Tag Archives: eric hall

Thursday 11th November 2010 – I’M BACK …

… on the road again and tonight will be my last night in North America.

This morning was rather confused though. According to Casey’s temperature gauge its 14°C outside – yet again!

This gives the lie to this idea about severe winters out here in Freezing Cold Canada doesn’t it? it’s flaming mid-November – what is the weather like in France … "it’s just as " – ed.

Mind you it’s below freezing and its snowing in Labrador.

I have just seen now on the other carriageway of this highway – heading in the direction of Windsor a vehicle that I am absolutely convinced is one of the big Fiat 125s.

If it is, and I cant think what else it could be, it gives a lie to the old story about “Fix It Again, Tony”, doesn’t it?

And quite a bit later somewhere on the road to Niagara Falls I saw an XKE – an E-type Jaguar – heading towards me. This was one of the late-model hard-top coupé version, and when was the last time that I ever saw one of those?

It wasn’t a convertible, though. And when was the last time I saw one of those?

And it was round about this point that I remembered that I had forgotten to take a photograph of the Ambassador Motel where I’ve been staying just now. I’m not doing so well, am I?

My road took me towards Hamilton and the airport there. And, more precisely, the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum based at the airport.

The Museum tells us that its mission is “To acquire, document, preserve and maintain, a complete collection of aircraft that were flown by Canadians and the Canadian military services from the beginning of World War II to the present …”

Such as this Bristol-Fairchild Bolingbroke, which we Europeans know much better as a Bristol Blenheim.

This is a reconnaissance version, as you can tell by its elongated snout.

When I say that this is “a” Bristol-Fairchild Bolingbroke, I’m being somewhat economical with the truth. It is in fact “many” Bristol Bolingbrokes.

When they were taken out of service they were sold off for scrap and the shells were very popular with farmers as chicken coops and the like.

Even today, you can still find them on farms and in scrapyards, and a total of eight of these “wrecks” have gone into assembling this one.

No prizes for guessing what this one is.

It is of course a Supermarine Spitfire, and the cockpit and a few other bits and pieces tell you that it’s a late-model one too.

As I suspected, it is indeed a late-model – a Mark XVI from April 1945 but which never saw actual combat.

Another aeroplane in here that never saw combat – although it certainly was old enough to do so, is this one.

Again, no prizes for guessing what this aeroplane is. It’s a Douglas DC3 – the legendary Dakota.

It’s always been a civilian aircraft – not a converted C47 “Skytrain” like so many were. She first flew in 1939 and spent the war years flying for Eastern Airlines.

Now here’s an aeroplane that I’ve been looking forward to seeing.

It’s a Westland Lysander and you may be surprised to learn that I’ve never seen one of these “in the flesh” before.

Built for an Army Co-operation role, there was a mix-up over the specifications and it turned out to be totally unsuited to the task.

However, its slow speed (stalling at only 65 mph), very short take-off and landing requirement and rather spacious interior soon found the aeroplane ideally suited for another role.

These were the planes that, painted black, used to fly out in the dead of night to land in lonely fields deep in Occupied Europe.

There, they would put down Resistance leaders, bring in supplies and pick up evading or escaping airmen and the like

Here’s another fine example of military aviation – the very-much unsung B25 Mitchell Bomber.

Not very successful against front-line German fighter opposition, their deployment was much more common in the Pacific and Mitchells were the first Allied aeroplanes to drop bombs on mainland Japan.

This one didn’t though – it wasn’t built until 1945 and so missed the war. It was discovered on a airfield in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1975, patched up, and flew in to Hamilton under its own steam for a programme of restoration.

I reckoned that this was a Fairey Fleet Air-Arm machine but wasnt sure quite what it was. Subsequent enquiries revealed that it’s a Fairey Firefly.

These were carrier-based fighters (hence the fold-up wings) and were two-seaters. They carried a navigator because it’s much more difficult to concentrate on navigation over the sea – with no reference points or landmarks that a pilot might immediately recognise.

Although dating from 1943, this one is a “peacetime” 1951 model and comes from Australia.

Loads of other aeroplanes here, but there was only really one that I was interested in seeing of course.

The museum is the proud possessor of one of the very few remaining Avro Lancasters – and furthermore one of the only three that still flies.

My interest though was from another point of view entirely. I blagged my way in to see the assistant-director of the museum with the express purpose of talking to her about KB882.

Her response was frightening. “Ohhh – we could use it as spares for ours!”

That is what I call sinister and that will be an even worse fate than that which it is currently experiencing. I rather wish that I hadn’t said anything now.

Don’t forget – KB882 flew over Germany on wartime missions – it has far more history than the one here.

I’m coming round more and more to the conclusion that the only hope for the future for KB882 is that if I put my money where my mouth is and buy it myself.

I went off to seethe … "is this a typing error or a Freudian slip?" – ed … aeroplane and had a wander around inside it and a sit at the controls.

That has to be one of the highlights of the voyage.

It cheered me up a little – but only a little. I was definitely shocked to the core.

I actually felt quite sorry for the poor people who spent all of their air-time crouched over these guns.

It can’t have been very pleasant for anyone to have sat here behind your twin .303s watching someone with a couple of 0.5mm cannon and a barrage of 8x.303s coming swooping down towards you and knowing that you might as well just throw stones at them for all the good that your defensive armament will do.

but the position which no-one wanted to occupy – unless he was a complete psycopath – was the rear gunner.

Night-fighters did most of their stalking from the rear and it’s inevitable that the rear of the Lancaster is going to be the first aiming point of the night fighter.

I don’t care what anyone says, the Mark I eyeball was never as good as the Lichtenstein radar carried by the nightfighters and the first warning that the rear gunner received was a fusillade of cannon shells and machine-gun bullets.

The museum was in a hurry to close (have I been here THAT long?) but I had just enough time to stick my head inside the bomb bay.

Just imagine one of Barnes Wallis’ Bouncing Bombs or 10-tonne “Grand Slams” stuck up there!

But I had to go. So much more that I wanted to see too but here they were, throwing me out.

But what a place it is, though. A museum curator who “knows the price of everything but the value of nothing” – that’s a harrowing thought.

Makes me wonder what else have they cut up at that museum that they are keeping quiet about?

And now for my last night in North America, which I’m at Fort Erie.

Port Erie is just like Windsor – a Canadian city with a big American City just across the River Niagara there.

That’s Buffalo over there, and we’ve been there before – and it seems like 100 years ago now.

But here we have a railway museum, the start of the Welland Canal (that enables ships to by-pass the Niagara Falls) and a few other things too;

Like a big bridge – the Peace bridge of 1927 in fact.

Named to celebrate 100 years of peace between the USA and Canada, construction started in 1925 and was opened to the public on 1st June 1927.

At the time, it was the only bridge between Niagara Falls and Minnesota across the Canada-USA border that could take road-going vehicles.

As you admire the colour changes, let me tell you that the bridge is built of 9800 tons of steel – of which 9,000 tons is in the structure and 800 tons as reinforcement in the concrete.

Altogether, it’s 5800 feet long, which is about 1.1 miles in real money and it spans a river where the average current is about 10 mph.

That’s actually quite a speed for a river.

Some of the most spectacular Canadian customs facilites are here too. That building down there never dates from 1927 – I promise you that!

It incorporates the toll plaza apparently and dates from 2005. There are 14 lanes for cars and special facilities for lorries, of which over 4,000 pass through every day.

As a result, the facilities are often overwhelmed and there is talk of some kind of pre-clearance facility similar to the European TIR idea.

I found a motel at a reasonable price and I put a tin of beans in the slow cooker before I went on my ramble.

On the way back I went to look for some chips to have with them but would you believe … in the whole of this town near where I’m staying where there are three or four fast-food places, there’s not a six of chips in sight.

And so I sulked off for an early night.

I’m off to Toronto where my aeroplane will await me at 20:50. And I’m already depressed about leaving Canada. I shall be inconsolable by the time I get back to Europe.

-1

Wednesday 10th November 2010 – GOOD GRIEF!

I’ve seen a few things today that have opened my eyes!

Actually, I knew that this kind of thing went on, like we all do, but I never expected to see it first-hand.

It started easily enough here at the Ambassador Motel and then I headed off across the border. There was the usual unpleasant scenario at Immigration – something that always drives me mad of course, and then off to find a Home Depot.

Having come off the free-way in Detroit, I did have to say that this is not the area where I would like to brandish a camera about.

And consequently I am not going to show you any photo of the car that’s parked up here on the left that looks like someone has pumped two bullets through the rear window.

Yes, The Lady Who Lives In The Sat-Nav ought to be an option for “salubrious area” and “insalubrious area”. This is not the area that I would have chosen to have driven.

I arrived at the Home Depot for more stuff and stepped straight into a drama.

A car pulled into the car park, closely followed by a couple of cars containing some of Detroit’s finest.

The car stopped and the aforementioned in the vehicles behind leapt out brandishing firearms and the like and what happened is what I would euphemistically describe as a “police interaction”.

I went into the Home Depot and bought some stuff in the Ryobi sale – an alligator saw, a compressor and a flash-light.

I knew where the mail company offices were, because I’d looked for them whem I was here in early October.

I shot back into town and packed up all of my stuff for shipping across the Atlantic.

And how things have changed since the last time that I was in the USA shipping stuff abroad.

Picking myself up off the floor, I headed off for a look around the north end of the city.

From over in Windsor – which is over there – I’d seen a little island in the middle of the river.

That’s on the USA side of the border so I went over there to have a look – and the view of Windsor was quite impressive

The view of Detroit isn’t too bad either, is it?

It looks quite an attractive modern city from here, but that really does belie its true appearance as you know.

That square mile of the city looks quite attractive, but the rest of the place – well, you’ve seen for yourself, haven’t you?

There’s also a good view of the Ambassador Bridge – or, at least, there would have been had the weather been better.

And make the most of the view too, because it won’t always look like this.

Plans are afoot – and have been since 2004 – to replace the bridge and by the time that you read this, the proposals will be well advanced and land is, even as we speak, being bought for its construction.

The Gordie Howe International Bridge may yet become a reality

Fuel was next, and I had the somewhat delightful privilege of seeing a petrol station attendant who was actually barricaded into his hut and his only access to the customers was via a CCTV camera.

Most unpleasant.

I tell you now – I wasn’t sorry to be back across the river in the comfort and safety of Canada. I could feel the stress and I’d only been there for five or six hours.

Tuesday 9th November 2011 – NO PHOTOS TODAY, FOLKS.

And that should come as quite a surprise to most people, what with me being in Canada and all of that.

But there are several good reasons for that, not the least of which being that I’ve not done anything worth talking about today.

This motel is quite cheap, as I said. And there are good reasons for that. It’s a little shabby around the edges and it’s right by a main road so it’s rather noisy.

But then again I’ve paid more money to have a worse night’s sleep than I’ve had here so I’m not surprised, and it doesn’t worry me too much. When you are on the economy plan, Value For Money is everything, as we all know.

First job today was to empty Casey, throw away all of the rubbish that has accumulated and do my best to make him look presentable. And that’s a hard-enough battle as it is.

Next visit was to the shops. I’m planning on posting a pile of stuff back to France as you know, so I may as well make the most of the packages by putting other thins in it too.

But that ground to a halt, for the simple reason that if I’m going over to the USA to post things, then shopping in the USA will be so much cheaper.

I’ve been letting the photos and the notes off the dictaphone lapse a little too, so they have been receiving my fullest attention too.

All in all, this has been a day of “mending the nets”.

Monday 8th November 2010 – I DID OK …

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

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

The drive down to Windsor was absolutely uneventful – I can’t think of anything at all to say about it, even if it was a rather circuitous route that I was obliged to follow.

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

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

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

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

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

-1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-2

Saturday 6th November 2010 – IT’S A GOOD JOB …

… that I wasn’t able to blog last night as much of what I would have written would have been unprintable. I was already in a bad mood due to a lack of sleep – some guy and his ladyfriend returned from somewhere at about 03:50, making a lot of noise as they returned, but that noise was nothing what was to follow.

I made a suggestion about what he could do about that but he was clearly far too preoccupied to take any notice of me, and I couldn’t even applaud the finale because that just isn’t something that you can do with just one hand.

So eventually it was dawn and after breakfast I set off to Exporail, the railway museum about 20 miles from Montreal on the site of the old ALCO locomotive works.

17 dollars to get in to see the largest collection of railway locomotives in North America (I only wanted to see them not buy them!) and after spending about 3 hours in building 1 I went over to building 5.

This is where the more interesting locomotives are to be found – the ones that have been salvaged from scrapyards, industrial plants and so on and have yet to be brought up to exhibition standard

But all the doors were locked

“That room is closed for the season”
“What?”
“Well, there’s no heating in it …..”
Heating? This is Canada. what does heating have to do with anything?

So no advance warning, no reduction of the admission price, no nothing. And no interesting locomotives either.

And so they got a piece of my mind. I won’t have any left at this rate if we carry on like this. But no heating. How about sending all of the “workers” to do a spell at a museum in Labrador City? And then they’ll find out what it’s like to be without heating.

And talking of heating, they aren’t kidding about Ottawa being the second-coldest capital city in the world behind Ulan Bator in Mongolia.

Driving up off the Plain of St Lawrence onto the Canadian Shelf the temperature suddenly dropped 5 degrees and from a fairly sunny 5 degrees in Montreal we had a cloudy zero and flurries of snow.

It’s a good job that Exporail isn’t situated there. It would all be closed, and permanently too.

-1

Friday 5th November 2010 – I WENT FOR MY WALK …

… around Old Quebec this morning but I only stayed for two minutes. And if you look at the roadway in front of the building you will see why.

There were waves of rainwater cascading down the hill. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen rain like this.

And that’s been the story of the day so far – torrential rain until about two hours ago.

Mind you I headed out for Battlefield Park so that I could scale the Heights up to the Plains of Abraham in the footsteps of Wolfe’s soldiers of 1756 and fall upon the city from the rear despite the atrocious weather, but would you believe this – the park is closed for the season.

Probably the most absurd thing that I have ever seen. I had to content myself with peering through the gloom at the Pont de Quebec instead.

So I went off to Montreal to run a couple of errands. The first one took a while as I expected and then I went off to Mount Royal Military Cemetery (where my great grandfather is buried) to speak to someone in the little museum there.

Regular readers of these pages will recall the map I found at a brocante over a year ago – the cloth map of Belgium dating from about 1910 and marked up as the property of one R W Seath, 11th battalion Canadian Field Artillery and showing the position of the Front Line in Belgium round about Armistice Day – anyway I’ve presented it to the Museum as that’s where it probably ought to belong (and if not, they will find a proper home for it).

Now I’m in a motel here in Montreal. The Howard Johnson Motel at St Leonards has a special offer on – a single room at $59 with breakfast included, and that’s where I’m staying.

Tomorrow morning I’m off to the Canadian Railway Museum just outside Montreal and then off to see Ottawa which, for the benefit of those who don’t know, is the second-coldest capital city in the world, beaten only by Ulan-Bator in Mongolia.

-1

Thursday 4th November 2010 – TODAY GOT OFF TO A BAD START.

I sat up bolt upright in bed at 06:20 – what happened to my 06:00 alarm call? So I quickly showered and dressed, loaded up Casey and took the key back to the office ready to give them a piece of my mind when I glanced at the clock – 05:55. Yes, I’d forgotten to retard my mobile phone to “Quebec Time”, hadn’t I?

D’ohhhh!

So at least I was ready nice and early down to the ferry port and I insinuated myself into the queue with all of the other cars.

As we were loading up I idly noticed another smaller ferry making its way out of port. “I wonder where that might be going” I said to myself, and thought no more about it.

And maybe two hours later we had the skipper on the ship’s PA system”we will be arriving in Godbout in about 30 minutes ….”
Consequently I buttonholed a passing steward

“Godbout? isn’t this the ferry to Baie Comeau then?”

“No – that leaves from the terminal next to ours about 30 minutes before we go”

So Godbout it was – about 20 minutes farther across and a 50-minute extra drive. Blast! This is going to mess up all of my plans.

I headed off to Baie Comeau where I fuelled up Casey, and set out for the 400-odd km drive to Quebec. I didn’t hang about too much, although there was still time to take some photos of all of the things that I had missed on my way up and when I had come here in 2001.

But getting closer and closer to Quebec it was getting darker and darker, and I realised that what with the changing weather and the late arrival I was never going to get my two hours or so around the old town.

And as we started to climb up the legendary Cap Tourmente out of the wilderness and over into the Plains of St Lawrence (you saw the pic on my way out a few weeks ago) there was a huge snowplough parked ominously at the side of the road.

The hill is about 790 metres high according to my altimeter (this satnav really is good what with all of these options) and at about 500 metres it started to snow. And by the time we made it to the top it was a veritable blizzard blowing.

But I’m in Quebec and the light beat me to it. But anyway I didn’t fancy going out because it’s absolutely teeming down outside. I bet it’s snowing like hell up there.

And the motel is a reasonable one – 60 dollars plus tax and quite respectable (or at least it was until I got here) – good value for a major city motel.

Mind you I can’t get used to the noise and the people after all this time in the wilderness. It’s all quite uncomfortable. It makes me wish I was back out on the Coasts of Labrador again.

And I certainly don’t want to go home.

-2

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 – AND NOW THAT MY MEMORY CARD READER SEEMS TO BE WORKING …

… I can show you some more pictures of the Gaspe Peninsula to make you realise just how beautiful it is and how happy I would be to stay on here.

In fact I’m still here now despite my words of yesterday, for I missed the 17:00 ferry by a country mile. That was mostly because I had spent a nice hour or two wandering around the town of Gaspe to see what there was to see – of which there was plenty.

I then went off down to the headland for a nosy and I was still there at 13:00. One claim to fame of Gaspe Bay is that it was fortified as a base for the Royal Navy if the UK fell to the Germans in 1940 and not only is there a fort in the hills to protect the harbour, it also still has its guns.

And after a bit of a clamber and a hike across the cliffs I managed to track it down. And yes, its guns are still there as you can see.

I couldn’t get down to the far end of the Point though. What with one thing and another (and once you get started you would be surprised just how many other things there are) I’d left it far too late to go there on foot. It’s not possible to go all the way down to the end.

But not to worry. There were still plenty of things to see in the area and I can always come back here again, can’t I?

Now followers of my outpourings will know that I wrote some stuff about the coffin ships – the sailing ships that took the Irish to the New World in the wake of the potato famine in the late 1840s.

I mentioned the cholera that they endured and there was also the starvation on board ship if supplies ran out, as well as countless other sufferings that the passengers had to endure.

But one suffering that must always have been on their minds was the risk of shipwreck and I went to visit the site of the shipwreck of one such coffin ship – the Carrick’s of Whitehaven out of Sligo that ran aground just off Gaspe Point on 28th April 1847.

It’s pretty much largely forgotten now, being isolated in the middle of a huge new road system (such as would be huge out here) and the monument to the 187 immigrants lost and the communal grave of the 84 whose bodies were recovered is nevertheless pretty poignant.

There was a further update to this story at the beginning of June 2019.

There has always been an apocryphal story about a mass grave relating to victims of the disaster, and starting in 2011 following a severe storm, bones started to be washed ashore close to the memorial.

This was followed by the unearthing of several other sets of bones on the beach in 2016.

An analysis of the bones was published by Parks Canada, which suggests that the age of the bones together with the likely diet identified during a DNA analysis corresponds with that which one might expect to see in victims of the Carrick’s disaster.

You might remember me talking about Marconi and his bouncing of messages across the Atlantic. Of course once they reached land at Cape Race they would need to be bounced by shore stations and we saw one of those on the coast of Labrador.

The next one further down is on the north shore of the Gaspe Peninsula here at Pointe à la Renommée and after trekking about 6kms down a dirt track that would be a match for the bad ones of Labrador and then descending 150 metres to the shoreline I managed to find the remains of that as well.

And so I’m still on the Gaspe – in a motel in Matane.

It’s Thursday tomorrow so there’s only one ferry and that’s at 08:00 so that’s a 06:00 alarm call. I won’t be up for long. And if I can’t get a place on that then I shall have to drive down the south bank of the St Lawrence and head for Quebec City that way.

I can’t afford the time to wait until Friday to get across.

-3

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 – HAVING SURVIVED …

… last night’s motel I woke up to the coldest day of the journey so far (Labrador excluded of course).

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

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

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

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

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

And so then along the north bank of the Baie de Chaleur, or the south shore of the Gaspe Peninsula, depending upon how you look at it.

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

This north bank (or south shore) is really beautiful and you can’t move along it without tripping over a motel ir a guest house. There are thousands of them.

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

Highlight of today’s part of the voyage has to be the town of Perce, and this was where I was headed.

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

I’m now in a motel in the town of Gaspe – the eastern-most town on the peninsula.

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

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

That is rather a depressing thought, you know.

-2

Monday 1st November 2010 – THE ONE THING …

… that I’ve learnt from stopping on my way around is that it’s very hard to start up again. And it was indeed hard to go back on the road. But this morning it was a case of having to. Turning on the radio and hearing Lindisfarne‘s
“I have no-one to call my friend”
“The road I travel has no end”
“and so I turn my face up to the sun”
“and walk on down the road to Kingdom Come”
that didn’t help matters.

I really enjoy my time in Centreville with Rachel and her family and friends. It’s the closest thing that I have ever had to a family and I am always really sorry to leave

And leave I must, unless I can pull off something truly spectacular, and I do have a cunning plan, from what I have learned while I have been over here.

In 2003 I started my circuit in Bathurst and that was where I was aiming for. I wanted to poke around the town as I didn’t see it then due to the thick fog that was there.

But the road across New Brunswick back to the east coast was exciting, due in no small part to the fact that we had heavy snow in places. Winter is truly here and how quickly it has changed since Thursday when I was wandering around Woodstock in shirt sleeves.

As for Bathurst, it’s tempting to say that I didn’t really miss all that much, but then I did pick a really bad time to call.

The big paper mill had closed down suddenly without much notice, and there was a big industrial dispute going on about a big hotel or something that had also closed down leaving scores of people stranded. No town could look its best under such circumstances, and I should perhaps have postponed my visit until another time when the town has had sufficient time to sort itself out.

So after Bathurst I had a leisurely drive along the coast northwards, admiring the wind turbines across the Baie des Chaleurs in the Gaspesie, all bathed in the glorious evening sunlight.

And as I was driving through Dalhousie and debating whether to stop at one of two B&Bs at $65 or a motel “starting from $69” in Campbelltown, I came across a motel at $59 that wasn’t in the tourist guide.

And I’m not surprised either – but then again I’ve stayed in worse and there’s the internet and a TV (it’s Monday Night Football) and it might be tatty and so on but it’s clean, and I’ll have my money’s worth here without a doubt.

Remember that I’m on the economy package and I’m going for “value for money”. However if I don’t blog tomorrow you will know that I will have been stabbed to death in the shower.

-3

Sunday 31st October 2010 – I ATTENDED HALLOWEEN TODAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

After Hannah and I had lined the drive with flaming pumpkins Rachel and I took Zoe, Amber and Amber’s friend (and Strawberry Moose who had donned a tutu and a bumble bee headgear for the occasion) out trick-or-treating.

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

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

-3

Saturday 30th October 2010 – TODAY HAS BEEN QUITE CIVILISED …

… and hasn’t it been a long time since anything like that ever happened?

In fact we had a recycling day today and with Darren’s big pick-up truck, Rachel, Hannah and I did a tour of the neighbourhood picking up glass bottles, plastic bottles and aluminium drinks cans.

Once we had a full load on board we went off to a recycling plant in Bath about 10 miles away from here where we weighed it all in.

The plant was quite interesting – it was a simple hand-sorting operation where you tipped out your containers onto a kind-of counter and two people hand-sorted the cans and plastic and they also weighed the glass bottles, not by scales but by eye.

And having seen the price is on offer for scrap over here, not only do I now understand why in several cities that I’ve been to and down several roads that I’ve travelled I’ve seen gangs of people picking up the litter, I’m also going to bring over the scrap aluminium off the two caravans that I dismantled and weigh it in over here.

It was quite a windy day over here too and so the highlight was definitely this giant inflatable pumpkin that was busily making a bid for freedom down the highway in the general direction of the USA.

What you don’t see in the photo is the guy from a nearby house who was giving a rather desperate chase after it.

Thanks in no small measure to the long piece of rope that was tethered to it the guy managed to restrain it but it was touch-and-go at one stage and my money was definitely on the pumpkin.

I was also taken out old-car spotting too.

Darren took me to see his brother-in-law who lives just down the road. He has an old Cadillac convertible that he has restored from a rusty heap and had taken it out for a run-around this morning. And so we headed off down the road to catch him up.

This evening we all went out for pizza to celebrate Halloween and a good time was had by all. My pizza is the one in the foreground – the vegetarian one without cheese.

If I’m very lucky tomorrow I might get to spend some time with my great-nieces but the trouble with teenagers is that they always seem to have a much different agenda to any agenda that anyone else is ever planning. So I dunno.

Mind you, I have an important decision to make. Do I go out trick-or-treating with Amber and Zoe tomorrow night or do I stay behind with Hannah and hand out the candy?

But all three of them have decided that once Halloween is over I can take off my halloween mask. I don’t seem to be able to convince them that this is my REAL face.

-3

Friday 29th October 2010 – THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE BEEN AROUND HERE FOR A WHILE …

… will know all about this aeroplane as you have seen it all before.

It’s KB882, a Lancaster from World War II and it is one of only three “combat veterans” still in existence. It flew to Edmundston airport under its own steam in 1964 and ever since then it’s been stuck outside in all kinds of weather gradually deteriorating.

I spotted it in 2001 and ever since then I’ve been fighting single-handedly (I do other things with my other hand) to persuade the clowns in whose hands this historic machine has fallen to surrender it up to the Imperial War Museum or some other worthy organisation who can put a stop to this disgraceful neglect and get it back into the air before it falls apart.

In 2006 I was told that things might be happening and so being only 150 miles away from it I drove out this afternoon to see what they have done.

And the answer is

they’ve put a better fence around it
they’ve raised it off the ground
… errrr …..
that’s it

What is happening to this machine is nothing short of a national scandal, a total disgrace and the city of Edmundston should be thoroughly ashamed of itself. In the 9 years since I last saw it it has simply rotted away even further.

So having expected that, my blood has been boiling all day and it’ll continue to boil for a while I suppose.

and that’s not all I’ve done. In order to cool off, I retraced my steps from 2001 and retook a few pics of the falls at Grand Sault.

When I was here back then, the falls were all frozen up (mind you, it was midwinter at the time) and so I wanted a few with the water actually unfrozen, as well as a few other photos of interest that I missed when I was up here.

But I did get sidetracked a little … "no surprises there" – ed.

From Rachel and Darren’s house I could see a pile of wind turbines away in the distance to the north of Centreville and so I wandered off for a closer look. And at one stage I was so close to them that I could almost touch them, and my route towards them led off down a little country lane called Mars Hill Road.

And here I came to a dead stop as here on this hill the road also comes to a dead stop.

This is a frontier between the USA and Canada, and an unguarded frontier at that, although I do suspect that the barbed wire, searchlights, man-traps and machine guns are in that forest somewhere and that the purpose of the wind turbines is not to power up the local villages but to power the spy machines lurking in the woods.

The actual border is that orange fence to the left and this building here, Darren seems to think, might possibly be the old Canadian customs post from when this was a manned … "personned" – ed … crossing back in the distant past.

>And it’s for sale, even though it’s totally derelict. And I have a cunning plan.

Now just suppose I buy it and demolish the property that’s on it. I could erect a huge billboard and use it to display Anti-American slogans and then set up some loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda messages into the USA from here.

If it works for the North Koreans who habitually do this to the South, no reason why I can’t do it from here into the USA.

-8

Wednesday 27th October 2010 – LAST NIGHT …

… the weather warmed up dramatically.

I had to go out to Casey at 11pm and it was so warm, even where the motel was, right on the shoreline of Baie Verte, that I was in shirtsleeves.

This morning it was just as warm – 13 degrees by the temperature gauge in Casey and the skies had closed right in. The dramatic rise in temperature coupled with the clouds could only mean one thing – and I was right. We had the torrential downpour to end all torrential downpours

I had time however to nip down to the end of the motel drive to visit the remains of Fort Gaspereaux.

This was the French “twin” of Fort Beausejour, sited on the south side of the Chignecto isthmus and the two forts were supposed to protect Acadia from incursion by British troops, but once Fort Beasejour fell to the British, the fort here didn’t last much longer.

Just down the road from here is the Confederation Bridge, the bridge that connects the mainland of Canada with Prince Edward Isle.

I came by here in 2003 but with nothing but a compact camera, it was impossible to do justice to a bridge that is 13kms long. Hence my return today, armed with a digital SLR and zoom lens, to set the record straight.

By now we were having the rainstorm that I forecast, and it’s rained like that for most of the day too.

Not that I would normally mind but the Satnav has had me going down all kinds of … errr … interesting roads over the mountains of central New Brunswick, some of which would not have been out of place up on the Labrador Plateau and so on city tyres and on loose gravel and mud in the torrential rain I’ve been sliding around all over the place.

But we are here now in Hartland on the south-western border of New Brunswick, and my motel is up there on top of the bank (taken next day in the bright sunlight).

We are so close to the border that you can spit into the United States from here, and I shall be doing that tomorrow, don’t you worry.

And then I shall be going 30 miles up the road to see my niece. I’ve told her I’m coming so she’s had plenty of time to hide the silver.

-2

EPIC HALL

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