Tag Archives: lighthouse

Friday 2nd June 2017 – HAVING A RIDE …

… on Rosie the Crocodile – and just look at those big scary teeth!

While I was out doing my shopping his morning I had a phone call from Liz. “We’re all going down to the beach at Montmartin sur Mer this afternoon after lunch. Would you like to come with us?”

Do bears go for picnics in the woods?

Last night was a really bad night for me. I was still wide awake at 04:35 and wasn’t sure that I would ever go off to sleep. But I must have done, and crawling out of bed at 07:00 wasn’t very easy either as you might expect.

A shower brought me round somewhat, and then I noticed a little calamity – something along the lines of the fact that I seem to have run out of clothes again. I had a good rummage around and managed to find a few clean things but I really shall have to go to the launderette next week. I have actually found one in the town by the harbour.

Once I’d organised myself I headed off to the shops. Going on a Saturday morning, is, as we know, a waste of time. I went to the Bio shop for some vegan sausages (I fancy sausages, beans and chips), to Mr Bricolage for some fittings for the curtain rail in the bedroom, and to LeClerc for the groceries and some diesel.

But I’m going to have to think again about the bio shop. The stuff in there is quite expensive, the choice isn’t up to much and the staff is quite surly in there. I shall have to see what I can find in the way of mail-order outlets once my bank account is FINALLY organised.

And we weren’t alone on the streets either. By one of the roundabouts was a police motorcycle patrol who was interested in vehicles entering the town. Not quite sure why, but he took a note of Caliburn’s registration number.

After lunch I headed for the beach at Montmartin sur Mer.

While I was on my way up the coast I was overflown by a flight of four aeroplanes. Big four-engines French Army transport planes of some description – I’ve no idea at all what they might be.

But when I was walking down onto the beach after parking up Caliburn they flew back again, directly overhead. This gave me a good opportunity to take a close-up photograph of them as they roared by. They were certainly impressive – and noisy. Just imagine what 500 Avro Lancasters going by overhead must have sounded like. No wonder you needed an intercom

At the end of the beach, away in the distance, they performed a U-turn and flew back off at a tangent somewhere inland. They were clearly up to something, that’s for sure.

As an aside, it was explained to me later that there’s to be a drop of parachutists over the Invasion Beaches to commemmorate D-Day in a couple of days time. I reckon that these would be just the type of aircraft to carry paratroopers and so maybe they are having a quiet rehearsal of low-flying over the beach.

While I had the camera out – do you see that lighthouse across there? That’s the lighthouse on the Pointe d’Agon where we were the other day. We’re actually at the mouth of the River Sienne (not the Seine) and the currents offshore are gradually shifting the mouth southwards by that huge sand bar over there.

Built in 1856 on the site of an old fortress washed away in 1776 by an exceptionally high tide, the lighthouse is now a good kilometre from the mouth of the river today.

We had fun building Rosie the Crocodile and then the lack of sleep last night took hold. I can’t think of any finer way to spend a sunny afternoon out at the beach than by having a good crash-out for a couple of hours. I was well away. And everyone was laughing because I’d put my cap on my face to protect my face from the sun, and as I was breathing in and out, my cap was going up and down like in one of these cartoon films.

Liz and Terry very kindly invited me back for tea and we all had a really good chat, as Kate, Darren and the kids are going home tomorrow. And then , I came home.

It had been a long day and so it wasn’t any longer that I hung about before going to bed. I have no plans for tomorrow so we’ll see what that day brings.

Sunday 14th May 2017 – THIS NEW MICROWAVE THING …

… has its uses, and I’m sure that I’ll be able to make the most of them once I work them out.

A cooked a pizza today using the grill function as well as the microwave and while it wasn’t all that good, it was better than some that I’ve had. The grill bit seemed to do its stuff but the base wasn’t cooked properly. What i’ll have to try to do next time is to microwave it first, and then give it 5 minutes under the grill and see what that does. It’ll be a case of trial and error, by which time I’ll probably have a real oven.

Seeing as how it was Sunday and a lie-in, what was I doing up and about at 06:15? The answer to that is the reason that any man of my age will understand. And I wasn’t up long either. Back in bed where I slept right through until 08:30.

And that was nice for a change, in my comfortable bed. And I didn’t fall asleep watching a film either last night because the battery went flat in the laptop while I was in bed. And I couldn’t be bothered to haul myself out of bed to find the charger.

Nevertheless, I did manage to go out and about during the night. I was in some kind of house with a couple of other people, including someone – a girl – whom I knew very well (and I just can’t think who it was now) and we were visited by some kind of loud-mouthed man who insisted on trying to force his opinions on us. It all became rather heated and in the end we had to use force to evict him from the premises. We thought that that would be that but I’d forgotten that there was an entrance down the side of the house and I had to dash quickly across the house to barricade the door just as he and another woman were trying to gain entrance.
A little later I was back in my own house – the one in the Auvergne to be precise although it wasn’t, if you know what I mean – and there had been some issue with the electricity. The electricity had been connected since the Friday and my consumption had been extremely negligible, which is hardly surprising seeing as I was using solar power and wind turbines. However wind turbines and solar panels weren’t authorised and everyone had to have a mains connection. These people came to visit me to inspect my premises and they were surprised by the low consumption of energy but I explained that I was quite happy to live without it and didn’t need it – that was the reason. So after much discussion they left the premises. But just as they left, I forgot myself and switched on a light – and I reckoned that they would be bound to notice that. As an aside, I wasn’t on my own here in the house but I had a girl with me – a girl whom, if I am not mistaken, is making her debut in my nocturnal ramblings so hello to you, Sue G.

After breakfast I mooched around for quite a while. I was planning to go out to the football but sometime during the night I must have pulled a muscle in my leg and I couldn’t walk very far.

But the weather cleared up later on in the afternoon. The sun disappeared, the clouds disappeared and we had a beautiful blue sky. Despite the aches in my leg, I decided that I ought to go outside for a walk after all. It would do me good.

And this is the view from where I sometimes eat my lunch – looking along the coast towards Donville les Bains. I wasn’t the only one enjoying the weather either because there was a small family sitting down there among the rocks.

Further along the cliffs there was a really good view of the building where my apartment is.

There are two entrances to the building, one nearest the cliffs and hidden by the bush and the second, nearest the road is the door to my half of the building. My apartment is on the first floor at the back.

But you can see how close we are to the cliffs and the sea, can’t you?

There’s a public footpath along the top of the cliff right out to the headland down there. It’s about half a mile down there and so regardless of the pain in my leg I decided to set out for a walk.

As you know, I have a thing about lighthouses and it’s nice to think that I’m living within a short stroll of one such. I’ll have to go out one night and see if it actually works.

In the past, you’ve seen quite a few photographs of the Ile de Chausey away in the distance at the entrance of the Baie de Mont St Michel.

But here on the edge of the cliff, the view here is even more impressive. And this is just the normal camera lens,
not the telephoto lens. That gives you an idea of how high up we are just here on the cliffs.

I imagine that the marker buoy here is to warn shipping of the rocks here. Like I said, i’ll have to go out at night and see what is lit up.

But while we’re on the subject of good views and height, there was a very good view of this motor boat out there in the distance. But it wasn’t that that caught my eye.

Right out there in the far distance you can see land on the horizon. That is actually the island of Jersey, and it’s all of 60 kilometres – 35 miles – away. That’s the kind of view that we were having today. The conditions were perfect.

As I said – conditions were perfect.

Away over there in the distance is the town of Bricqueville sur Mer where I stayed for a couple of weeks a while ago. Its church is famous for its magnificent spire and you can clearly see that in the distance on the top of the ridge in the background.

You can also see the oyster beds there in the bay.

This area was heavily fortified by the Germans in World War II. The fortifications of the Atlantic Wall extended down as far as here and they were so well-built that they have resisted all attempts to remove them.

There are several gun emplacements here on the cliffs overlooking the entrance to the bay and you can see what happened when they tried to dynamite one of them.

In fact they tried to dynamite a couple of them and merely succeeded in scattering lumps of concrete about the place. What they could move easily, they moved it. But the remainder, they just left here and incorporated them into a public garden.

After all of that, they gave up trying to remove all of the rest of them.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have something of an issue with bad and inconsiderate parking.

Here’s a beautiful example of an old XK Jag that isn’t even parked, it’s abandoned, right acrossthe entrance to the lighthouse and in the zone that should be kept clear for the fire brigade.

But as we know, Parisians consider that laws in the Provinces don’t apply to them as they are some kind of superior being.

Round the corner of the headland and overlooking the Baie de Mont St Michel. Across there is the town of Jullouville where I spent a couple of days immediately after returning from Leuven, with its chateau d’eauup there at the back of town.

In the foreground is a marker light for the entrance to the harbour here in Granville. I would imagine that if anything around here is going to be illuminated at night, then that light would be the one.

A little bit further around along the coast is the town of Carolles and the seaside resort of Carolles-Plage.

If you cast your mind back a few weeks, we went for a walk one morning all along the beach from Jullouville to the headland at Carolles-Plage and stopped for a coffee.

And that over there to the right across the bay, that’s Brittany.

Around the headland, I doubled back on my route, but of course on the other – south – side.

Here we have not only a splendid view of the lower town and the edge of the harbour here, but also an excellent view of the fortifications of the old medieval city walls.

The church that is over there is the one that I can see from my living room window and slightly to the left of centre is that beautiful turretted building that we saw from close up the other day.

Now who’s he when he’s at home – if he ever is?

Ahh yes, Georges Pleville le Pelley. Born in Granville in 1726 and died in Paris in 1805. His claim to fame is that apart from many high offices that he held later in life (such as Governor of the Port of Marseille) he was a corsair who preyed on the British during many of the wars of the 18th Century.

Not only that, he’s one of those people conveniently forgotten by the uSA without whom the USA would never have had its independence from Britain. The British imposed a naval blockade on the 13 States during the War of Independence,
and this cut them off from a supply of all manufactured goods which they needed to sustain the war. The French navy engaged the British blockade ships on countless occasions, allowing blockade runners carrying munitions to slip into American harbours. Pleville le Pelley was one of the most intrepid of these blockade runners.

The Americans have completely forgotten about the huge debt that they owe to the French for safeguarding their borders during their fight for independence.

From here, I went back home again. I have some strawberry sorbet in the freezer, just the thing for a very warm Spring evening. And now it is pizza time. So I’ll attack the aforementioned and leave you to read this … errr … 1720 words.

And serve you all right too!

Thursday 27th April 2017 – I HAD A …

… day off house-hunting today. I wasn’t in the mood.

In fact, I’ve not had a very good day at all today.

Just by way of a change I managed to watch all of a film last night and even stayed awake for a while afterwards. But I did eventually go off to sleep and despite some fitful tossing and turning, slept until the alarm went off.

After breakfast I had a shower and a good clean-up, and herein lay a minor tragedy. I had had a jar of jam in my suitcase since Belgium the other week, and it’s somehow managed to be smashed. As a result there was jam everywhere and all over everything.

This led to an impromptu tidying up and sorting out session, and to a good wash of the suitcase with plenty of soap and hot water, before rinsing it off with the hosepipe. Luckily it was a reasonably sunny but very windy day so it had dried by the time that I returned.

Having done a few things on the laptop I set out for the shops. Bent Tin Ci … errr … Netto at Brehal was the port of call, where I bought my baguette and some salad stuff as well as a few other bits and pieces that I might need. and then off to Coudeville-Plage to pass the rest of the day.

Just for a very rare change, weather and lighting conditions at midday were absolutely ideal for photography.

Not only that but I managed (having tidied up Caliburn quite a lot recently) to put my hands on the big telephoto lens so I was able to take a few shots out across the water.

There, many miles away, right out in the far distance on a rock is what I reckon might be a lighthouse. And I love the way that the haze on the water makes it look as if the lighthouse is floating in the air above the sea.

And with the light being so good, I was finally able to take a decent shot of the Ile de Chausey out there, with the colours actually being a little more true to life.

Once I’m actually settled (whenever that might or might not be) I’m determined to take a little trip out there to see what the island is really like, and I hope that I’m not going to be disappointed.

But me disappointed with a sailing across the ocean? Not on your life!

While I was making my butties (I stayed inside Caliburn with this wicked wind today) this strange machine pedalled past.

We’ve seen loads of things similar to this along the Costa Stella in Belgium, but this particular multi-person pedal machine is quite different in that it appears to be articulated. That’s a first for me anyway.

I bet that the kids would have loads of fun sitting in the front of it though.

I wasn’t feeling good today, as I may already have mentioned, and I crashed out for a couple of hours. When I came to, all of the car parks were jam-packed with people.

Today is apparently what they call the marée. One of the days when the tide is at its lowest and so everyone has the right to go down to the low water mark and scratch around for cockles and mussels alive, alive-oh!

The beach was crowded with people, each havng his own little patch. And there were people carrying buckets that were pretty well filled with them. It must have been a good catch today.

And I do hope that they remember to share them with all of their friends and neighbours. For as I have said before … "and you’ll certainly say again" – ed … you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

It was a struggle to come home from the beach but I made it in the end, and I sat in the verandah to drink my coffee and read my book seeing as how it was really windy outside.

Tea was once again made in the kitchen in the garage, I’ve had a good chat with Rosemary and now I’m ready for bed.

And quite right too. I have a couple more ruins to see tomorrow.

Sunday 2nd October 2016 – NOW, THAT WAS MUCH MORE LIKE IT.

I took the time and the trouble to rearrange the blankets here on the bed before settling down, and once I was back in it, I remember absolutely nothing at all until about 05:30. ‘Stark out” is the phrase.

It was also a struggle to awaken. Despite the alarm going off at 06:00 and agan at 06:15, it was about 07:30 when I could finally say that I was back in the land of the living. And then only just too. But I suppose that it’s no surprise, seeing as how I’d been on my travels again.

I’d started off with e female member of my family (and I can’t remember who now) and we were working on some project which involved an enormous database and spreadsheet. I’d become involved in this project somewhere along the line and ended up doing something magnificent rather like the one that I did for The Conference Board that time, and it really did look impressive.
From there, I went on to a motorbike – a big powerful thing – and I was looking for a … errr … gentleman’s rest room rather urgently. I had turned off the main highway into some kind of village and there was a supermarket of a certain type down the road near a phone box and I knew that there were conveniences there, so that was where I headed. But it was all an illusion and no supermarket was there. There was however a kind of village hall that was open and so the girls who were rehearsing there allowed me to use the facilities, which were outside and which afforded almost no privacy whatever.

Anyway, it’s Sunday – a day of rest. But I have plans for today so I can’t rest all that much. I need to be out and about.

But not straight away though – I can (and do) take it easy in the mornings and this is what the plan is today. So I retire to my room, just in time to see the F A Gauthier come sailing … "dieseling" – ed … into port, sit on the bed and plot my next move. And when I wake up about half an hour later, I have more of an idea of what I’m going to do.

First off though, I have a good chat with a couple of friends. It’s nice to see friends on line and the power of the internet is a wonderful thing. But eventually, I haul myself off downstairs and out to Strider.

If you remember my voyage around the north shore of the St Lawrence in 2012 you’ll recall that we spent a night at a really magnificent lighthouse at the Pointe des Monts.

That’s only just down the road from here (well, 30-odd kms is “just down the road” in the wilderness of the North Shore) and so today, I decided to go back and have another look at it to see what had changed over the last 4 years or so.

So when I arrived, first thing that I did was to stop and make myself some butties. There was a howling wind blowing and so I didn’t walk out to the lighthouse straight away but took shelter between Strider and a hedge where I was protected from the wind. I’ve run out of hummus and forgot to buy any yesterday, but I do have some vegan cheese

At least it meant that I could sit and ready a book quietly without being disturbed too much.

I was interrupted on several occasions, mainly by tourists arriving who were mostly turned away by the sight of the chain across the footbridge announcing that the attraction was closed, but also by a very good candidate for our “ship of the day”.

I rushed off to grab the zoom lens to photograph it and to see if I could identify it, but no such luck. It’s way too far out in the estuary for me to see it properly.

First thing that I noticed this year, as opposed to when I was here in 2012, was that all of the artefacts had grown labels – and not before time. That means that I can tell you more about the exhibits on show here.

The anchor, for example, is that from a Norwegian fishing vessel of 1032 tonnes, called the Cimba. She ran aground a short distance to the west of here and was lost – the anchor being salvaged in September 1983

I didn’t need an identity plaque (good job, as there wasn’t one) to be able to tell you a little about the shorter, stubby cannon in the background of the previous photo.

Its size tells us that it’s quite old, and it’s definitely British, and Government Issue too. You can tell simply by noticing the “broad arrow” that has been cast into the outside of the gun barrel. That was the symbol for the British Office of Ordnance, which was created in 1544.

The figure “8” would indicate that this cannon fired 8-pound solid shot.

As for the second cannon, no doubts at all that this is a British weapon. Not only does it have the royal crown cast on it, it has the letters “GR” indicating that it was fabricated in the reign of King George.

But which King George? We’ve had 6 of those in the UK. I couldn’t make out a number in the casting, so I don’t know which King George it might have been. The absence of a number might indicate that it was cast during the reign of the first King George, who reigned from 1714 to 1727.

This would make the cannon to late to have been lost during Walker’s expedition of 1711, and so I’ve no idea really what it is doing here.

Over there back on the mainland we can see Strider parked where I had lunch earlier and with the offices for the lighthouse.

I think that there have been some changes to this site since I was here in 2012 because I’m certain that I reversed the Dodge into a gap between the rear of that building there and another building that was behind it, in order to protect me from the howling gale that was blowing up that night.

Unless of course I imagined it, which is always possible.

I didn’t imagine this though.

It’s a wigwam, or a teepee, or a tipi, and on further investigation I can tell you that it is actually a tipi. We’ve seen a few of these before, one that I recall vividly when we were at Goose Bay in Labrador last year. This makes me associate it with the Innu people who have a heritage around this area that dates back a considerable amount of time.

Talking of the Innu – who were known by the French as Montagnais – and their habitation of the area, there was originally no church for them and religious services took place on a kind of ad hoc basis.

This all changed when the Chapel of St Augustin was opened in 1898 following a petition to the church from Victor Fafard, the lighthouse keeper at the time.

However, the local Innu dispersed not long afterwards and so the chapel served the fishing families who lived round the area. They too had dispersed by the time that World War I had started, and the chapel fell into decay. It has however been restored a couple of times since then.

There is a restaurant-cum-cafe that I had noticed just across the road from the Chapel and I did have to admit that I could have done some very considerable damage to a large mug of coffee right at that moment.

I wandered over there but, as you are probably expecting, the place was closed up. As I have said before … "and you’ll say again – and again" – ed … this Canadian idea of just a 10-week summer season isn’t half getting on my wick

All along the coast and round about in this area is an old Innu trail that these days is called the Sentier de Charlotte. It runs from the chapel down to where there was a well-known Innu settlement that has been excavated.

Unfortunately we had a little change of plan here, due to the fact that I crashed out in Strider – and crashed out good and proper. “Away with the fairies” had nothing on this.

When I awoke, I clearly wasn’t feeling myself … "disgusting habit anyway" – ed. I’ve had a few crashes like this over the last 10 months and I can now recognise the symptoms. I’m having a bad turn. And so I set of for home and bed.

But I did stop along the lane to take a photograph of the vegetation. Autumn had come at last and the leaves have started to turn. And quite dramatically too.

These are absolutely beautiful and sum up exactly why I like to be in Canada at this time of the year. There can’t be anywhere else in the whole wide world that is as beautiful as this.

Even the mosses are changing colour too.

Back home at my digs I crashed out yet again for a good hour or so, staggered down to make my tea, and then staggered back upstairs again.

Yes -I knew it – I’m having a relapse aren’t I?

Wednesday 21st September 2016 – I’M BACK ON THE ROAD AGAIN

After something of a disturbed night last night, I was up and about fairly early on. And after a light breakfast, I started cleaning the motel room and tidying up the place, as well as chatting to a couple of people on the internet. And by chucking-out time, 10:00, I was ready to go.

I dumped the rubbish and took back the keys, and then headed off into town and the Sobeys supermarket for some shopping for lunch. And as most North American motels these days have microwaves, I also bought a bag of spuds and some more beans. It’s as well to be prepared.

I headed off northwards along the Arcadia Trail, and the first place that I visited was Cap Caissie. This is a small fishing port at the mouth of Shediac Bay.

It looked as if the tide was going out here so we’d be having a beach here in a couple of hours. And if you look at the weather that we were having this morning it would have been nice to have hung around for a while and done some sunbathing. But I had other things to do.

There’s a harbour here at Cap Caissie were no boats in there this morning, but there was a refrigerated lorry standing by.

Talking to the driver, it turns out that it’s lobster that is the catch here, and all 14 boats registered at the port are out at the catch. The driver was telling me that the catch hasn’t been so good this summer but over the last week or so things have been pretty good.

From the port at Cap Caissie there’s a good view of a lighthouse half a mile or so away. And so when you see a street name – Chemin du Lighthouse or Lighthouse Lane, you have to go for a look (or, at least, one of us does).

And if you think that Lighthouse Lane is going to lead you to the lighthouse you are mistaken because nothing could be farther from the truth, as you can see in this photo.

Further on round the trail is the mouth of the Cocagne river, and guarding the entrance at Cap Cocagne is another port.

This is another small commercial port and there is plenty of lobster fishing, judging by all of the lobster pots out there in the estuary, but there’s a considerable presence of pleasure boats here too.

As an aside, the word Cocagne in France has several meanings, two of which are completely contradictory.

You have the Pays de Cocagne, which is the Land of Milk and Honey where there are abundant harvests, a warm climate and all that kind of thing, and then we have the Mât de Cocagne which is the greasy pole that you try to climb up but you always keep on sliding down to the bottom

One of the games that we play while we are out on our travels in North America is “100 uses for a redundant school bus”.

School buses are only allowed by law to carry school kids for a certain number of years and then they have to be retired from school operation. There’s not much of a market for old school buses and so you find them littering the North American countryside not doing very much.

Here’s one from the 1950s or 1960s that’s been painted white and is being used as a summer house by the side of the sea. That’s certainly a novel way of making use of one.

After lunch by the river at Bouctouche I went for a drive around the Bay of Bouctouche. We’ve been here before a few years ago and so instead of the famous sand spit, I’ll show you something else.

This is actually a shop that’s been extended by the addition of a bow and a stern from some kind of wooden seafaring vessel and a couple of masts have been plated in it.

I was hoping to find out more information about it so I went to make enquiries, but despite all of the doors being open and the stock being lined up outside for inspection, there wasn’t a soul about. That made me think that maybe this was what became of the Mary Celeste.

That wasn’t all that there was to see around here either. Just across the road were a coupe of old motor vehicles. We’ve not had too many of them to date.

The coach is an old Prevost that looks as if it might have been built in the late 1940s or something like that, and the car is a Dodge that dates from 1928. It’s been painted in the colours of Arcadia, which was the name of the area around the New Brunswick – Nova Scotia border during the time of the French occupation.

Further on along the coast you can catch a glimpse of Prince Edward island away across the Northumberland Strait.

With a telephoto lens you can come up with some kind of shot of the coastline over there, and the Prince Edward Island wind farm. And note the wind turbines too because one thing that you will notice about New Brunswick is that there aren’t any, despite the magnificent weather.

New Brunswick is still tangled up in the mess of the Lepreau Nuclear Power Station and trying desperately to go to any lengths to justify the massive expenditure that has been poured into yet another one of the Province’s white elephants.

We saw this bridge near Rexton back in 2013 and so I won’t post it again, but I do remember making a remark about the state of the carpentry.

And so I can show you a photo of one part of the bridge as it is today, and you cans ee how much it has deteriorated. and I thought that it was bad three years ago. I wouldn’t like to be driving on this bridge in another three years time

I stopped off on the edge of Rexton to fuel up – Strider still has his unhealthy fuel consumption – and this ship in the Richibucto River caught my attention. I went across to photograph it.

It’s not a real ship of course. it was constructed in 2003 as a symbol of Rexton’s ship-building industry. They reckon that in a period from 1819 to the turn of the 20th Century some 105 ships were built here, of which 94 were built in just one shipyard – that owned by the Jardine family.

My road north took me to the town of St Louis de Kent, a town that has a claim to fame in that the world’s largest Acadian flag is flown in the town.

St Louis de Kent is quite a hotbed of Acadian nationalism, a movement that took hold at the end of the 19th Century, mainly due to the efforts of Marcel-François Richard, to resurrect the heritage of the Acadian settlers – the French settlers of the mid-18th Century who were abandoned by the French empire during the Seven Years War.

Whilst no-one will deny the events that occurred subsequent to the fall of Acadia, no-one should lose sight of the fact that we are discussing a period of history 250 years ago and it’s a mistake to judge historical events by today’s standards.

Many colonists of French origin were indeed expelled from Acadia, but only those (at first, anyway) who refused to take an oath of allegiance to the King of England. But there was nothing unusual in asking citizens of captured colonists to take such an oath and even more so when a war between the two colonial powers was still taking place.

Displacement of recalcitrant colonists was nothing but normal behaviour back in those days and if you remember being with me in the Czech Republic last May, we discussed the displacement of recalcitrant Germans of many generations of settlement from the Sudetenland as late as 1948 – 200 years after the displacement of the Acadians – and no-one thought that what took place in Eastern Europe after World War II and which affected 30 million people was a major issue.

That’s not to take issue, of course, with the cultural traditions of the descendants of the Acadian settlers – I’m all in favour of celebrating culture and tradition – but St Louis de Kent is another place where all of the information on the tourist information boards is written in nothing but French – and that’s in an officially bilingual province too.

There’s a statue here to Marguerite Bourgeoys and we all know who she is. We visited the house of her birth in Troyes in 2014 and we’ve mentioned her many times on our journeys round Montreal.

She organised the women and girls of Montreal with their religious and educational needs during the crises of the early days of the colony there, and it was the organisation that she founded, the Convent of the Sisters of the Congregation of Our Lady, that was asked to open a convent here in the late 19th Century.

You’ve all seen this place before. It’s the Fundy Line Motel in Miramichi where I stayed in winter 2003 and this is where I ended up last night.

It’s quite basic and a little tired but then so are its prices, and it’s scrupulously clean. It scores very highly on my value-for-money index and I’m happy to stay here for the night.

It has a microwave, which is good news, for I have a bag of potatoes and a can of beans, as well as a vegan burgerleft over from when I was in Shediac.

That’s me organised for tonight anyway.

Friday 16th September 2016 – TONIGHT’S TEA …

… was even nicer.

On my way back home this evening I went down into town for tomorrow’s bread and while i was there i noticed that they were selling loose potatoes by the pound. So even though I have plenty of oven chips left, I succumbed and bought a pound of spuds. Here in this room I have a microwave and an oven, and so I had a vegan burger, some more Heinz beans, and some baked potatoes done in the oven and finished off in the microwave.

Add to that the ice cream stuff and fruit salad and we had yet another tea fit for a King.

I’d had a reasonable night’s sleep last night with the odd trip down the corridor, and I was wide awake by 05:50. I’d been on my travels too, a long complicated ramble that had taken me to all kinds of places and all trace of which had disappeared completely the moment I awoke.

Being awake like that gave me plenty of time to get on with stuff before breakfast, which once more consisted of vegan granola, orange juice, coffee and a blueberry bagel with strawberry jam.

And then I could carry on with some more stuff up until lunch time, having the odd doze here and there (something that I’m finding to be rather depressing these days).

At lunchtime I made my butty and then cleared off into the sunshine.

Just down the road from here is the place that I have come here to Shediac visit.

This is Parlee Provincial Park at Pointe du Chene, just down the road from where I’m staying. It’s a typical Canadian Provincial Park in that it costs an arm and a leg to come here to visit for a day, but in news that will surprise almost every regular reader of this rubbish, my motel room includes a free pass to the park, and I intend to take full advantage.

The claim to fame of Parlee Park is that it is said to have the most beautiful beach in New Brunswick. It’s certainly the most popular beach in the Province, with 400,000 visitors every year. On one day, it registered as many as 16,000 visitors.

This year of course it will be having 400,001 visitors because I’ve come here, and this is where I intend to stay for a while.

There weren’t 16,000 visitors on the beach here today and that’s not really a surprise because although it was a really beautiful day, there was a cold wind a-blowing.

I started off by lying on a blanket on the sand but it was rather too windy for that and so I grabbed the folding chair out of Strider and settled down with my butties and a couple of really good books. As the legendary Marechal MacMahon once famously said, “J’y suis, j’y reste“.

One of the things for which the beach is famous is the temperature of the water. It’s said to have the warmest water in Canada, and although some people might be willing to test it, it wasn’t for me.

And that wasn’t just because of the wind either. I’d heard that there was a water pollution warning in existence at the moment, having been posted in August, and I bet that that did wonders for the tourist trade this year

As the evening approached and the temperature cooled down I headed off for a walk around the park to see what I could see.

There’s plenty of evidence of the former commercial nature of the area around the park, and here from the steps of the restaurant (which is on stilts) there’s a good view over what looks suspiciously like a canal to me.

We even have what looks like a kind of lighthouse here – presumably to guide vessels along the canal.

There are quite a lot of facilities here, which is hardly a surprise when you consider how much you have to pay to come here for a day.

But it has more facilities than you might imagine too. If you carefully read the publicity that the Park authorities put out, you’ll find that “The popularity of Parlee Beach since the 1800s has created a cottaging area for the city of Moncton” – a statement that will have most British people, or those knowing a good deal of British slang, rolling in the aisles.

I wonder if the Parlee Beach authorities really mean it like that.

So having read that, I buggered off back to civilisation via the petrol station and the supermarket.

After tea I was thoroughly exhausted and went for an early night. But I managed about half an hour before I was wide awake again, and then I found it difficult to go back to sleep.

Monday 14th April 2014 – AFTER ALL OF THE EXCITEMENT …

… after the weekend, it’s back to the daily grind today.

We had the usual few hours on the website this morning and then I went outside. First job was to clean out the solar shower – and it needed it too. Something of a mess of algae growing in there over the last 9 nonths;

I found most of the stuff to connet up the heat exchanger to it too, but there are still a couple of vital parts missing so I need to go to Brico Depot for those.

As I couldn’t connect up the heat exchanger I decided to deal with another issue that I’ve been putting off – the outside shower cabinet. I started to sift through the old beams left over from when we did the roofs here, but the more I checked the beams the worse they were and I’ve ended up with a huge mound of extra firewood instead.

Not that that worries me, because they were always going to be for firewood and if I could reuse any (like I did on the woodshed) that would be a bonus.

So by 18:00 I gave up the idea of finding enough recycled wood, and went to water the garden. It was a glorious day today and everything needed it.

And then I found some new wood – a couple of chevrons and demi-chevrons, and started to cut those but I didn’t get very far before knocking off time.

And tonight we have a glorious, gorgeous full moon. Just like the one that we had on the banks of the St Lawrence near Godbout in May 2012.

Mind you, the setting here chez moi is nothing like as spectacular.

I really ought to think about moving on, oughtn’t I?

-4

Thursday 27th February 2014 – THIS IS WHERE …

… I spent the night. The “Grain de Sable” in Ares. So called because all of the walls are lined with bottle containing sand from different beaches throughout the world.

A little on the expensive side, but you would be surprised how difficult it is to find any hotel here in this tourist area, never mind one that is open. Camping and chalets and flats seem to be the order of the day.

But you can see what the weather was doing. Cold, wet and miserable. It caught me up during the night. But not as cold, wet and miserable as last night in the mountains of Nova Scotia where I wqs picking up bits of the Swissair flight that blew up over the Atlantic just offshore from Halifax. Must have been a strong jetstream to get aircraft parts onto the mainland, that’s all I can say.

I had a slow, leisurely drive all the way around the bay and to the town of Arcachon. There I was disappointed as it really is a “twee” place. No chance to park as firstly the weather was so bad and secondly, parking is very strictly controlled and it wasn’t easy to see a space, let alone reverse into it seeing as how the streets were so narrow (well, they weren’t – it was just that the roadway was deliberately narrowed so that pedestrians would have more room to walk about, not that it stopped them stepping off the road in front of the traffic without even looking or caring whenever the fancy took them. How was it who once famously said “There are two types of pedestrian – the quick and the dead”?)

I did stop a few miles out of Arcachon because I reckoned that from there I would be able to see the Cap Ferret lighthouse across on the other side of the bay.

So there you are – that’s where I was yesterday afternoon. Round by the lighthouse across the bay.

And you might have noticed that the weather has improved sightly too.

As you come out of the bay and hit the Atlantic coast, the effects of the currents going in one direction and the wind blowing in the opposite direction has created some immense sand dunes, such as this monster dune near Pyla sur Mer. It’s enormous.

I was going to have a close look at it but it’s all fenced off until you come to the car park, which is a “pay to leave” car park with ticket control, automatic barriers and the like. I did a U-turn and drove out of the entrance – I’m not being caught for parking like that.

Next stop was Biscarrosse Plage in Les Landes. Odds-on there being loads of hotels here seeing that this is one of France’s major unsung holiday resorts.

But why it is unsung is that there are in fact only 5 here (and a couple of enormous camp sites) but none is open. And not only that, there isn’t a single open boulangerie in the whole town.

The beach is closed too, but there’s a reason for that. There’s been a howling gale blowing here for the last month with enormous waves. This area is the neck of the funnel that is the Bay of Biscay and the whole of the Atlantic Ocean is trying to fit into this little coastal strip. There’s nothing out there until the south-eastern seaboard of the USA. IMpressive, what?

So with no hotels, no bakery, no nothing, I drove on and on and now I’m in Mimizan Plage where not only is there a little democratically-priced hotel but also a Morroccan restaurant that has made me a delicious vegan couscous.

-2

Wednesday 26th February 2014 – THIS IS WHERE …

… Caliburn, Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly stopped for lunch this afternoon.

I’m at Le Cap Ferret, which is on the French South-Western Atlantic coast not too far from Bordeaux. There is an errand and some Pionsat-based research to be undertaken in this neck of the woods and when I woke up this morning at Brive-La-Gaillarde to another round of miserable driving rain and the only spot of clear weather on the whole of today’s map of France seemed to be around here, I thought “sod this for a game of soldiers” and I’ve gone West.

“Not before time” I hear you say, but anyway, as Marshall MacMahon once famously said, “here I am and here I’ll stay”

One reason for coming here is that there is a big lighthouse on the Cape and as many long-term readers of this rubbish will recall, I have quite a thing about lighthouses.

But this one wasn’t what I was expecting to see for rather than being isolated on some kind of sandspit somewhere, it’s right in the middle of a built-up area. Access is very difficult and also it’s not easy to find a good spot to take a photograph. Still, one does the best one can.

I went for a good long walk for a couple of hours along the beach. Part of the beach is actually an enormous sandspit that stretches for a good mile, if not more, just offshore and it’s a wonderful place to go for a stroll.

There was practically no-one about which was surprising given how qwarm it was this afternoon. But I bet that it wouldn’t be like this in July and August, not by any means

We’d had a few sudden, short storms during the day, some of them quite heavy, and while I was out on my sandspit we had another one.

Come and gone in a flash, but we had the most astonishing rainbow and I’ve never seen one quite like this before. It came out really well on the photo which was something of a surprise as it doesn’t usually happen like this either.

But on the debit side, dunno if you remember me fixing the auxilliary charging circuit on Caliburn on Monday. Since then, there has always been an occasional little whiff of Sulphuric gas from the battery – no surprise as the battery is goosed and it’s only there to make a circuit. But this evening there was a different smell. The second battery is behind the driver’s seat so while I was driving, I put my hand down to feel if anything was out of the ordinary happening to the battery – and promptly burnt my hand.

The battery was more-than-red hot and so I think that it’s gone totally o/c. And so hot that I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had burst into flames either.

I’ve disconnected it anyway and I’ll have another look at it tomorrow. Or sometime. Maybe.

But now I’m in a little seaside hotel just down the road from Le Cap Ferret. No idea where I’ll go tomorrow, but I don’t feel like going home.

And last night?

I was with Nerina and we went to the Victoria Hall in Hanley to see Neil Young. We were very early and caught him on stage setting up and checking his equipment. There were about 20 early birds in total and he invited us all on stage for a chat, and asked us if we had any questions.

I asked him about his songwriting – I reckoned that the songs that he wrote when he had the Black Dog looking over his shoulder were by far and away the best. Did he agree? And how did he cope with Depression affecting his songwriting.

He replied that he was so accustomed to it that he had learned to live with it and what he wrote, as long as it was technically competent, he had no qualms whatever about recording. Songwriting is all about expressing the writer’s moods and there is good and bad, just like in life.

He then asked for a volunteer todo something and, to my surprise, Nerina volunteered. Not like her – she always had very firm preiciples. But nevertheless she left her position of crouched on the floor at Neil Young’s feet and went off to do this task.

-3

Monday 17th June 2013 – I DON’T KNOW …

… how anyone could sleep through that racket that we had at about 06:00 this morning.

If the noise didn’t wake you up, then the flashing lights certainly would have done so. Its a long time since I’ve seen a thunderstorm like it, and all the inhabitants of the cemetery of Port Joinville down the road have come out to complain.

Now its raining cats and dogs. I’m glad that I crashed out last night at about … errr … 21:40 otherwise I wouldn’t have gone to sleep at all.

After breakfast we went for another load of shopping and I wanted to buy some mortar to seal the handrail into the length of piping as well as some rawlplugs to fix a handrail in the shower (my next task, so it seems).

I bought the stuff but remind me, someone, next time I think about doing something silly like living on an island. I paid more for 25 rawlplugs than I would pay for 500 at Screwfix, and a 5kg sack of mortar cost more than a 40kg sack at Brico Depot.

Having cemented in the handrail after lunch (after a siesta, of course – I’m becoming quite fainéant in my old age) we went for a drive out

We’ve already seen one lighthouse on our travels – the one at the Pointe des Corbeaux – but that’s not the most famous one on the island. Ohh no!

And so with my fascination for the aforementioned, off we went into the doom and gloom in search of the phare de l’Ile d’Yeu.

Believe it or not, it isn’t situated on the coastline – something that comes as quite a surprise to most people.

It is however situated on the highest point of the Ile d’Yeu, a hillock called “La Petite Foule” at a height of all of 57 metres, and the lighthouse is sometimes known by the name of the hillock.

Being away from the coast, the hordes of tourists on the island don’t really visit it, and it is this fact that led to Thomas Hardy writing his famous novel “Phare From The Madding Crowd” … "are you sure about this?" – ed.

It has four things in common with the lighthouse that we saw the other day

it’s not the original lighthouse on the site
the previous lighthouse was blown up by the Germans when they evacuated the island in August 1944
the current one was designed by Maurice Durand
it was built in 1950

And built in a modern 1920s-style art-deco design too.

Made of “modern” lightweight concrete on a stone base, it’s 36.5 metres tall and has a halogen light bulb of 650 watts that can be seen for over 23 miles.

It was badly damaged in a hurricane on 29th September 1952 and again by fire on 2nd November 1953 but was repaired each time

With the lighthouse’s unusual situation well-inland, the dangerous parts of the coast (of which there are many) are protected by light buoys.

I was told that there is a certain technique involving lining up the light buoys with the big lighthouse in order to work out your position as you approach the island from the sea.

That wouldn’t help the pilot of the Air Quebec flight to London who, when asked by the control tower to “give height and position”, replied
“5’8″, front seat”

This evening we all had a sing-song of traditional French songs, something that Cécile’s mother particularly enjoyed, althugh I’m not quite sure why because a sing-song like that usually heralds a torrential downpour.

-5

Tuesday 11th June 2013 – I HAD A GOOD …

… night’s sleep last night, just for a change.

In bed long before 22:00 and awoken by the alarm clock at 07:30. The sea air must be doing me some good.

Mind you, I felt better than the weather because once more, it was persisting down and this weather is really doing my head in right now. Happy holidays, hey?

This morning while mumsie had a little snooze Cécile and I went for a wander around the old port

This afternoon, while mumsie was at her Seniors’ Club, we went to visit the posh side of the island.

That’s the site from which you can see the mainland if you look really hard enough and have a good telescope or, in my case, a really good 30mm telephoto lens.

By this time the rain had stopped and so we went for a good walk along the beach

We came across quite a pile of fishermen’s cabins on the shoreline.

Almost any one of which would suit me down to the ground, and I would have been tempted to make an offer.

I would, however be wasting my time apparently. According to Cecile, you could by a two-bedroomed apartment on the mainland for what they would want for one of these cabins.

Down at the south end of the island at the Pointe des Corbeaux is a lighthouse, and you all know about my fascination with these.

It’s 19.2 metres tall and its light can under normal conditions be seen out to see for about 21 miles.

It was built in 1950 to a design by the local architect Maurice Durand, and replaced an earlier lighthouse tat the Germans had demolished on 25th August 1944 when they evacuated the island.

The roads are very much like the roads around Labrador and so I felt quite at home.

What even made it more so was that I encountered a grader, and it must be quite a while since we last saw one of those.

But what made me realise that it was not at all Labrador was the fact that we had a compactor as well.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that during all of the 2000 miles of the Trans-Labrador Highway we encoutered a mere … err … three, despite there being hundreds of graders at work on the Highway.

And while I’m writing this, the heavens have opened again. We really are having some astonishing weather.

Thursday 15th September 2011 – I HAD …

… an absolutely excellent nights sleep last night. Out like a light although I did have to get up to go for a gypsy’s in the middle of the night

This morning however it’s not as gorgeous as all that as far as the weather goes because there’s a low hanging cloud or mist all over the place. Its all grey and overcast and misty damp and clammy not very nice at all.

Nevertheless I managed to make my way to Home Depot where I managed to purchase my weed control blanket, but not a brush-cutter. There was nothing suitable so I’m going to have to see about getting a second hand one. I managed to organise a few other exciting bits and pieces while I was there, including some cheap metal shelving clips that will make nice and ideal straps for holding solar panels on the roof of the car.

I had an interesting chat with one of the sales staff there. He’s called Danny and comes from Croatia. And so we had a good chat about Slovenia, Hungary and Croatia and places like that, reliving old journeys that we had made.

And then down to the University of New Brunswick where to find my way around campus I stopped a girl but she didn’t understand any English. So when I asked in French she didn’t understand any of that either so I asked her what language she did exactly speak thinking that I might summon up something and she said Persian. So how she is going to study in New Brunswick at the English-and-French-speaking University is anyone’s guess.

Its Doctor Chang with whom I need to speak about my wind turbines and he’s not in, as you might expect and so I’m going to have to come back here again. I hope that he will talk to me because judging by the leaflets that I saw about what he has been doing he could be an extremely useful person to know.

And I heard that lorry that sounds like an old Foden 2-stroke diesel when it’s slowing down so I dashed out to see, and it’s a Western Star. Thats not too much of a surprise as at one time Western Star had a major interest in Foden junior’s ERF lorry manufacturing business down the road in Sandbach.

But what has just come around this corner here at these traffic lights is something that I haven’t seen for I haven’t a clue how many years and that is a Honda 6 When was the last time I saw a 6-cylinder Honda. Of course we are talking motor cycles here, in case you are wondering.

So with a couple of hours to kill, I can go for a wander around Fredericton.

This white building is the legislative Office of Conflicts of Interest Commissioner, and that’s an enigmatic organisation if ever I heard of one. I wonder what he does and what cases he’s considered during his tenure of office.

But it is a nice building, isn’t it? I could live in a place like this with its nice round turret

Here’s another nice building almost next door on the corner of King Street and Secretary Lane. And it also has a nice round turret of the type that would appeal to me.

It’s the Maison Jewett House, whoever Jewett was when he was at home if he ever was. Ahhh – yes, he was a local doctor and, strangely enough, he wasn’t the first owner of the house. It’s now being used as government offices

I always like to have a look at war memorials and Canadian ones are quite surprising to a European such as myself.

In Europe, there are usually at least 5 times more victims recorded for World War I than there are for World War II but here in Canada, the numbers are about equal. However, that’s rather misleading. The population in Canada was much smaller in 1914 than it was in 1939

This is the Christ Church Cathedral and while I’ve seen many bigger cathedrals than this, I’ve also seen one or two smaller ones.

If you think that it’s small and that you might have seen it before, it’s said to be a copy of St Mary’s church in Snettisham, Norfolk and having seen the church when I visited my friend Lorna who lived nearby, I can see the resemblance.

The cathedral was built between 1845 and 1853, and its claim to fame was that it was struck by lightning on 3rd July 1911. it did make me wonder what they had done in the cathedral to have incurred this sort of divine wrath.

There used to be a railway line or two here in Fredericton but today it’s one of two provincial capitals (the other one being Charlottetown on Prince Edward Isle) to have had its railway lines ripped away.

The track bed is now a riverside walk and the bridge across the Saint John River is a walkway and cycle path.

It was on here that someone wished me a “good evening young fellow” so there’s clearly a vacancy for a good optician in the city.

Down along Queen Street is the Legislative Assembly Building for the Government of New Brunswick.

It dates from 1882 and replaced a previous building which, for the benefit of those of you who have not yet come to terms with life in Eastern Canada, was destroyed in a fire in 1877. The dome, by the way, is over 40 metres high.

To the left is the old Education Building dating from 1816.

Fredericton is actually situated in York County, New Brunswick, and over there is the old York County Building of 1855

It also served as the County Court back in the old days, and what was unusual about it was that back in the early days it had a market underneath with the Court buildings on top. I suppose that if they set up the stocks outside, the spectators wouldn’t have too far to go to find the rotten fruit and vegetables.

Despite what you might think, this really is a lighthouse. The Saint John River used to be navigable to paddle-wheelers as far upriver as Perth-Andover. There were 21 lighthouses along the river, and this one at Fredericton was the farthest north.

12 of them remain today, of which 7 still serve their original purpose, such is the volume of pleasure traffic that might be found on the river

This is something that really gets on my wick.I always understood that Christians were supposed to turn the other cheek, forgive people their sins, and pardon the wrong-doer. I read nothing in the Bible that states that sinners and wrong-doers would be towed away.

It’s this kind of hypocrisy that brings the church, Christians and Christianity into disrepute. Didn’t St Paul say something about “be not afraid to entertain strangers, for thereby, some have entertained angels unawares”?

This is Officers Square where there is a museum that preserves relics of life in the area in bygone days.

It has a considerable military significance and every day tourists can witness the Changing of the Guard, followed by, at the Royal Canadian Bank down the road, the Guarding of the Change.

There’s also going to be a stage here for the Festival tomorrow.

As far as the festival went, I was at the Hoodoo House tonight.

First on stage tonight was a guitarist called Morgan Davis, and he started off by giving a pro-active demonstration of playing on a cigar box guitar.

Next up was Geoff Bartley, who plays like an early T S McPhee when he lets go and ups the tempo, which is unfortunately something that he didn’t do all that often. But he did let rip with a superb version of Chuck Berry’s “Nadine is that you”.

Rambling Dan Stevens certainly lived up to his name. He a real rambling blues singer who sings just like an old blues singer should. His version of “My Baby Don’t Need No Loving” was excellent and the jam that he did at the end with Geoff Bartley was magnificent.

The main group tonight is Joe Murphy, Garrett Mason and the Water Street band, with a keyboard player who looks just like Mini-Me
. Murphy did a lead-guitar type of thing with bottle neck slider and his guitar fell to bits in the middle of it.

They are pretty good and they really rock when the mouth organ player pi … errr … leaves the stage. He spoils it after a while. You can have far too much of a mouth organ. If he’s not there they are really tight and they really rock. I quite enjoyed them.

And now we have torrential rain storming down outside and one of the venues has been flooded out. I won’t be going for a late-night photography walk-around tonight I’ll tell you that.

And thanks to Dave and his wife from Nottingham and now New Brunswick who looked after me so well here this evening. They have given me quite a few hints to follow up.

Monday 12th September 2011 – THE FUNDY SHORE

After I pleasant day at Colleen’s, I was back on the road once more

But I didn’t get far. It was lunchtime and I found a fish and chip shop.

And this place is noteworthy for two reasons

it sold real chips. Nice proper lumps of potatoes, not these horrible matchstick things
it was the first place that I have ever encountered in North America that had real malt vinegar on offer.

And they were delicious too. And it was really nice sitting outside in the sun.

First stop this afternoon was at Black’s Harbour where the ferry goes over to Grand Manan Island. And look what’s parked up over there. I’m sure that it’s the ferry that was under repair in Pictou last October when we there there.

And as a matter of fact, she is. It appears that there are two ships that ply across the waters, but only one in winter. And last winter she was laid up as her replacement was due in the spring. However the arrival of her replacement was rather late, and then the other one was involved in an accident back in May, so she was pressed back into service.

Her ultimate destination seems to be hauling gravel for a company in Quebec – the usual fate of many old ferries out here.

Whenever you see a road called “lighthouse road”, that’s a cue for a deviation – or, at least, it is in my case.

And I’m glad that I came down this road too because some of the scenery is magnificent. According to the church in the distance, this area here is called Beaver Harbour and if so, that’s an old Quaker settlement where a bunch of United Empire Loyalists came to settle.

And you can see why they came to settle here, cant you?

The road to the lighthouse was all closed off so I couldn’t go down there, but a thing like that isn’t likely to put me off.

Where there’s a will there are relatives, and so here I am round on the next headland down with a telephoto lens.

It’s Drews Head lighthouse, so I’m told, there has been a lighthouse on here since as recently as January 1876 although this is not the original. It was replaced by a skeletal tower-type of construction in the late 1960s and the fibreglass skin that you can see dates from 1984.

What we see right out there is the nuclear power station situated out on Point Lepreau. It’s the only nuclear power station in Atlantic Canada and is something else that was quite controversial in New Brunswick.

After years of debate, the New Brunswick Prime Minister Richard Hatfield announced that it was going to be built, regardless of whatever conclusions an Environmental Assessment committee reached. It was built in the early 1980s and cost three times the estimated amount.

It’s suffered all kinds of problems caused by, amongst other things, poor maintenance and employee sabotage, and there has been a variety of work-related accidents and illnesses. An 18 month overhaul, started in March 2008, took four and a half years to complete.

I went out there for a drive around to see what I could see, but it’s hidden in a forest so you can’t see it from close up.

Instead, I went off to see if I could find the famous waterfall on the Lepreau River.

The river is only about 30 kms long but has quite a descent over that distance, culminating in a drop of about 6 metres over this granite ledge.

Below the falls is the tidal limit of the Bay of Fundy and on the incoming tide you’ll find salt water down there. In fact, you can’t see it in this photo but the tide is coming in as I’m standing here.

When I was here ten years ago, I arrived after dark and left before light so I didn’t take a photo of my motel that night.

So here we are. This is the Island View motel where I stayed, on top of a hill to the south of the city of Saint John. I seem to remember that there wasn’t that much to write about this motel, but I don’t remember criticising the price either so it must have been a reasonable deal.

There’s a convenient hill just a little way around the corner and so I wandered off to see what I could see.

And sure enough, there’s a beautiful view down the river towards the city of Saint John (and you mustn’t forget to always write the name in full – that’s quite important).

You’ll notice all of the modern skyscrapers there. Saint John is the second-largest city in Atlantic Canada (after Halifax) and also one of the wealthiest

I can’t believe that I’ve managed to time my arrival so badly – when the tide is at mid-point.

Over there are the Reversing Falls – at low tide the level of the tide is about 4 metres below the level of the river and at high tide, it’s about 4 metres higher. Consequently, at either high or low tide, you have a spectacular spectacle right underneath the bridge.

I took thousands of photos here at Saint John, and one day I’ll post them all somewhere for you to see.

You’ll remember just now that I posted a photo of the city taken from distance, and showed you the tall modern buildings on the skyline. And so here, right in the centre of the city, we can have a view of them from closer up.

With there being water around, there are bound to be ships. And I’m not disappointed either because this is a huge harbour and there are dozens about.

However, never mind the ship for the moment – take a look beyond it at those shipping containers with the word TROPICAL written on them? They are, would you believe, going to feature in our story in a few days’ time.

But I hope that you aren’t expecting to see anything really historic in the city because, beautiful as it might be from this perspective on the waterfront, there’s very little in the city dating from before 1877

In that year, there was, for the benefit of those of you who know very little about the history of Canada, a devastating fire raged through the city and destroyed 1612 properties and caused $28,000,000 of damages.

Not like the fire that raged through Bentilee in Stoke on Trent, destroying 1612 houses and causing £30 worth of improvements.

Saint John was in the front line during the disputes with the USA. In the early days, the border between Canada and the USA had not been resolved, and the USA was claiming as far up the coast as the mouth of the Saint John River.

Of course, Britain was having none of that and the mouth of the river, especially on the shore, was quite heavily fortified.

This is Fort Howe, built during the War of American Independence following the Siege of Saint John in 1777, the “Howe” being the Commander of the British forces in North America at the time. It has the distinction of being the first site in Canada to be designated a National Historic Park.

Way over there in the distance (thanks to the zoom lens) is the Carleton Martello tower, one of only 9 now remaining in Canada.

This dates back to the War of 1812 and was built to guard the entrance to the harbour. It was in use during World War II as an anti-aircraft gun tower (the Canadian Government had more faith in the Luftwaffe’s technical abilities than the Luftwaffe did) and observation post, and during World War I had been a prison for deserters from the Canadian Army.

I did say that Saint John was one of the wealthiest cities in Atlantic Canada, and you can tell that by looking at some of the buildings around here.

This is the old city market, situated on Charlotte Street. and dates from 1876. It’s the umpteenth Market Hall in the city, and regular readers of this rubbish don’t need to be told what happened to the others.

The building deteriorated considerably after World War II but underwent a major renovation between 1987 and 1990.

Churches are always a good indication of the wealth of any community, and no-one is going to be disappointed by this church. This is the Trinity Anglican Church in Germain Street and was founded by United Empire Loyalists who fled here in 1783.

This imposing pile dates from 1880, and you don’t REALLY need me to tell you what happened to its predecessor, do you?

There’s a beautiful park right in the centre of the city – King’s Square, it’s called. And right in the middle is a bandstand, the King Edward VIII bandstand, dating from 1908.

It’s not very well-known, (so I shall publicise the fact) that I once made a bandstand. That’s right. I set fire to all of their chairs.

I’ll get my coat.

I said that there was plenty of evidence of former wealth in Saint John. And there is also plenty of evidence of current poverty too. This street here would not be out of place in any industrial city in the north of England.

If that’s not all, I stumbled upon a bingo hall which had a game actually in progress. The hall was pretty full too. Just how sad is that? It really did remind me of Stoke on Trent on a bad day.

And some ageing hippy has just come up to me. He was having a good look at my telephoto lens and, pointing to it, said “hi – you must be one of those long-distance photographers”.
“I’m from the UK” I replied. “Is that long enough?”

Bravely battling against the lack of light, I rejoin my vehicle and head out of the town, continuing my journey to the north-east and leaving behind me a load of photographs that I must deal with some time.

Just outside the town is the immense KC Irving oil refinery and LPG processing plant. It really does look like a desperate scar on the landscape, but as long as people want to drive around in cars, what do you expect?

A phrase involving omeletttes and eggs springs to mind.

And now it’s dark, I can’t see what I’m doing, but there’s a truck stop ahead. That’s going to be as good a place as any for me to lay down my weary head.

Sunday 11th September 2011 – SAINT ANDREWS

Dawn rose early over the Bayside ferry terminal, and so did I. It was rather cold in fact – a mere 8°C and that was probably what did it. But I do remember being completely comfortable last night and I didn’t feel a thing.

Anyway, I’ve made a note of this little place and added it into my little mental directory of suitable places to stay the night.

back down the road along the Saint Croix River, I can have a better view of Saint Croix Island, the Ile de Sainte Croix, than I did last night.

One thing that I could never understand however was the attitude of the British Government in giving so much away to the USA after the end of the War of Independence. Even though the Ile de Sainte-Croix was the site of the first-ever French colony on the coast of North America and thus by all accounts and rightful claims a French (and subsequently British by right of conquest) possession, the British allowed the USA to occupy it due to the fact that it was south of the main water course.

From here I went to Tim Horton’s for a coffee – and I wish that I hadn’t. 6 members of staff on duty, but only one serving and she was a trainee. And the guy in the queue in front of me orders, would you believe, 16 breakfasts. I was there for hours.

It’s the 11th of September today so Strawberry Moose gives the Americans a timely reminder, and also something else to think about.

A 21-gun salute across the Saint Croix River into USA territory at Eastport in Maine is just the thing for this morning and as usual, His Nibs is always keen to oblige whenever the need arises.

I’m at the blockhouse that’s situated on the bank of the Saint Croix River just outside St Andrews. This was one of the ones that was built in response to American aggression on the border here during the War of 1812 but by the time it was finished, the panic was over.

Just like everywhere else in Canada, it was badly damaged by fire in 1993 but was subsequently

There’s a long pier that goes out from the quayside here, and from there, there’s a very good view back towards the town.

The town dates from 1783 and was another United Empire Loyalist settlement created after the end of the War of Independence. In fact, it’s often said that some of the settlers brought their houses with them, floating them across the river on rafts.

This was where I was last night in the dark.

The town is laid out in the typical North American grid pattern that you will find in almost every city. And since then, it’s been a ferry port connected to Grand Manan island, a centre for irish immigration and, latterly, according to some tourist stuff that I had read, “Canada’s first seaside resort community”.

Talking of tourists, while I was wandering around, a tour bus from the USA pulled up and disgorged a load of passengers.

half an hour later, this boat sailed past me with a full load of passengers, presumably from the aforementioned, on their way to do a bit of whale-watching.

And I don’t know why the leader of the party needed a microphone to speak to his passengers – I could hear him quite clearly from over here.

Another thing that I do when I’m in a strange town is to look at the house prices. And I reckon that I might just be able to afford this kiddies’ garden play house.

Cheapest property in the Estate Agent’s window is a mere $63,900 and that’s just a small cabin, so residents of St Andrews can now breathe more easily. I will not be coming to join them. I can do better than that for a quarter of the price up on Mars Hill.

There’s a lighthouse here too at St Andrews. It’s the Pendlebury Lighthouse, right at the entrance to the Saint Croix River and dates from 1833.

It was disaffected in 1938 and gradually deteriorated. Some time in the early 1960s the sea wall was washed away and the lighthouse tilted over. It was eventually righted and in 2002 was moved 50 feet inland to protect it, as another section of the sea wall was observed to be on the point of collapse.

And that was just as well because in the following winter, the sea wall and the site of the lighthouse were washed away. Since then, there’s been a thorough restoration of the lighthouse and the sea wall and it’s been restored to its original location.

My route took me round by Passamaquoddy Bay and down a road that was signed as a “dead end”. The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav told me to do a U-turn in 500 metres, but she was clearly joking – or so I thought at the time.

It turns out that the island over there is called Minister’s Island and its claim to fame is that Covenhoven, the summer home of William van Horne.

And who might William van Horne be? Well, he was the power behind the Canadian Pacific Railway and this was where he came to relax.

And why is The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav not pulling my leg about this U-turn? That’s because you will have noticed the ramp over there on the island. It’s not a ramp as such, it’s part of a road because there’s a road that runs over there that is accessible at low tide. It’s only at high tide that the island is cut off.

A few times today, an old car that I thought might be a Ford A drove past me while I was wandering around. A short while later, I happened to stumble across it and I reckon that I may well be right.

It was sitting here in the drive of a house just outside St Andrews and it was not alone. It had several other old vehicles to keep it company, one or two of which will be quite exciting when they are finished.

There were a lot of roadworks going on here so I went for a closer look to see what was happening.

It’s the Digdeguash River that flows by here and it’s crossed by a bridge that has the date 1938 carved upon it. Although it crosses the river no more as it has collapsed. And it looks as if it’s been collapsed for quite a while too. hence all of the roadworks.

Next town down the road is St George and it has the most beautiful post office that I have ever seen.

St George is known as the “Granite Town” due to the fact that it had a granite quarry that for over 60 years gave up some of the best granite blocks ever seen in this part of Canada. What we see here in the post office, and some of the other buildings around here, are just seconds, believe it or not.

Just down the road at L’Etete is a ferry that goes over to Deer Island. I don’t unfortunately have the time to do over on it, so I’ll content myself with admiring it.

But interestingly, one of the members of staff told me that there’s another ferry on the other side of Deer Island that goes over to Eastport in Maine. Now isn’t that an interesting idea for an unusual crossing into Great Satan?

Down at the end of the road at Green’s Point is another lighthouse. It’s through the channel that ships travelling to St Andrews and St George used to travel and so it was logical that a light should be installed here.

At first, there was just a steam-powered foghorn installed, and the light followed as recently as 1903. The light was automated in 1996 and the keepers cottage is now used for holiday letting.

Whilst admiring the view and the water flowing by, I fell in with a guy from Toronto who was renting the cottage. He comes here every year and when you see the view you will understand why

While we were having a right old natter, our attention was drawn to three boats circling around about a mile or two offshore, with a disturbance in the water in the centre of the circle.

I took a photo with the telephoto lens and although I couldn’t see much, a little crop and enlargement produced something quite spectacular. According to my new friend, who was looking through his field glasses, we had been watching a Minke whale.

I had to dash back to St Andrews to meet Colleen but yet again I was sidetracked. I was having a good day for old vehicles, wasn’t I? In fact I’d seen many more today than those that I’m featuring on this page.

The engine was still in this one so I could tell that it’s a 6-cylinder side-valve (flathead) engine and judging by a few bits and pieces in the cab, it’s an International. And it’s just sitting here.

On a final note, Colleen and I went out for a meal (good job that I had some vegan cheese for my pizza) and we met a few of Strawberry Moose‘s admirers.

I stopped and took a few photos of them while His Nibs went over to make their acquaintance. Colleen gave him directions to her house and we went home for a coffee.

What a nice day!

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

… that I wouldn’t be blogging tonight but here I am in the harbour (well, the terminal, not actually in the harbour) of the ferry terminal at Channel Port Aux Basques with a few hours to go before I sail back to civilisation and I’ve discovered an internet hotspot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But here’s a thing.

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

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

Eventually, we were allowed to board the ship and Strawberry Moose did well to park Casey correctly.

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

-3

EPIC HALL

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