” provincial attitude of the aforementioned, even if it was my bread-and-butter for 13 years in the late 70s, 80s and 90s. I’m glad I don’t have to mix with them today.

Still, never mind. The Hotel New Astoria didn’t let me down. The bed and breakfast that I had for €45 plus local taxes has to be the best deal that I have had on my travels these last few years, despite the company.

Having dealt with the issues of breakfast etc I went for a wander around. I’d seen some kind of ship working just offshore last night in the doom and gloom and lo! and behold – here she was again. Quite an old ship by the looks of things and probably a dredger too, she’s called the Pinta.

Presumably named after one of the three ships – the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria and not after an old Milk Marketing Board advert. And anyway, she looked as if she was old enough to have accompanied Columbus on his travels

On my way back to the station area I found, much to my surprise, a free ferry that crosses the harbour to the other side. I’ve not noticed that before and I wonder why not because I’ve been to Oostende dozens, if not hundreds of times.

As you know with ferries because I’ve told you before, every time I see a ferry it makes me cross, especially if it’s free, and so here I am sailing, or rather, dieseling, across the harbour. No sense in missing out, is there?

The other side of the harbour is also somewhere else that I’ve never visited and, once more, I can’t think for the life of me whyever not.

It’s quite historic over here and all kinds of things are happening, or are on display, or are simply “there”. Like this old barque called, incidentally, the Oostende moored here at the foot of the lighthouse. There has to be a story about this kind of ship and I wonder what it might be.

And, more to the point, why it isn’t moored up with the Mercator, another historic survivor fro the days of sail.

You don’t need me to tell you the story about all of this, do you?

Oostende was one of the more important ports along the coast facing the UK and the Germans had something of a fragile hold here. The ports along the coast, Oostende and Zeebrugge, had been raided in force in World War I and the unsuccessful landing at Dieppe in 1942 showed that the Allies had not forgotten the importance of these ports in World War II.

The Germans thus fortified them as part of the Atlantic Wall defences that I showed you a couple of years ago, and the fortifications still remain.

From this side of the harbour I managed a closer look at Larkspur.

There was no-one around who really knew what was going on with her – I asked a couple of people and they each gave totally different answers – but there was a couple of people in industrial safety clothing on the deck and I noticed a few rubbish skips present at the scene.

From my untutored eye it looked like they were gutting the ship of anything that was of high value in preparation for sending what remains of her to Turkey or India where she will doubtless be turned into a couple of thousand baked bean tins.

What a sad end.

After a marathon hike around the docks (because it is) I made it to the station for the 14:45 train and that had me back in Brussels by 16:00. I picked up Caliburn, did a few bits of shopping, had an excellent falafel supper at that place near Marianne’s and now I’ll be settling down for the night.

I hope.

-2

Tuesday 6th May – I’M GLAD I WENT TO BED EARLY LAST NIGHT …

… because at about 02:00 the refrigeration unit of the lorry parked across from me suddenly sprung into action.

And it was rattling away for about half an hour and just when I thought tht it ould never stop and I was thinking about giving it up and moving on, it cut out as dramatically as it had started and we all managed to go back to sleep.

And no harm done either as I was awake long before the alarm went off too and I even had time to make myself a coffee. No hot water in the Gentlemen’s rest rooms so that ruled out the possibility of a good wash and shave.

There’s no ticket machine at the terminus at Berchem St Agathe and the bus driver wouldn’t change €20 so I ended up at the railway station with a 40 minute wait for a train to the Centre. Fird train that passed was the train that I used to take to go to work when I worked at Boisfort. I was debating whether to take it and do my business around Schuman first, and I wish that I had now because my train was cancelled and I ended up with over an hour to wait. It’s just like a third-world country here.

Anyway I hopped onto the next train going to Schuman and started from there, albeit an hour later than planned.

I dealt with the stuff that needed doing in the city centre and then caught the train back to Caliburn, and doesn’t the rolling stock look modern compared to the relics of the 40s and 50s that they still had here when I used to go to work?

There’s a fritkot right by the station at Berchem and the smell was overpowering. And it was lunchtime too and so I fell by the wayside.

Caliburn is now in the garage having his check-up and I set off to the station. I’m having a night out and so I’m going to the seaside – and why not? It must be all of 2 months since I’ve seen the sea, and it’s not all that expensive on the SNCB, certainly when compared to railways in the UK.

I wouldn’t have made it here to Oostende and back on the amount of diesel that the railfare would have bought me

I’ve found a cheap hotel, the Hotel New Astoria, for the night and I really did forget just how tacky these package holiday resort hotels can be, even down to the organist in the lounge at night. This brings back a few memories I can assure you.

As for value for money, no complaints here at all. I’m quite happy from that point of view.

Down the the docks to see what’s happening and first port … "ahem" – ed … of call has to be the old Larkspur, now apparently known as Lark.

Built in 1976 (so I’m surprised that they didn’t change her name to Ark), which is well past her sell-by date according to EU legislation, she was formerly pride of a couple of ferry fleets, especially the Sally Line with whom she sailed for years as Sally Sky and then Eurotraveller.

She ended her days as the flagship of Trans-European Ferries, who inherited, at several removes, the old National Belgian shipping line that ran between Oostende and Dover. Without the financial backing of the Belgian government, which struggled even so to keep the line running, no-one made a success of the line and TEF was the final fling, having worked some kind of deal with the town of Ramsgate about running into the harbour there.

Now she’s sitting here rusting away while her future is debated.

You have probably seen Larkspur’s sister. A video of her being run aground full steam ahead on a beach in Turkey to be broken was posted on the internet a few months ago and did the tour of the world in seconds flat.

But it’s sad to see her, or any ship for that matter, end her days as a rusting hulk.

She wasn’t the only ship in the harbour either. There were a couple of cruise ships moored here too.

One of them was totally inaccessible but the other one, the Delphin out of Nassau, was moored up next to Larkspur which must have been a different kind of experience for the holidaymakers.

Or maybe it isn’t, for the Delphin is even older than the Larkspur, being built in 1975 and her claim to fame is that she was refloated after sinking in Singapore harbour in 1992 and subsequently undegoing a full refit.

The Delphin was also apparently a former a car ferry – or at least, that’s the impression that I gained after learning that her refit included "welding closed the opening bow doors". She was formerly based at Odessa in the Soviet Union and owned by the Black Sea Shipping Company.

Since then she has passed through many hands, several of them ending in bankruptcy.

There was something of a crowd on the jetty opposite the Delphin and on making enquiries I was told that she was just about to depart. And even as we were speaking, a tug sidled up alongside and a line was heaved aboard.

One the line had been secured, the Delphin cast off from the quayside and with a little "slow astern" and probably some "left hand down a bit" too and "full speed ahead" from the tug, the Delphin slid away from the quayside and executed a beautiful 180° turn in the harbour.

Poetry in motion, you might say.

Now that she was pointing in the correct direction, it was "full steam ahead" and she set off into the setting sun with her full load of passengers – next port of call Ijmuiden in the Netherlands.

I set off too in search of food and ended up with the worst, and probably the most expensive, falafel supper that I have ever had the misfortune to eat. That was a real disappointment after the excellent falafel suppers that I have had in Brussels.

Anyway, that was enough excitement for me. Back to the hotel where I discovered that I had forgotten to bring with me my USB key with my collection of feature films downloaded from http://www.archive.org.

Never mind – I had an early night instead.

-1

Monday 5th May 2014 – I KNEW THAT IT WAS A MISTAKE …

… to have that final cup of coffee. Despite being nice and comfortable in my little bed – no complaints there of course – I couldn’t get off to sleep and I was watching dawn break through the windscreen at one moment. I think that the best sleep that I had was the hour or so after the alarm went off, to be honest.

Mind you, no complaints about the choice of service area either. This was quite quiet and isolated and with the “usual offices” close to hand, which is always a bonus.

The coffee was still warm in the flask as well and so that saved on brewing up too.

Once that was organised, I could hit the road, but not before laughing at some Parisian’s idea of parking. Why take up one place when you can take up four? No wonder that all of the other French people that I know don’t have a very high opinion of Parisians.

The journey to Brussels was quite uneventful but I realised that I would be too late to do what I needed to do as I wouldn’t be there before lunchtime, so I hit the shops at Waterloo. And Media Markt was having a sale so I stocked up on a pile of DVDs. There’s enough there to keep me out of mischief.

In Brussels, Caliburn’s annual check-up is fixed for Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning and so I need to find something to do for Tuesday night. And I have a cunning plan too! Just wait an see!

A visit to IKEA is always compulsory espcially as I have a few little things to buy, and I finally found a sofa that is what I want for the house, whenever that it might be that I’m ready for it. But I’m not holding my breath, as you can imagine;

However I saw the funny side of something that happened in IKEA and when I find my micro-SD card converter I’ll show you a photo of it.

After having had multi-level marketing

on an Air Transat flight last year, we now have staggered opening times for different nationalities. This must be something of a first in the Developed World, although of course it is Belgium and anything can happen here.

As indeed it did. Half an hour after typing these words I had a run-in with the Belgian police – yet again. And it wasn’t as if I was doing anything either. I was quietly parked up at the side of the road reading a book. Either Caliburn or Yours Truly is well-known to the Belgian police, I reckon. But then again I recognised one of the policemen – he was one of the two with whom I’d had a “frank exchange of views” last year, so he was probably getting his own back.

God how I hate this country.

Anyway, If that’s not enough excitement for the day, while I was parked up at the motorway service area outside the town (and outside the jurisdiction of the poilce of Bruxelles-Capitale, I ended up repairing some young guy’s car that had broken down and later I witnessed a collision between two lorries on the car park.

It really IS all happening here.

-3

Sunday 4th May 2014 – I HOPE THAT YOU ALL HAD …

… a happy Star Wars day. Yes, May the fourth be with you, all of you.

As for me, I had a Happy Star Wars day, and for two reasons too.
Firstly, I had the first produce out of my garden. Only a handful of lettuce leaves, nothing to get too excited about, and especially since they were from bought baby lettuce that was planted and grown on, but garden produce just the same and it tasted beautiful.
Secondly, I had my first soalr shower of the year. And admittedly the water was only 26.4°C so I had to add 5 litres of hot water, but that solar hot water came out of the dump load for surplus electrical energy so it was all mine anyway. And besides, it was the first go in the new shower cabinet and that was exciting too.

Yes, you’re right. Surplus electrical energy. We finally had the day that we were promised for yesterday, with beautiful sunshine and not all that much cloud in the sky. And about time too.

And I missed some of it as well. With it being Sunday I had a long lie-in until 09:40 for which I was very grateful. Then after breakfast I carried on with the web pages. I’ll get them up-to-date if it kills me in the process.

After lunch I swept out the rear of Caliburn and now he’s clean and tidy. He has a bed – the one that I shortened the other day – suspended from the sides, and a matress abd clean bedding and it’s all looking quite comfortable in there.

When I had finished tea I washed up, finished loading Caliburn and then hit the road. 21:30, it was when I set off and by 02:00 I was somewhere between Paris and Lille in a service area having stopped off for 10 minutes to fuel up and pour some coffee out of the flask for me.

And now I’m going to try out the bed.

-1

Saturday 3rd May 2014 – I’VE BEEN A LITTLE PREMATURE …

… about these batteries, so it seems. The problem has been that it’s not been quite dark when I’ve taken the readings and when I’ve been out the next morning to check, the sun has been up for an hour or two, so the voltage reading is being distorted by the amount of energy being received.

However, it’s possible to program the charge controller to show Minimum Volts, and that’s what I’ve done. And that reading isn’t anything like what I was hoping it to be. But the barn is lit by a few of these 1-watt LED lighting strips and they are plenty bright enough even with a lower-than-expected voltage so no harm is being done. The batteries are certainly good enough to power them and I don’t need anthing more than that for the time being.

So apart from that, what else?

I had a late night last night and so it was a struggle to crawl out of bed this morning. But I did, and at a reasonably-respectable time too.

And I worked on the web site too and uploaded a pile of pages – the effort of the last couple of weeks on the North Shore of the St Lawrence River. If you go to this page and follow all of the links, you’ll see the … gulp … 18 pages that I’ve uploaded.

And I’m nowhere near the end quite yet either.

This afternoon I’ve been tidying up a little. That’s right – only a little. As you know, I’m off on my travels on Sunday night as I have a few things to attend to in Brussels. And for that I need to find a few papers and a Bank Card – hence the urgency.

Anyway, much of the stuff has been found and I can now head off tomorrow night in reasonable peace, once I’ve cleaned out Caliburn. The back of the van is in a desoerate state after having had all of that mess inside it.

So apart from that, not much else to tell you about. I haven’t done too much else.

What is a real shame though is that my little attic doesn’t look very much different after my tidying-up session, despite the two bags of rubbish that I took out. All of this is very depressing.

And the glorious, clear skies that the weathermen promised us today. Ptah!! That’s very depressing too!

-1

Friday 2nd May 2014 – I’M CLEARLY …

… in the wrong line of business, that’s for sure.

I went round to Rosemary’s and loaded up her old zinc guttering and downpipes into Caliburn along with the btteries and aluminium and then after having given her a hand with a few little jobs we set off to St Ours les Roches and the metal factor.

We didn’t have enough to be put on the weighbridge so we had to unload it and sort it by hand, which took about 45 minutes, and then weighed it on some smaller scales.

And then off to pick up the money.

And then to pick myself up off the floor and walk out waving a cheque for … errr … €363:23. Yes, I’m clearly in the wrong line of business.

Mind you, we were lucky to get there because round about St Angel I head a rumbling from the front end as if a tyre was about to go. The noise worsened, without the loud bang however, and the steering didn’t seem to be affected, but at the first available opportunity I stopped for a look.

At first I thought that a wheel bearing had given up but in actual fact the wheel had worked loose – nothing more than that. So I tightened it back up.

I also checked the other wheels and about half the wheel-nuts had come loose, so i’ve no idea what was happening there. So they are all retightened now and I’ll check them again in early course.

Back at Rosemary’s we had home-made soup and a chat, and then I nipped off to do my shopping to save me coming out tomorrow. In the Intermarche at Pionsat I met Rob and Julie and then Keith and Clare.

It was all happening today again.

-2

Thursday 1st May 2014 – THIS BLASTED WEATHER …

… is getting on my wick; Non-stop rain again for the I don’t know how manyth consecutive days. 7.5mm today. Well over a week since I last saw the sun and yesterday, I had about as much solar energy as I would get in a wet winter weekend in Weymouth.

On the positive side, though, the two batteries that I put in the barn seem to have sprung into life. We had a little more solar energy today and they have not only charged themselves up but they seem to be holding the charge too. That’s a little relief and means that I’m not so rushed about doing the new floor in downstairs and installing the mega-batteries.

Still, that’s a job that is high on my list for when I come back here.

Apart from that, I had a nice early night last night and when I woke up – to the sunshine – I thought that this would be a good day. I lay in bed for ages reflecting on this and that and then decided to haul myself out of bed as it was late enough.

This was when I found – to my chagrin – that it was just 07:15 – even earlier than if I had set the alarm. That filled me full of gloom, I can tell you.

With it being Bank Holiday I’ve not done a tap of work. i’ve been up here all day working on my website and slowly pulling myself along the North Shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence. I’ve no idea whan I’ll reach the end, but then I’ll have plenty more stuff to be dealing with.

Not only that, I’m making plans for my annual trip to Canada. Looks like I’ll be going as usual round about the end of August and I’ll try to fit in another trip around the Trans-Labrador Highway if I can. Lots of stuff that I missed out on my first trip that I need to fill in.

EPIC HALL

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