Tag Archives: airport security

Thursday 17th October 2019 – WHEN I WAS LOOKING …

… at my flight and trying to reserve a seat, I remember looking at the rows and rows of seats available and thinking to myself “this must be a flaming big ‘plane with all this room on it”

And much to my surprise, when i was walking down the ramp I noticed on the side of our aeroplane “Boeing 787 Dreamliner”. Boeing’s new flagship aeroplane, and we’ve only flown on one of these before, FROM CHARLES DE GAULLE TO MONTREAL IN AUGUST 2014. My luck seems to be in, for once.

The cabin crew were super-efficient. Although we had had a long wait, we were ushered in, seated and we were off taxiing down the runway in a matter of just a couple of minutes. Quickest loading and departure I’ve ever had.

Just two of us on a row of seats meant for three. My companion was a Francophone Canadian woman in her 40s I reckon, very friendly and with a good sense of humour. We got on quite well although she was a “mobile” passenger, needing to get up and move about on regular occasions, usually just after I had dozed off to sleep.

Mind you, there wasn’t much opportunity for sleep. That was a flight that I will remember for quite a while. I don’t think that I have ever encountered such astonishing turbulence over such a length of time. We were being tossed around like corks and at one time I think even I was praying to Mecca (it’s the first flight that I’ve ever been on where Mecca was shown as a destination on the flight direction screen). My poor travelling companion felt the worst of it too.

Vegan meals on offer too and that was quite pleasant. I’m rather wary of some flights – I’ve had far too many failures in the past. But my ratatouille and rice was quite acceptable. I turned down the coffee though. I’m having enough sleep issues as it is.

I suppose that I must have dozed off here and there because I was awoken by the arrival of breakfast. Bread and jam (with coffee and orange juice) and that filled a nice little hole.

Eventually we touched down – in Casablanca, Morocco!

And I bet that you are all wondering just WHAT I’m doing in North Africa!

The fact is that with having left my booking for the return flight rather late, the “direct” prices are just totally absurd. And with it being merely a “one-way” booking, there’s an opportunity to look around all different companies and sites to see who has the best deal on connections on scheduled flights. There was a whole batch of them too at prices that, while not exactly a bargain, were much less expensive than the direct price. And it’s not as if I’m in any particular hurry.

And so I had a good look around to see whether there was a connection proposed at anywhere exotic or anywhere where I had never been before.

Sure enough, Casablanca looked a good choice to me, so here I am.

We had to pass through Security, and then a four-hour wait. But that time passes quite quickly, especially when you are tired and close your eyes for … errr .. a short while. But close them I did.

Our plane back to Brussels wasn’t particularly full so we could spread out at the back. I had rice and veg for lunch too and that was delicious.

The flight was uneventful and we touched down in Brussels bang on time. And all in all, I’ll fly with Royal Air Maroc any day of the week. I’d had good service all the way from Montreal.

The joys of flying in on a scheduled flight from North Africa is that I was the only passenger in the “European Union” queue so I was straight through. I had a fight with the railway ticket machine and then collected my suitcase. Just as I set foot on the platform a train for Brussels pulled in so I piled on board and headed for the city.

For a change, I’m in a new hotel. I’ve never stayed here before but my regular one is booked up. This one is clean and modern, but cheap with no lift (so the receptionist had to carry my suitcase upstairs – all 19.7 kilos of it). I’ve stayed in many worse hotels than this, and for much more money too, although the internet is rubbish. And the huge damp patch on the wall behind the shower is rather worrying.

Back to the Delhaize at the station for a salad and now I’m ready for bed. Hospital tomorrow. I wonder what they are going to tell me.

Wednesday 16th October 2019 – SO HERE I ALL AM …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting in one of the departure lounges of the worst airport in the world, with the rudest staff I have ever met. I hate this place with a passion that cannot be measured on any scale that is known to Mankind but here I am. I’ve decided that it’s time that I was moving on before I put down roots.

And roots indeed. The last time that I slept in my own bed was on 26th June – that’s 16 weeks or so ago and while I’m not going home just yet I ought to be getting a little closer to it.

A lot of water has passed underneath the bridge since 26th June, that’s for sure.

Talking of passing water, I had another bad night last night. A whole succession of cramps in the calves and shins and it kept me awake for an eternity. I took advantage of the wakefulness by going down the corridor, but I would much rather have had a decent sleep instead.

I suppose that I must have dropped off at one point though. Or maybe more because there are several recordings on the dictaphone that I don’t remember making. Anyway, at about 07:15 I was wide-enough awake to push on with things.

No breakfast though. I repacked the suitcase and bunged another pile of stuff into it (and it registered 19.7 kilos at the airport’s weigh-in machine so I’m clearly getting back to normal) so that the backpack is at least manageable.

At 10:30 I set off for a walk, leaving my baggage behind for a moment. All the way up to the top of the town where I met Josee. I had done a little research in the area and discovered a little Lebanese restaurant in the basement of the shopping precinct so I took her there for a meal. And it turned out that she was well-known to the proprietor.

Later on, I had a leisurely stroll around the town and visited a few buildings that I had seen on my travels in the past. The big one near rue Sherbrooke that I had seen on several occasions is in fact the former hostel for the Deaf and Dumb of the city.

Eventually I rescued my suitcase and by 17:00 I was on the 747 bus to the airport. And it was then that I realised that I had left behind my raincoat and my aniseed balls. The objects and items that I have abandoned behind me on my travels could have filled another suitcase.

It was a good idea to go early to the airport because the traffic was horrendous. It’s a working day of course so we had the rush hour to deal with and there were queues everywhere. Our bus even lost a mirror against a lamp-post trying to squeeze past a queue of traffic turning right.

The departure check-in wasn’t open yet so I had a sandwich at Subway and then handed back my card for the USA. I won’t be going there for another while unless something quite dramatic happens.

Security is always extremely stressful here so I don’t propose to talk too much about it, even though I’ve had much worse passes through airport control than this. Now I’m sitting quietly waiting for my flight to be called.

But before I go, let’s talk about music. For no reason at all a track suddenly popped into my head out of nowhere. It’s Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams and regardless of how apposite the lyrics might be vis-a-vis my own personal circumstances and how I have lived my life, then just as Colosseum Live reminds me of almost every late and lonely night that I have ever spent on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, this particular track reminds me of just one particular night that was later than most and which I didn’t ever want to end.

I wonder if it means anything to anyone else.

That brings me round to the music that I am listening to now. Tom Petty has come round on the playlist and I have Into The Great Wide Open going full-blast.

Not a good idea right now of course. Far From it, in fact.
I heard you singing to no one
I saw you dancing all alone
One day you belonged to me
Next day I just wouldn’t know
One day all the rules will bend
And you and I will meet again

“One day all the rules will bend and you and I will meet again”. Nothing is more certain than that. You just have to believe.

“How could I get so close to you, and still feel so far away?”

Quite!

Friday 16th August 2019 – SO HERE I AM …

… in Toron.to about to start the fourth leg of my journey. So if you don’t hear from me for a while don’t worry. It merely means that I can’t find a reliable internet connection.

Last night was a really bad night and I don’t know why. I couldn’t get off to sleep and when I did, I couldn’t stay asleep for long.

but I was still up and about reasonably early, having medication and then going down to breakfast.

it took me a good while to organise myself after that but eventually I was ready for the shuttle bus to the airport. It was pretty busy and one guy spent all of the journey talking into his mobile phone and saying nothing except basically “how clever I am and how stupid my clients are” to someone else on the other end of the phone. Not one of the rest of us could understand a single sentence that he was saying.

The airport was busy but the wait through security wasn’t that long and after a thorough examination of my new laptop I was able to proceed.

The plane was pretty full but my neighbour was rather bizarre. I said “hello” to her but she looked back at me as if I had two heads. Never had that in Canada before.

At Toronto it took a while for our suitcases to appear and then I trotted off to the hotel. I’m on the 7th floor in the “secure” area – can’t think why.

We had our expedition briefing later and I met a couple of old friends. But the vultures at the head of the queue cleaned out the buffet – and how – before those of us farther behind could be served. Looking at the mountain of food on some of the plates, then some people have no shame.

I trotted off to Subway for a sandwich and then came back to watch the football. Newly promoted Penybont were playing Barry Town in the opening match of the Welsh Premier League – now the JC Cymru League.

For the first half Penybont played quite well with some nice football, compared to Barry Town’s idea of “hoof it upfield and hope McLaggon can run fast”. 60%-32% possession told its own story.

But in the second half Barry improved and ended up winning 2-1. A bit unfair on Penybont who deserved something from the game.

I’m off to bed now. It’s an early start in the morning. And I don’t know when I’ll see you all again but I’ll catch up eventually.

Sunday 30th June 2019 – SO HERE WE ALL ARE …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting in the bedroom of a relatively comfortable hotel in, would you believe, Aberdeen.

And how unhappy am I?

Having made a special enquiry, and had it specially confirmed, that there was a hotel shuttle bus, necessary in view of the amount of luggage that I have and the state of my knee, I telephoned the hotel when I arrived at the airport only to be told “we don’t have a driver on tonight”.

So I had to hobble, dragging my load behind me, for about a mile up the steep hill to the hotel.

On arrival, in quite some distress with my breathing problems and the like, I was given a room on the second floor (despite having asked for a low floor) – and there’s no lift. So I had to drag my load up two flights of stairs.

As you can see, despite the fact that this nice modern hotel could be such good value for money (very rare in the UK)if it were to have staff and management wh actually cared about the customers, here’s one very unhappy bunny.

And the UK? I have said (on many occasions) that I would never ever set foot in this accursed country again, but needs must when the devil drives.

With it being Sunday morning I was hoping to have my usual Sunday lie-in but after last night’s quite dramatic crashing-out, I shouldn’t have been surprised at all by sitting bolt-upright at 06:44. Not what I intended at all.

Plenty of time to go off on a nocturnal ramble.

I was doing a coach tour again last night, down in the South of France and I was picking up passengers all over the place. I couldn’t find the paperwork for the moment telling me who and where I was picking folk up. So I was doing as fast as I can, and ending up at the final stop I was one person short. So I wondered where on earth I’d got this one person short. While I was waiting I was chatting to people and some woman came up to me to ask me what I thought of the passengers – what I thought of this woman, what I thought of that man. Despite my being very non-committal which I always tried my best to be I was shaking my head and pulling a face at some of them. I certainly hadn’t intended to do that. Eventually I found the piece of paper and found that I had left three people behind at Dijon and that was over an hour back. I thought “how am I going to explain this?” because I’d have to ring up the company to say that I didn’t get them and if I had the paperwork I could have done that. But Dijon is this thing and I might have to go all the way back and upset all of the passengers before I’d even started. One woman pulled the voyage list that I had to read it and of course i had to pull it back before she could as passengers aren’t supposed to read the voyage list with everyone’s name and address on it.
Later on I’d been in Crewe last night with Margaret Armstrong’s old Ford Cortina and parked it up in Bedford Street. I’d walked through the alleyway round all the backs of the houses round the back of Chambers Street and Catherine Street and all of those places, walking for a while around there. There were all kinds of exciting things round there, round Gresty Road where My sister used to live it had all been transformed with some kind of building built onto the backs of the houses over the back yards, and a derelict house that I had once looked at, that was all derelict too and the roof and attic too of this “new build” extension. And some weird semi-detached houses, quite modern design all covered in ivy, and some older semi-detached houses derelict and bricked up. Unkempt gardens and all kinds of things like that. There was a girl there, walking in my direction back to the car, on the phone so I passed her once, she passed me and I passed her again. As I got to the car she came over to me “you’ve got the zodiacs, haven’t you?” I said that they are actually on board the ship and that’s off the coast of Scotland at the moment”. “Well I want to make the white cloth to throw over them” So I said that I would get the measurements the next time that I’m up there, which will be in a couple of weeks’ time..

Firstly though, I had to find my medication. But I’ve packed it so well that it remains well and truly packed and I probably shan’t find it until I return home, whenever that might be, because now that I have my French Carte de Sejour I’m not in any hurry to go home.

After breakfast I attacked yesterday’s blog and then went out to the station. Now 09:30 so Subway should be open to buy something for lunch, and to buy my rail ticket. But much to my surprise, Subway was closed. And none of my raisin buns in Carrefour either so instead I had to go back down into the bowels of the station to the Delhaize and that came up trumps with a vegan falafel salad, demi-baguette and a fruit mixture thing. The guy at the till even found me a plastic cutlery set to eat it with.

So on the way back out, Subway was just opening up. That’ll teach them!

Back at the hotel I collected up everything, organised myself, grabbed my stuff and went off to pay for my two breakfasts. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve paid the booking agency in advance for a couple of breakfasts in a couple of places, only for the hotel to have “no trace” of the breakfast payment. So now I pay on-site if I’m breakfasting.

Down to Brussels-Midi station in time to leap aboard a Nederlandse Spoorwegen train to Amsterdam via the airport. It threw me out here. And here I am, in the departure lounge of Brussels Zaventam Airport, waiting for an aeroplane. And I hope that the Big Old Jet Airliner will carry me far away.

I eventually found the flight desk, which was not yet open and so I had a lengthy wait, spent talking to a couple from Australia and a young guy who looked like a Pacific islander from Baltimore.

Check-in was quite straightforward and Security even more straightforward. If only it would be as simple as this in other airports. Now I’m sitting quietly waiting to find out which terminal my flight will dock at, and I’m clearly in Travelling Mode because I’m listening to Colosseum Liveand I’ll probably follow it up by listening to On The Road by Traffic. My two favourite travelling albums.

We we were eventually called to our aeroplane. It was now moored at gate A60 at the far end of the terminal from where I was so I had something of a hike, which will probably do me good anyway.

I didn’t have long to wait and much to my surprise we were very quick in boarding the ‘plane. There were only a handful of empty seats but it was only a small ‘plane. I asked the stewardess if it was a Fokker and she replied “no, it’s quite well-behaved”. But I made a note of its registration – PH-EXT. That tells me that It’s an Embraer 190.

The name of the stewardess was Suske so I asked her what she had done with Schanulleke. But as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once said, and as I have repeated on many occasions, “it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners”.

Once the ‘plane took off I switched on the laptop, put it onto flight mode, and started to listen to “Lost Angeles” once more. But it was quite pointless because no sooner had it all fired up than I had to switch off because we had gone into the arrivals path. In fact, I think that we spent more time manoeuvring on the ground than we spent in the air.

It’s not all that far to Schiphol from Zaventem and I could have gone by TGV from Bruxelles-Midi but believe it or not, it would have worked out more expensive. And that’s something that I don’t understand.

And I’m pretty annoyed because I have to wait 5 hours or so for a connection. There was a flight that went my way that took off 5 minutes before we landed but, would you believe, it was delayed and I could in theory have gone on that had I realised and run for it.

So now I have to wait. I sat and ate my delicious falafel salad and bread.

To reach my flight I had to pass through passport control and for some reason I was grabbed for a security check. I always have bad experiences at Schiphol, as I remember from last time.

I was given the “works” and was preparing myself for the cavity search when they suddenly found what had drawn their attention to me. “No, those aren’t bullets in a magazine. They are AAA batteries in a battery holder”.

It was weird at the terminal. People were actually locked into their departure lounge and if you weren’t on that particular flight you were locked outside. I had to wait for ages until the departure lounge cleared and they tidied it up before I was allowed in.

In the meantime they had changed departure lounges without saying anything and I almost found myself going to Glasgow. I had to hurry along down the corridor.

The place to Aberdeen was packed, and it was a big plane too. PH-BGK, a Boeing 737 called Noordse Stormvogel . They asked for volunteers to send their hand luggage into the hold and I volunteered. Less to have to carry around.

And it seemed that everyone knew each other. Probably Shell oil workers flying back to the platforms after a weekend off.

We had to wait for 20 minutes too. There was a connection that arrived late and some of our passengers were on it. And then when they arrived, we had to wait again for a free slot. However, we arrived in Aberdeen only a few minutes late.

Immigration was relatively painless and our bags were already out when we arrived in the hall.

And then I had my issues with the hotel.

Once installed in my room I had a nice, welcome shower and washed my rather sweaty undies, and now I’m off to bed. I’ve had enough of today. And this might be the last you’ll hear from me for a while, so don’t be disappointed. Check back regularly until normal service will be resumed.

Sunday 30th September 2018 – I MUST HAVE BEEN …

… tired last night.

It didn’t take me many minutes to lie down on the bed, and when I did, that was that until the alarms went off at 06:00.

And I’d been on my travels too. On board a car ferry that had struck the ice and was sinking rather like the Titanic. And agin, the lifeboats on one side were crammed with people while those on the other side were going in with just a handful. There were two women in one and they called for two men to accompany them. We were three but nevertheless we were allowed in and lowered to the water. We rowed so far away but I stopped the boat to pick up people swimming in the water . But very few people went swimming past, and those who did wouldn’t come aboard, even though they had some frightful stories to tell of lorries sliding around in the car decks and crusing piles of passengers. Eventually, fed up of waiting I went back aboard Titanic or whatever to stimulate some trade. But I noticed that my new red mackintosh was badly damaged – the outer had separated from the padding and it was all looking really bad. One of the people on board sent me off to the purser to have it checked over – as if he didn’t have enough to be doing right at this moment.

Surprisingly, despite being the cat-house to end all cat-houses, the bed was quite comfortable and I was well-settled in there. But after waking up, I did a pile more work and then went for a stroll round the corner and down the road, rue St Catherine est to be precise, and the Tim Horton’s for breakfast.

Josée came on line and we had a little chat, and made arrangements to meet up for a brunch seeing as she had only just arisen from the dead. So I went back and had a shower and made the necessary arrangements for leaving.

She turned up at 11:30 and we went back around the corner to a place called Cora, which do some exotic kinds of breakfast. I had toast and a huge bowl of fresh fruit, and I wouldn’t like to describe what she had. She wasn’t too impressed either and sent back her cheese waffles, to be replaced with some muffins.

And here’s a surprise.

Something else I’m no good at is drawing, but Josée enjoys it, and there was a discussion on asteroids followed by a session on learning to draw lunar craters, on offer at the University of Montreal, her old stamping ground.

I’m all in favour of trying something new, so I tagged along and we spent a very pleasant 90 minutes there. Of course, my drawing was … shall we say … inconsequential, although Josée was commended for hers and quite rightly so.

We headed back into town and said our goodbyes at the Jean-Talon metro station. She headed north for home and I headed to Berri-UQAM and my hotel to rescue my luggage. Cheap and basic the hotel, but then so was the price and it scores quite well on the “value for money” scoreboard.

And I forgot to photograph it too.

The bus was exciting too. It was full of students from Cape Breton University – the “Capers” who were apparently a girls’ basketball team. And judging by the “athlete” badges that they were wearing, they had been competing in a competition. Whilst they might (or might not) have been good at putting the ball into the basket, they were absoluely hopeless at stacking their luggage in the luggage racks.

It was a quick drive to the airport – just aver 30 minutes – and I even managed to miss about 10 minutes of it, having … errr … closed my eyes for a relax.

The automatic check-in machines at the airport failed to recognise me … “no surprise there” – ed … so I had to check in manually. And no aisle seat either. I’m not having much luck.

Downstairs next. Hand in my USA green card to the Immigration and then pick up a Subway falafel sandwich for tea. That’s to take through security, but I had a “visit to the fountain” – my last root bear until I really don’t know when, if at all.

The usual fight through Security, where I was accosted by someone who ordered me to take off my boots.
“I bet your mother is really proud of the abruti she has turned out” I barked.
It must have struck a chord with her because I had a “thank you” afterwards. Now how difficult is it to say “please” and “thank you”?

airbus 330 300 dorval pierre l trudeau airport montreal canadaA walk all the way down to the far end of the terminal where I sat quietly (for a change) and ate my sandwiches. When the staff appeared I used the “bad leg” ploy (I really DO have a bad leg by the way – I’ve broken the right knee three times in my youth and as I’m getting older I’m feeling it more and more) and they came up trumps with an aisle seat.

There’s a piano down here and much of the waiting time was spent listening to various people vamping away on it. And pretty good they were too. I’d sign them up in a heartbeat.

We’re now on the ‘plane – an Airbus 330-300. I have a middle-aged Belgian woman sitting next to me. Very nice and friendly, but not very confident and asking me lots of questions.

And the data viewer on my seat has crashed. Even 4 hours out from Montreal we are still only 26 miles from Dorval. This is going to be a very long flight.

Tuesday 18th September 2018 – AND SO I WENT …

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

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

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

… to bed quite early (and missed all of the excitement too!) and crashed out almost immediately. The record that I was playing Colosseum Live"now THERE’S a surprise" – ed … was still playing when I briefly awoke, so I quickly turned that off and fell back into the Arms of Morpheus.

It didn’t take me long to go off on my travels and a big Hello! to The Vanilla Queen who made her debut. “Vanilla Queen” indeed, living up to her alter ego! The stress is clearly getting to me, that’s for sure.

With having to be up and about so early I was awake at about 04:30. And again at about 05:15. I couldn’t go back to sleep after that and so I Arose from the Dead and started to tidy up and pack.

We’ve now entered Kangerlussuaq, the “Big Fjord” and so I took a few photos. No sunrise today unfortunately and not really all that much else to see. So I toddled off to breakfast where I had a lengthy chat with Dave about Glasgow and GreenocK. Heather came to join us too for a short while.

Afterwards I finished packing my possessions and then I had to wait around for ages to see what was happening.

Before I could check out. We received a USB stick with all of the voyage details thereupon, and I was able to go back upstairs to upload the photos of Strawberry Moose in his kayak.

Eventually we were called down to the zodiacs and were transported to the shore. We passed by Linda, the cruise director, and I’m afraid that I couldn’t resist it. I said to her “I suppose you’ll give me that e-mail address tomorrow”.

I really am wicked! But serve her right.

A fleet of buses was awaiting us – some modern monstrous machines and also a couple of really elderly vehicles, including a Kassböhrer-Setra and, much to my surprise, a DAB-bodied 1984 Leyland bus.

We went past the ruins of Kellyville, an old American radar base and then up the hill to the old American submarine radio base. Long-since dismantled, you could see how tall the antennae must have been by reference to the concrete base and the size of the cable stays. They were massive.

Much to my surprise the diesel generators were still present – a couple of really old straight-eights. I was about to give them a good look-over but before I could do so we were summoned back to the bus.

Back down the hill again and past the cupola for the gun that defended the port installations and the runway for the airstrip at Kangerlussuaq in World War II. In (and out) of the town to look at the Pride and Joy of the urban area – the new bridge that replaced the one that was washed out in an ice-flood in 2012.

We were told of the volume of water that passes through the bridge at the height of the melt-water season and I can’t remember now what our driver said it was but it was certainly impressive. Today we had a floating plaque of ice that was jammed up against the culvert with all of the water passing underneath.

He showed us the site of the old bridge and explained that if we were to dig down in the collapsed morass we would probably be able to recover a digger that was swept away in the confusion.

Up to the top of the mountain on the other side.

There was a beautiful view of Kangerlussuaq from the top, as well as the old radio and radar installations from the Cold War. Some of the equipment is now utilised by the Danes to pick up the data that is transmitted from weather satellites that pass overhead.

And I found some beautiful glacier-polished rock right on top of the mountain. It looked really splendid.

Back down to the airport – the largest in Greenland with the longest runway – another Cold War legacy. Plenty of time to kill before take-off so I went to watch the Air Greenland planes take off. This is the only airport in which the big jets can land so they unload and turn round here and there are endless shuttles of smaller planes that feed the passengers in and out and on and beyond.

I took the opportunity to eat my packed lunch too. Not that it took me all that long. Laszlo and I clearly have different ideas about the size of my appetite.

Still hordes of people congregating around so I spent quite a while chatting to Sherman, Michael, Christopher and Tiffany. They were sharing out the crisps which I thought was quite nice of them.

Eventually we made our way to the departure lounge and I had another stand-off in what laughingly passes as “security”.

“Empty your pockets!” barked a woman with a badge.
“Would you mind saying ‘please’ to me when you address me” I replied.
This led to an extremely warm 5 minutes until she buckled under.

And now our plane is 90 minutes late. isn’t that a surprise? It’s so late that the second plane has in fact arrived first.

I thought that it would be absolutely awful watching the others depart before us, but they sat for half an hour on the tarmac without moving – and then the rood opened, the stairs came out and the pilot descended.

The cynic in me started to work out all kinds of depressing scenarios and in the words of JRR Tolkein “all are dark and unpleasant”.

We were later told a story of what had happened. Apparently some kind of aeroplane had come to some kind of grief on the runway. Our plane couldn’t land and so had flown back to Iqaluit.

But none of this explains why plane 2 had managed to land on the runway, and why another aeroplane from Air Greenland had managed to land. And why they hadn’t grabbed one of the towing dollies that I had seen in action earlier and yanked the plane off the runway.

20-odd years of working in the tourism industry has imbued me with a desperate sense of cynicism that will one day surely be my undoing. However, I am guided by the comment that “a cynic is someone who sees things as they are, not as they are meant to be”.

And seeing the n°2 aeroplane take off before our (earlier) one had landed did nothing to dispel my feelings.

The tour company offered us a meal of sorts. And after much binding in the marsh they managed to rustle up a salad for me. A blind man would have been pleased to see it, I suppose.

But the biggest laugh is yet to come.

After the meal they gave me a bottle of water – unopened and sealed – out or the restaurant so I strode back into the waiting area. And they wouldn’t let me pass with it and we had quite an argument about it.

But behind me were the tour managers with 200 of the identical bottles of water and they passed those into the security area, right enough. And so we had another argument about that too.

In the meantime, the clock in the waiting room had ceased to function. That’s always a handy stand-by when people are feeling the drag of waiting around. They don’t notice the passage of time if the clock isn’t working.

The plane finally arrived at about 20:35 – a good 15 minutes after the “latest update” time and well over 4 hours after its due DEPARTURE time. And in the meantime Sherwin had given us an impromptu concert to pass the time. One suspects that a certain well-filled brown envelope had changed hands at some point. We even had Latonia singing along.

And once the aeroplane had landed, they started up the clock again.

I really must develop a more positive attitude, as I have been saying for quite a while.

Departure time should have been 16:30. We took to the air at 22:15. That was me thoroughly depressed.

What depressed me even more was when I talked to the cabin crew. They told me that there had been a “maintenance issue” and that, together with the associated paperwork, had delayed the take-off

Clearly someone is being … errrr … economical with the truth somewhere.

And I felt really sorry for The Vanilla Queen. She lives in Iqaluit but was having to take the charter flight to Toronto, and then make her way home via Montreal. So where do you think that we stopped for a refuelling break?

Much to my surprise they actually did have a vegan meal on board. And even more surprisingly, it was quite reasonable too, as far as airline meals go.

But that was as good as it got. My good humour that had been slowly disappearing over the last few days – well, the last vestiges have disappeared into the ether now. As Doctor Spooner once famously said, “I feel like a hare with a sore bed”.

I tried to settle down to sleep but no chance of that. I shall have to stay wide-awake with only my good humour to keep me company.

I don’t think.

Sunday 2nd September 2018 – HAVING GONE WEST …

… yesterday, I was hoping that we would be emulating Richard Barnes today and, getting rather tired of Southern Comfort we would “Go North”.

early morning plane landing edmonton airport canadaAnd it must be my really bad conscience telling me something, or else the tension has totally swept me away, Or else it was the early night. But I was wide-awake at 02:25 this morning, looking at the aircraft coming into land at the airport.

By 04:00 I was out of bed working, having given up the idea of sleep a long time previously. I really need to do something about this otherwise I’m going to have a catastrophe.

After all of the alarms had rung, I went and had a good shower. And gathered up all my things.

Luckily, at the check-out I managed to locate a coffee machine so I was able to fuel up. Maybe I’ll feel a little more like it when it starts to work. Who knows?

At the baggage check-in at the airport I noticed that I’m definitely losing my touch. My suitcase weighed a mere 16.6 kgs and that included Strawberry Moose. It’s not like me at all. I could have taken a couple of extra children in my baggage allowance.

Security was another total farce. We had probably the surliest member of the Canadian Government Service that I have ever encountered (and I’ve encountered a few, believe me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall).

And then my boots rang the alarm bells at the barrier so I was told (not asked, told) to take them off. And so I made an acerbic remark about the fact that I’d rather take my chances with the freedom fighters than the Security Services, which led to my being “selected for special screening”.

The guy then couldn’t make the explosives detector work so I sat down on his table to rest, to which he took a great deal of exception. My response was that I wasn’t going to hang around like this while he messed around with all of his useless equipment, and we had something of a stand-off as I dug my heels in.

In the end, I was waved through, but not before they confiscated my bottle of water. For some reason or another they took exception to my book too and we had a little argument about that as well.

I really don’t know what’s the matter with these people. It’s almost as if they go around looking for a fight. So the best that I can do is to make their day and oblige them.

While I was sitting down, I started to make a list of the things that I don’t remember packing. I can see it being another one of THOSE voyages. And I must remember to find a large bin-liner in which to wrap His Nibs, otherwise he’ll be rather wet.

bae 146 avro rj85 rj100 canada september septembre 2018Our aeroplane is one of the old British Aerospace BAe146 voriants, either an Avro RJ85 or an RJ100, and the only way to tell them apart withour a tape measure is to have one standing alongside another.

You can tell from the registration number too, but I can’t see it on my photo. It’s a charter flight operated by a company based in Yellowknife and there weren’t all that many people on it, which makes me think that it might be an RR100.

I ended up sharing a row of seats with an elderly British lady who has lived in Canada for 75 years, and a rather garrulous British guy who had clearly had more than just a whiff of the barmaid’s apron.

A meal was supplied on the flight and I was rather dubious about whether it was really as vegan as it was supposed to be.

After a nice relaxing flight we came in to land at Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories for a refuelling stop.

That’s a decision that seemed to me at the time to be a rather strange decision, knowing the likely range of a BAe 146. And the cynic inside me was not assuaged by the news that we received here.

It seems that, once more, we had been confounded by the weather. Instead of blowing stuff away from us, is blowing stuff towards us and blocking our passage, which can be very painful if you have forgotten to bring your ointment.

The bad weather conditions mean that we can’t go on yet again, and we are now stranded here in Yellowknife for a while. Looking at the positives, because I need to adopt a more positive outlook, at least, I can say that at 62°27N this is the farthest north point that I have ever reached, beating Finland 1981 by a good 100 or so miles.

But will we make it any farther north?

That positive outlook didn’t last very long, did it?

While things are being organised, I went for a walk outside the airport.

Straight away, I stumbled across a paid of really old Douglas DC3 “Dakotas” parked up at the end of the runway. I knew that there were some that had been abandoned here but I didn’t think that I would be lucky enough to find them.

douglas dakota dc3 c-gpnr buffalo air yellowknife canada september septembre 2018This one here is registration number C-GPNR and it was apparently built in 1942, construction number 13333 and ex-USAAF serial 42-93423.

It’s a DC3-S1C3G variant, which seems to indicate to me that it’s fitted with two 895-kW Pratt and Whitney R-1830-S1C3G Twin Wasp radials rated at at 1200hp, so it’s much more powerful than the versions fitted with Wright Cyclone engines.

But it doesn’t look as if it will be going very far in the near future as from what I can see, its last airworthiness certificate that I could find expired on 23rd May 1996

douglas dakota dc3 cf-cue buffalo air yellowknife canada september septembre 2018This one is a Douglas C47 version – the Skytrain – of the DC3 Dakota.

Her registration number is C-FCUE, built in 1942 as construction number 12983 and fitted with two Pratt & Whitney R-1830-92 Twin Wasp radial engines. It’s claimed to be the first aeroplane to have landed in Yellowknife and can count among its celebrated passengers the Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

It’s also been suggested and one very vocal local yokel told me that one of these two aircraft was involved in the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944

But it’s a shame to see them here slowly disappearing into the landscape like this. Someone ought to do something about saving them.

There’s another aeroplane here too, away in the distance. This one is on display on a plinth. Yet another obliging local told me that this was the first aeroplane to have landed on the North Pole and so I went to see that too.

arctic fox bristol mk31 freighter north pole yellowknife airport canada september septembre 2018And, lo and behold, it’s Arctic Fox, registration CF-TFX.

She’s a Bristol Mk31 freighter and you will have to look long and hard to find another one of these aeroplanes anywhere in the world because there can’t be more than a dozen remaining.

She was built in 1953 to a wartime design as a freighter as you can tell from the clamshell front doors for transporting machinery and vehcles.

arctic fox bristol mk31 freighter north pole yellowknife airport canada september septembre 2018She was bought by Wardair in 1958 and used for the transportation of freight around the North-West Territories.

But her claim to fame is much more important and personal than that, because she was the first ever wheeled aeroplane to land at the North Pole, a feat that she accomplished on 5th May 1967 under the control of a pilot called Don Braun.

It was purchased from Wardair in 1968 and installed here as a monument on 22nd June 1968

I went back to the airport afterwards to see what was going on, and eventually we were picked up by a shuttle bus and driven to our hotel. We’re staying in the Days Inn in the centre of the new town, up on the hill.

And much to my surprise, I don’t seem to be alone.

The Vanilla Queen, whom I mentioned yesterday and who is named for all those of you who know your Dutch rock music from the early 1970s – is the Québecoise who was on my plane from Montreal to Edmonton yesterday. She was then in the hotel last night, again on the ‘plane this morning, now on my shuttle bus and she’s staying in my hotel.

We had a lengthy chat and what she told me caused me to give her all of my adulation. She comes from Montreal, south of the river, and had the urge to go to live in the Arctic. So one day, she just upped sticks and moved to Iqaluit, the principal town on Baffin Island, beyond the Arctic Circle.

And how I admire people like that who have that kind of courage.

She’s a hair stylist (NOT a hairdresser) by profession, so I joked that she would have loads of fun trying to do something with what remains of the hair that I still have.

For lunch I wandered off into town and came across a Subway. That’ll do me nicely.

demolition of old wooden building yellowknife north west territories canada september septembre 2018But not before I’d witnessed the total demolition of an old wooden building here.

Half of the town was out watching it, and I thought that it was the highlight of the year, but it turns out that it was a silent protest as almost everyone in the community was up in arms about the whole affair.

Mind you, someone whom I met later said that in her opinion it was a derelict wreck and about time that it went.

On the way back I noticed a sign saying that the town had been built on the oldest rocks yet known in the world,, so I recounted to one of the officials on our voyage the story of the rocks being 4,000,004 years and three months old.

But as Alfred Hitchcock and Kenneth Williams once so famously remarked “it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners”.

great slave lake yellowknife north west territory canada september septembre 2018A little later, there was a guided tour of the town organised so I leapt on board. And so did The Vanilla Queen, and we had quite another chat.

I was expecting to see the sewage farm, the rubbish dump and the brand-new bicycle rack but instead we ended up on the rock at the Bush Pilots’ Memorial where there’s a magnificent view over Yellowknife Bay on the Great Slave Lake.

It was well-worth the climb because You could see for miles from up here over some really beautiful views.

modern town yellowknife north west territories canada september septembre 2018Yellowknife is actually two towns in one.

The original settlement that was founded in the 1930s is down by the lake but when the North West Territories were incorporated in 1967 and the region’s administrative offices were located here, these buildings were constructed up on the hill away from the water.

A modern town, complete with all facilities, to house the staff who came here with the Government grew up around the buildings. Today, about 20,000 people live here.

hotchy yellowknife northwest territories canada september septembre 2018We walked back down the hill towards town in the company of another couple of people who had spent some time in the town and who knew their way around.

There were several exciting things to see on the way down, including this little photo prop at the side of the road.

It’s the kind of thing that is always worth a good photo opportunity

ad hoc sculptures yellowknife north west territories canada september septembre 2018On our way again, we hadn’t gone all that far when we were sidetracked by some of the most extraordinary people you would ever wish to meet.

Down at the edge of the lake we ended up at the old original settlement of the town. Here we met a guy who makes sculptures by collecting all kinds of abandoned objects and balancing them on top of each other.

Having lived here for a considerable number of years, he told us a whole host of interesting and exciting stories about life down here.

houseboats great slave lake yellowknife north west territories canada september septembre 2018He also pointed out a route along the lake shore where we could see many interesting things, such as house boats that float on large iron pontoons.

Rents in the town are quite expensive, but the lake is actually outside the city boundary so people can live here on a houseboat without paying rent or any local authority charges.

This can on occasion lead to quite a considerable amount of controversy. There are of course no services available to those who live in the houseboats and so they take advantage of those available in the town – without usually paying for them of course.

jolliffe island houseboats great slave lake yellowknife great slave lake canada september septembre 2018Many of the local residents and indeed the town council are none-too-happy about this situation and on quite a few occasions the farces of law and order have been involved.

Access to the houseboats is of course by boat during the summer but in the winter the lake freezes over and access is on foot.

And the ice on the lake is so solid that residents can even bring their vehicles right up to the front door.

ragged ass road yellowknife north west territories canada september septembre 2018One of the most famous roads in the town is called Ragged Ass Road.

When the access to the waterfront properties was by water, what is now known as Ragged Ass Road was the rear limit of the properties and at was against this line that all of the outside toilets of the residents were situated.

However there are some people who reckon that this story is at best apocryphal.

Another famous street in the town is Lois Lane. In case you haven’t guessed, one of the houses in the street was for a number of years the home of the actress Margaret (Margot) Kidder.

While we were down in Ragged Ass Road we met a woman who told us that she was a computer programmer and that she had developed the computer program that Sue was using on her tablet.

international harvester r150 yellowknife northwest territories canada september septembre 2018In the garden of a house right by where we were talking, there were a couple of abandoned lorries.

I thought that this one was exciting. It’s an International Harvester R150 that was gradually being overwhelmed by Arctic Willow.

This is quite a rare vehicle because as far as I could discover, they were only made from 1953 to 1955. The whole range totalled about 250,000 of which well over half related to just one model, the R110.

air compressor tools and drills yellowknife northwest territories canada september septembre 2018That wasn’t all that was exciting around here either.

This is an old mining area and as well as the old Ingersoll Rand air compressor that was lying around, there were loads of old air tools and machinery lying around too.

Someone had taken full advantage of all of these to create a very interesting art-deco sculpture that spanned several gardens in the street.

gold miners cabin yellowknife northwest territories canada september septembre 2018I mentioned that the original site of the town was down here on the waterfront.

It consisted of loads of of old ad-hoc wooden cabins assembled by the miners who came here in the late 1930s in search of the gold that had been discovered in the area in 1934.

There are still a few of the original cabins remaining and this was pointed out to us as being one of them.

Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre yellowknife northwest territories canada september septembre 2018By now our little group of people had whittled itself down to just two of us and so we wandered off to the museum of local life, the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

This was certainly quite an interesting place and there were lots to see. We certainly learnt a great deal about local life amongst the indigenous people.

I was very keen on the Polar Bears while The Vanilla Queen fell in love with a stuffed Muskox.

parliament building council offices yellowknife northwest territories canada september septembre 2018The Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre is situated in a very beautiful location on the edge of the city in a small park, in the same area where the Parliament of the Northwest Territories is situated.

We still had plenty of time after the museum closed and so we were able to admire the Government Offices in all their glory in the evening sunshine.

This isn’t the kind of traditional view that you would associate with life on the tundra so close to the Arctic Circle.

Our evening meal at the hotel across the road had been put back by half an hour and so we had plenty of time left on our hands. But there was a beautiful lake at the back of that hotel which looked very inviting so we went for a walk.

And I must have been very distracted because I don’t seem to have taken any photos of it. I’m sure that that can’t be right.

inuit throat singing yellowknife northwest territories canada september septembre 2018We had a nice buffet tea, with plenty of choice even for me which makes a nice change.

And after tea, we were entertained by some Inuit throat musicians giving a fine demonstration of their art. It was certainly different.

But the procedure was interrupted by an announcement from the admin of our trip that with a change in the direction of the wind we are going to try to go on tomorrow. But to where, we really don’t have much of an idea

So off we traipsed to our hotel and bed. Alarm calls at 04:00 and on the bus at 05:00

And where will we be stranded tomorrow?

Saturday 1st September 2018 – IT WAS HARD THIS MORNING …

… to haul myself out of the stinking pit. But then, what do you expect at 04:00 in the morning? at least I beat the morning chorus of the air-conditioning and the fridge compressor.

But having made my butties and packed my bags last night, a quick wash and a few other things and I was ready for the road.

I hadn’t gone more than 100 yards when I was totally drenched in one of these sudden storms for which Montreal is famous. But it went just as quickly as it came so it wasn’t too much of a problem.

And it’s a good job that I was early at the bus stop. The advertised time of departure is 04:54 but at 04:54 we were already half-way down the Boulevard Rene-Levèsque, doubtless to the annoyance of a few people, I should imagine.

The airport was the usual Dorval chaos. As Alvin Tofler predicted 40 years ago in his classic book “The Third Wave”, it’s all self-check-in stuff now. The passengers don’t have a clue half the time as to what they might be doing, and it’s all very well for the staff to tirer la tronchewhen the labels are stuck on the suitcases incorrectly or something like that, but what do they expect?

While “security” might ordinarily have been somewhat painless, I was still marked out for more personal attention – probably because they found the tube of Aloe Vera, for which I had paid a small fortune yesterday, in my backpack. They even closely examined the peak of my cap.

As I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … I’d much rather take my chances with the freedom fighters than the airport “security” personnel.

They had a call for hand luggage to go into the hold, and just for a change I sent mine down, having removed the laptop and the book. I remember that I was rather overwhelmed with stuff on the journey over, and it’s only a couple of hours on the plane (said he, having forgotten about the two-hour time difference).

airbus A320-200 air canada august aout 2018Today’s aeroplane is an Airbus A320-200, and it’s been a while since I’ve had a flight in one of those.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see its serial number so I can’t tell you anything about it.

But what I can tell you is that, much to my surprise, there wasn’t a meal offered on the flight – and it was over 4.5 hours too. That was bizarre.

Plenty of coffee though, so I fuelled up on a couple of occasions. And being stuck in the middle of a row (no aisle seats available yet again) I had to disturb this rather nice Oriental girl sitting next to me.

hotel renaissance edmonton airport canada august aout 2018But as for the hotel itself, I’ve never ever seen anything like it. It even puts the one in Tunisia to shame.

The staff are overwhelmingly polite to the point of being obsequious and I found that very disagreeable.

But there’s absolutely everything that you could want here, even down to an electric iron and a shoe polishing kit.

edmonton airport canada august aout 2018I’m right at the top, on the 8th floor to be precise.

And on the side that has a beautiful view right over the terminal building and the runway too. I could sit and watch the planes come in to land all day, but I have plenty of thigs to do;

Like reorganise my luggage.

subway sandwich bar near edmonton airport canada august aout 2018But first things first.

With there being no food on the aeroplane I need to organise some lunch, and one of the advantages of having a good internet connection is that these days one can call up a map of the area to see what’s about.

And just about one kilometre away across the car park is a Subway sandwich bar.

These days they offer falafel so I braved the biting wind and went over there for a falafel and salad butty. And it was hard work trying to persuade the rather elderly “sandwich artiste” to make me what I wanted instead of what she wanted to sell me.

But when I finally received it, it was very nice. And with it being this week’s special offer too, it was very realistically-priced.

electric block heater socket canada august aout 2018The walk back through the car park was very interesting indeed, and for a whole variety of reasons too.

Do you remember all those years ago when we first started to come regularly to Canada and we saw these electric plugs dangling out of the engine compartments?

We decided that they were engine block heaters and, sure enough, here on the car park at Edmonton Airport are the sockets in which to plug them in winter.

nissan quest edmonton airport canada august aout 2018No what about this car?

This is one that I’ve never seen before, and yet it looks kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

It’s actually a third-generation Nissan Quest, made between 2004 and 2009 and in my opinion it bears more than just a passing resemblance to the Dodge Grand Caravans that we used to have in the good old days before Strider, doesn’t it?

genesis edmonton canada september septembre 2018And here’s something else that we Europeans won’t ever have seen.

It’s a Genesis, and in case you are wondering what that might be, it’s really a Hyundai but quite a luxury one.

With the Hyundai name being usually associated with more plebeian vehicles, it was felt that offering a luxury car under that name was not such a good idea – hence the branding exercise.

luggage edmonton airport canada september septembre 2018I went for a walk around the terminal building.

I was intrigued by the fact that, for the domestic flights at any rate, the baggage carousels decanted themselves right into the middle of the Arrivals terminal.

That’s not such a good security idea in my opinion – anyone could grab your suitcase and walk off with it without any check whatsoever.

Another good advantage of having a decent internet connection is that you can watch the football. In the Welsh Premier League today, the televised match was Cefn Druid v Llandudno and I managed to catch the second half.

Llandudno had most of the play but weren’t as well-organised as the Druids, and the 2-1 scoreline in favour of the latter was about right.

But judging by the style and quality of the play, it’s clear to see why these two clubs are at the wrong end of the table.

I had a shower and a wash of the clothes that I had been wearing, and then I had to go to a meeting to discuss our future.

There were 170 of us in this little room all told, including The Vanilla Queen – a nice young girl whom I had noticed on the aeroplane coming up here. The presenter of this meeting gave us all some very bad news.

Not the news that I was hoping to hear, I have to say, but it can’t be helped. No-one can legislate for the weather at all and you get what you are given and like it.

As a result, all of our plans have now changed and I am really disappointed. And what didn’t help was missing my aim and biting a huge chunk out of my lower lip. It’s swollen up like nobody’s business right now.

But there’s always a bright side to everything. I had a long chat with she named The Vanilla Queen. She’s a hairdresser, so it seems, and lives on Baffin Island. And she’ll be on my aeroplane with me (and about 50 other people) at … gulp … 06:00 tomorrow morning.

And so yet another early start. I’m going to bed.:!!

Wednesday 11th October 2017 – SO HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting in the Departure Lounge of Dorval – or the Aeroport Pierre-E Trudeau waiting for my flight back to Paris.

And I have a feeling that it’s going to be an uncomfortable flight too. I’ve asked for an aisle seat because I’m still having problems with my right leg, And the girl in the check-in has given me my boarding pass, with the luggage label stuck over one of the places where the seat number is printed, and another sticky label stuck over the other place. So I can’t read it.

And so I bet that it isn’t an aisle seat. That’s just the kind of trick that they play on passengers instead of being honest and up-front about it. And so I’ll be crammed in somewhere extremely uncomfortably in the middle of a row.

Just as well that it’s a decent Air Canada flight and not an Air Transat sardine tin. But I’m still not happy.

I slept the sleep of the dead last night. Flat out all night and didn’t feel a thing until the alarm went off at 05:00. Mind you, it was … errr … somewhat later that I actually crawled out of bed. I wasn’t in much of a rush.

I spent a while doing some stuff on the laptop and then I went for a shower. Once I’d done that, I sorted out all of my affairs and repacked all of my possessions. That took me up until about 09:30 – meaning that I missed out on breakfast. But I didn’t really worry too much about that.

There’s a cupboard here at the hotel where you can dump your suitcase and so I left mine there and went for a walk around the city. First stop was the Dollar Store to pick up some stuff for the aeroplane. A couple of bags of sweets and the like.

Next stop was the Scotia Bank to take out some more money.I like to have a little stock on hand when I’m in Europe. I’ve been caught out with an expired bank card before, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

From there I went down to the Old Town. I needed a few things to take home with me and there was a place that had what I needed.

One last thing was to leap aboard the 55 bus with the driver listening to Focus III at full volume, and head off to the north side of the city.

Bang on midday I was at Josée’s place of work. I’d missed her yesterday as you know so we had agreed to meet for lunch. We ended up at a place not too far away where I had a vegan salad. I handed back the telephone, with grateful thanks to her for letting me borrow it.

Back down into town after that, and despite the grey overcast weather I couldn’t resist the opportunity to visit the vegan ice-cream bar in the rue St Catherine. The coconut milk was delicious as usual but I declined the chocolate – you remember from last year that it left something to be desired. Instead they had some kind of Vietnamese fruit.

I had a snooze too, having made sure that it wasn’t an auto-flush toilet. I seem to be making that some kind of habit these days again. But at least for the last couple of days I’ve been doing well over 100% of my daily activity so that’s something. and it will probably be something like that tomorrow too.

Having had my little relax I hobbled back (because I’m feeling the strain now) to the hotel to pick up my suitcase. the owners were there and they recognised me from when I was there before. We had a little chat and I had a little rest before wandering round the corner for the 747 bus to the airport.

We had one of these bus drivers who was a stickler for the rules. Everyone had to put their luggage in the racks and once the racks were full he refused to take on board any more passengers. But the motorway was open at last and it didn’t take too long to drive there.

Interestingly, some of the worst parts of the flyovers seem to have been demolished – they had concrete-cutters busily chopping up all of the rubble as we drove past.

At the airport I remembered to hand in my green card at the Immigration desk, and then went to check in. The automatic check-in didn’t recognise me, which is hardly a surprise – after all, who would want to admit to recognising me? And so we had the performance at the check-in desk.

And my suitcase for the flight back? A mere 16.7kgs. I’m clearly losing my touch.

Food is the next thing. I know that I won’t be having my special meal on the flight, but there’s a “Subway” in the airport, which is a good thing. A 12-inch vegetarian without cheese accompanied me through the security gate.

While we’re on the subject of security … “well, one of us is” – ed … apart from the queues it was relatively painless. They discovered my small bottle of water that I was hoping to keep, and also one of these juice pack things which I had forgotten all about.

They didn’t think much of my laptop either – but then I’m not exactly crazy about it. They spent quite a long time giving it a close-up befoe they were able to agree that it was relatively harmless.

At the boarding gate I had a word with the girls there. They confirmed that I didn’t have an aisle seat and so I explained my problem. They doubted that they could do anything for me seeing as the aeroplane was full.

But much to my surprise, 10 minutes later one of them – a young red-headed girl called Roxanne – came running over to me waving a new ticket. Somehow they had managed to find an aisle seat. It was a left-hand one, not a right-hand one, but that is far better than nothing.

So in a minute we’ll be boarding. Didn’t that 8 weeks go quickly? I managed to pack an enormous amount into it – like 12,000 kilometres in the 5 weeks or so that I was on the road. I don’t want to leave but I don’t really have much choice.

But then I’m always like this when I leave Canada.

Tuesday 15th August 2017 – WHAT A NIGHTMARE!

“Start as you mean to go on” say I.

And so the usual performance at 04:00 this morning aroused me from my stinking pit. No idea what the neighbours are doing at that time of morning, but never mind.

And I saw from the fitbit (because I had another shower this morning) that I’d been awake a couple of other times during the night too. So all in all it wasn’t a good start to the day.

But it could have been worse. I could have been the two policemen in the Volkswagen van who thought it cool to jump the red light outside the building just as a motorist coming the other way decided to race the orange light. They will be sorting out that mess for quite a while, I imagine.

It’s only me though who could nip out across the road to the boulangerie for some bread for lunch and forget to take his money with him. Luckily there was some Moroccan bread at ?0:50, an amount which corresponded quite nicely with the small change that I had in my pocket.

But do you ever get the feeling that it’s not going to be one of your days?

We eventually managed to come to some agreement over the hotel room for when I come back. I arranged the room at the price that I’d paid for the room just now and I’m okay with that. Smallest room in the building but it’s not a problem, and neither is the price at just ?55 per night for a city centre hotel just a stone’s throw away from the station.

Having organised that, I headed off down to the Gare du Midi for my train.

TGV brussels gare du midi lille aout august 2017The first TGV took me to Lille Europe. It was one of the older generations of TGV so we were rather cramped and it was not as comfortable as it might have been.

However, I was one of the first on so there was no problem about finding luggage space – something which can be an issue on these trains.

And my seat was right by the door too so I was one of the first off when we arrived.

tgv lille europe aout august 2017

We then had a wait at Lille Europe for my next train. And no-one was more surprised that I was to note that it was the double-decker to Marseille that had set out from … errr … Brussels 50 minutes later than the one that I had caught.

So what that was all about I really have no idea – why they couldn’t have stuck me on that one to travel direct, but I have noticed some … errr … anomalies with the SNCF booking site. Like the 7 minutes that it’s allowing me on the way back to negotiate the entire length and breadth of Paris Gare du Nord.

No electricity on this train, and we were all packed in, although with it being one of the new generations there was plenty of room to stretch out. And everyone was for some reason stressed out and irritable when we had to alight and the squabbles over unloading the baggage were something that I hadn’t seen for a while

Terminal 2 at Paris Charles de Gaulle is immense and it took a while for me to work out where I needed to be. But once I arrived, this was when the real problems arose.

Since 1st November 2016 passengers to Canada have needed a visa – such is the craven fashion that the Canadian authorities have surrendered to the Americans south of the border. Of course, with nothing having been said, Your Truly didn’t have one.

Neither did so many other people either, and there was a crew on duty to help passengers apply. Mind you, the female receptionist was far more interested in flirting with the male security guard than she was with dealing with stressed-out passengers, so you can imagine just how quickly this all descended into chaos.

Several bouts of sharp words – not all of them from me either – passed between the passengers and this girl and it took well over an hour for her to deal with what should have been a relatively simple matter. But in the end I was armed with an entry visa to Canada. And she won’t forget me in a hurry

We had the usual total nonsense at the “security” and I shan’t go into too many details because I’ve told you all about it so many times. There’s a couple of people there who aren’t going to forget me in a hurry either.

air canada flight 885 15 aout august 2017At the gate I had to … errr … negotiate in order to have an aisle seat. But the aeroplane had the last laugh in this respect because ONCE AGAIN the brassards had forgotten my special meal. There was a steward on the plane who tried to be funny with me about it, and he’s not going to forget me in a hurry too.

If I keep on giving people a piece of my mind like this, I’m not going to have much left by the time that I arrive in Montreal.

That is – if we ever arrive in Montreal because the plane was 50 minutes taking off, and very little of that was actually my fault.

Mind you, it would be wrong to say that I was … errr … unprepared for this. I’ve travelled with Air Canada before, haven’t I? The quinoa salad and Moroccan bread followed by the leftover fruit, with some of Alison’s crisps for a mid-air snack went down vert nicely.

To calm myself down I went to watch a film on the laptop (the in-fight entertainment is total rubbish) and found that the electricity supply seems to be set up for North American plugs only. And there I am with a North-American cable for my laptop power-pack, and it’s in the suitcase in the hold isn’t it?

Definitely not my day.

air canqda flight 885 15 aout august 2017We were actually on time arriving at Montreal which was good news. The bad news was that there wasn’t a gate for us and so we had to sit for over half an hour until something was cleared. And that annoyed me intensely as you might imagine.

Much to my (and to everyone else’s) astonishment, there was hardly a queue at the Immigration desks and I’ve never had to wait for such a short space of time before being called up. And here the fun began again.

No trace of my visa, apparently. “But of course I have a visa” I wailed. How else zould I have been allowed to board the flight?”

So I had to connect my mobile phone, and that took much longer than it might otherwise have done too – not helped by the fact that I had switched it on to “flight” mode while I was on the aeroplane, and sure enough my Visa came up.

Or, at least, a Visa came up. But it wasn’t mine. That stupid girl at Charles de Gaulle had typed in my name incorrectly with the family name in place of the given name and vice versa. So that led to another round of arguments.

Eventually; after what can only be described as “considerable discussion” I was allowed through, but by now you can imagine the state in which I was. One exceedingly unhappy bunny here.

“Baggage at Carousel 6” was the notice, and so I queued at Carousel 6. And queued and queued.

After about half an hour of this I was pretty fed up as you can imagine. It’s a large suitcase (but not that large) so I wandered over to the oversize carousel to see if it might be there.

No luck there either so I wandered back to carousel 6. And queued and queued.

Something out of the corner of my eye made me turn round – and there on carousel 4 was my suitcase – and the suitcases of plenty of others who were likewise waiting. No idea how long it had been going around there but there it was – so I grabbed it and shot off out of the blasted place.

Getting my bus ticket was straightforward – and would have been even more straightforward had I not left my Canadian money in the suitcase instead of in the rucksack which was where I had originally placed it (I wondered this morning why I’d put it in there – now I remember!).

And only Brain of Britain can do this! When I stayed at this hotel before, it was in anticipation of an 05:00 start so I was long-gone before breakfast. And so it seems that I have managed to book myself into the only hotel in the whole of Montreal that doesn’t do breakfast.

And wandering around the city a little later in the evening, the nearest Tim Horton’s is quite some distance away. This isn’t so good, is it?

gay village rue st catherine est montreal quebec canada aout august 2017At least it was a beautiful evening and I enjoyed my stroll, even if it was quite late in real terms. I’m just around the corner from the “rue St Catherine Est” which is the “Gay Village” of Montreal so I was expecting it to be crowded with people.

But not so. No idea where everyone was, but in any case I decided to bugger off quite sharpish back to my hotel, finish off the quinoa salad and bread and have a good night’s sleep.

I need the sleep and to relax after all of my efforts. You’ve no idea just how stressful it all is doing all of this. I’m a bad traveller anyway and all of the problems that I’ve been having are enough to try the patience of a Saint.

And having given so many people a piece of my mind just recently, I don’t have very much left.

Sunday 9th October 2016 – AND SO THIS IS IT!

My last day in Canada on this trip. And for all I know, my last day ever in Canada. The way my health is going, I shall be hard-pushed to make it back.

But just for a change just recently, I had a good night’s sleep! In bed reasonably early, and out like a light. One trip down the corridor but apart from that it was totally painless until the alarm went off at 06:00. Didn’t feel a thing! My efforts of the last few days have worn me out as you know, and so a good sleep was an essential.

I was rather late for breakfast though and there was quite a crowd. But coffee, orange juice and bagels soon had me up and about.

It was a nicer day today too – some blue sky was out there for a change. With it being my last day, and with my flight not leaving until 22:00 I decided to take advantage of the weather to out and about, to say goodbye to the St Lawrence River. Accordingly, I had a little doze for a while, stuck my suitcase in the “left luggage” and then hit the road at 11:00, just in time to leap on board the bus 202 that was going past.

metro station cote vertu montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016At the Ducollege Metro Station, I made a decision. I’ve been going one at a time to the different Metro Stations at the end of each line to see what was going on, but I’ve never actually been to the end of the line down from past DuCollege.

That Metro Station is the Cote-Vertu and so I headed off there. And this is a photo of the interior of the station, just to prove that I made it here. And you can even see a train down there at the bottom.


metro station cote vertu montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016Here’s a photo of the exterior too. It’s situated on the corner of the Boulevard de la Cote Vertu and the Boulevard Decarie. The building is the one over there at mid-height on the left margin of the image.

And really, I should have come here ages and ages ago. It semms to be occupied by the Indian community and there’s a couple of very democratic Indian restaurants there, as well as a pizzeria and a falafel place too. I can quite easily find a place to eat here.

There are lots of other shops too, including a wholesale fruit and veg place that sold me a pound of delicious grapes at just $0:99.

Yes, I missed out here at the Cote Vertu.


eglise st laurent cote vertu montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016Down one of the streets off the Boulevard Decarie I noticed a church, and so I went off down there to look at it.

It’s actually the Church of St Laurent, which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise seeing as we are actually in the Borough of St Laurent. The church was built in the 1830s, although the facade was not added unti 50 years later.

It’s not the first church on the site. There was one dating from the 1730s and which was significant in being the first church on the island to be built outside the traditional city limits.


vanier college montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016The buildings next door to it were even more impressive than the church. This is the Vanier College and is significant in that it’s one of the very few English-language colleges in Quebec, having opened its doors in 1970.

As for the name, that relates to Georges-Phinéas Vanier, who was one of the very few Canadian-born Governor-Generals, and served from 1959 until 1967, much to the chagrin of the Quebecois extremists.


vanier college montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016Prior to the college being here, this was the site of the Couvent Notre-Dame-des-Anges – the Convent of Our Lady of the Angels, run by the Soeurs de Sainte-Croix – the Sisters of the Holy Cross – from whom the land was bought.

There was also a women’s college, the Collège Basile-Moreau, on the site. He was, by the way, the founder of the Order of the Holy Cross.

On the way back to the Boulevard Decarie, I stumbled upon a Charity Shop that was actually open. And here I had an enormous stroke of luck.

I’ve written loads of stuff about abandoned railways and the like, mostly from analysis because there seems to be nothing at all in the way of historical research into Canadian railways. It’s not like the UK, where every inch of old railway is faithfully reported and its history thoroughly researched.

But here sitting on the shelves of the Charity Shop was a book entitled Canadian National Railways – Towards the Invitable Volume 2 1896-1922. It’s long out of print but it covers almost all of the lines in which I have an interest, including the ephemeral railway line to Centreville about which I’ve been barking completely up the wrong tree.

And $3:50? You must be joking!

ducollege metro station montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016My perambulations brought me all of a sudden to the DuCollege Metro Station. I realised that despite all of the trips that I have made from here, I’ve never actually taken a photo of the exterior of the building.

This is the time to put this right, even though it’s the other entrance that I habitually use. And while I was taking this photo from the park across the road, I was being smiled at by a couple of these religious people with their portable news stand handing out the literature.

I’d never actually looked down the end of the side-street in daylight either, and I’d been wondering why the street was called “DuCollege”. And I dealt with both of those issues while I was here.

CEGEP St Laurent montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016There was this beautiful stone building right down the end of the street so I strolled off down there to inspect it. It’s the CEGEP ST Laurent. The Collège d’Enseignement Général et Professionnel is, I suppose, one level below the University system in the same sense that the old Polytechnics were in the UK – that kind of thing

Although some of the education services here date back almost 175 years, the college came into being in 1967 when the CEGEP system was founded. It goes without saying that it is French-speaking.


church avenue ste croix montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016As for the church next to the CEGEP St Laurent, well, shame as it is to say it, there I was busy taking a photograph of it – after all, it really is beautiful – and then off I wandered back down the street towards the DuCollege Metro Station having forgotten to make a note of its name.

Anyway, it’s actually situated in the Avenue Sainte Croix, although I do realise that this piece of information isn’t going to help anyone very much.

Back at the Metro station, I hopped on board a train and headed into town. Just as far as the Victoria-OACI station, and then walked up the hill towards the Place d’Armes.

amphi tours place d'armes montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016As I walked into the Place d’Armes through the crowds, this interesting vehicle pulled up across the square so that the passengers on board could look at the Cathedral and the statue of Paul Cholmedy, the Sieur de Maisonneuve.

It seems to be another one of these amphibious vehicles of the same type that we saw years ago in Halifax and probably does the same job. I can imagine that there’s some kind of factory somewhere in Canada churning out these machines for the tourism industry.

There’s a “Subway” further on down the street and that’s where I was heading. I’ve been wandering around for quite some time and it’s way past lunchtime. My stomach thinks that my throat has been cut.

Down at the docks, we’re in luck. Last day of our journey and we are able to conjure up a “Ship of the Day”.

venture self discharging bulk carrier montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016She’s the Venture, a self-discharging bulk carrier of 30,000 tonnes and built in 2002. She arrived here after some considerable perambulation in the Mediterranean.

The flag that she is flying, and which I didn’t recognise at first, is the flag of the Marshall Islands, a group of islands (one of which is the legendary “Bikini Atoll” of nuclear-testing fame) in the Pacific and said by the United States Atomic Energy Commission to be “by far the most contaminated place in the world”.

Another claim to fame of the islands is that it probably has more ships than it has inhabitants – a fact probably not unconnected with the islands’ rate of corporation tax of just 3%.


tugboat st lawrence river montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016By now the clouds were starting to close in from the south, but the rain was holding off and so I went for a walk along one of the quays.

There must be something up somewhere concerning maritime traffic on the St Lawrence because there was this tug steaming … "dieseling" – ed … up the river. I hadn’t noticed any ship in the vicinity other than the Venture and she didn’t look as if she was preparing for sea, so I wondered where the tug might be going.


vieux port montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016Over there on the other side of the dock is the quay where we saw that goelette when I was here in early September. It’s not there now (the ground’s all flat, and beneath it lies the bloke …) though.

In the background over there is the Ile Sainte Hélène and the Biosphere, which was the pavilion of the United States during Expo ’67. It was originally covered by an acrylic sheath but it will come as no surprise to any regular reader of this rubbish to learn that this sheath was destroyed in a fire in May 1976.


autumn colours vieux port st lawrence river montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016From my spec on the dock I walked around the quay onto the waterfront. There were hordes of people here, all taking advantage of the afternoon and what sun was still loitering about.

But never mind the people for the moment. What was interesting me was the autumn colours on the trees here in the Vieux Port. They are magnificent. You can see why I love being here in Canada in the autumn – I wouldn’t be anywhere else.


clock tower st lawrence river pont jacques cartier montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016A little further on along, there was a good view down towards the east past the clock tower. This is a war memorial to the sailors of the Merchant Marine who were lost during World War I and was designed as a replica of Big Ben in London.

Further down is the Pont Jacques Cartier – the Jacques Cartier Bridge that spans the river between Montreal and Longueuil, with the modern port area further along behind.


commercial port st lawrence river montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016The weather was now deteriorating rapidly as you can tell from the clouds. Scattering a cloud of pigeons, I walked around the docks to the old commercial port.

We’ve talked about the goelettes – the ships that used to run the boat services from Montreal to all of the small towns and villages along the shores of the St Lawrence in the days before the road network.

This was the dock from which they sailed and to which they returned. And all around here back in those days was a kind of market where the people from along the shore who had brought their produce down in the goelettes would set up their stalls to sell their produce.

Feeling the strain again by now I repaired to the old Marché Bonaventure. This has now been restored and occupied by all of these trendy boutiques. But down at the far end is a café where there are some comfy chairs and, surprisingly, coffee on sale at a very democratic price.

A comfy sofa was free so I installed myself there, drank my coffee and read my new book for a while. When I find my strength again, I can move on.
television interview place victoria montreal quebec canada october octobre 2016About half an hour or so later I hit the road again, retracing my steps to the Place Victoria and the Metro Station.

Right outside, but across the road from the entrance, I stumbled across a television crew filming someone talking into the microphone about something or other. I’ve no idea who he was and I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I took the opportunity to take a photo of him.

I always seem to find a camera crew when I’m on my travels in North America, don’t I?

The metro took me back to DuCollege and there I had to wait ages for the bus 202 to take me back to the Comfort Inn. We had the usual unavoidable performance of persuading the driver to drop me off by the bridge at the end of the Cote de Liesse where I could cross the motorway (otherwise I have to walk for miles and miles because there’s no official bus stop anywhere near there).

There was an airport shuttle already on the road so I grabbed my suitcase, nipped into the Gentlemen’s rest room, and then back outside for the shuttle and on the way to the airport.

In the shuttle were a couple of people and we ended up discussing the Brexit. Even though many Quebecois have been fighting tooth-and-nail for 50 years for independence, the unanimous opinion of my fellow-travellers was that the British vote for the Brexit was the most stupid thing that they have ever heard.

Quebec has an almost-inexhaustible supply of raw materials and an almost-inexhaustible supply of energy. The UK has no raw materials and all of its energy resources are owned by foreigners (even the new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point is to be operated by EDF of France).

It has nothing that anyone would ever want and nothing that would be any use in launching a manufacturing industry.

There was quite a queue at the baggage check-in and I had to wait for about half an hour to hand in my suitcase. And this time, they managed not to drop my passport into the conveyor belt.

The food on Air Transat is total rubbish as I have already told you, and there is a “Subway” downstairs. Consequently, I went off and ordered a 12-inch vegetarian without cheese. Just for once, I asked for the bread to be toasted, and I’m wishing now that I hadn’t, for reasons that I will explain in due course.

The final thing that needed to be done concerned my bus ticket. I had bought a three-day one, as you might remember, and there was over 28 hours remaining on it. I intended to give it to anyone who was about to buy one but although I was there for 10 minutes there was no-one approaching the ticket machine.

What I did therefore was to write on it “valable jusqu’a mardi minuit” – “doesn’t expire until Tuesday at midnight” and left it on the machine. Whoever might need it can just help themselves.

The queue through the security was quite small – about 10 minutes to go through. And much to my surprise, not only was it painless but the staff weren’t the usual arrogant unpleasant staff that you normally find at the airport at Montreal.

I hiked off down to the gate, which was right down at the end of the terminal, and installed myself on a seat where there was a power point (and that took some finding too). Feeling hungry, I attacked my Subway sandwich but half of the filling fell out. Having the bread toasted meant that it wasn’t as pliable and so I won’t be doing that again.

At 21:15 we were called onto the aeroplane. it was an Airbus 330, quite new by the looks of things, and I was lucky in having one of the twin seats near the rear.

Once we had all settled in, we hurtled down the runway and launched ourselves off into the air, heading back to Europe. My stay in Canada was over.

I was desolate – this may well have been my last trip across the Atlantic because I won’t ever be in any better health than I am right now. Who knows where I’ll be in 12 months time? “Pushing up the daisies” I mused to myself.

And here you are – 2658 words of my last day in North America. A world-record number of words.

I hope that you all appreciate it. Don’t forget to “like” it

Sunday 4th September 2016 – WELL, I NEVER THOUGHT THAT I’D EVER …

… get back here again, but here I am all the same.

And it was really no surprise where I was going, was it? Hands up if you REALLY didn’t guess.

And I’m glad that I’m here because it really was miserable this morning! And I’m not talking about me either. I had a reasonable night’s sleep for a change – just two trips down the corridor, and I ended up awake round about 06:45. But you would never have guessed what time it was – it looked as it if was 04:00 outside – totally dark, grey and miserable. How glad I am to be getting out of this.

No breakfast at the hotel either. It seems to have tightened up considerably on its efficiency from what I saw last night and I reckon that the breakfast cards that I still have from my time as a chauffeur all these years ago might be disallowed these days. But having anticipated this move, I did have some supplies with me – Strawberry Moose hadn’t eaten all of them – and so we had breakfast in my room. The complementary coffee plus the crackers, banana and satsumas out of my suitcase.

After breakfast I had a shower – and the door to the shower cubicle promptly fell off the runners – evidently the previous honeymmoning couple had been far too energetic in the bathroom – and there was no soap in the dispenser in the shower cubicle either. It was clearly not my night in the Comfort Inn, was it?

The shuttle back to the airport was fairly straightforward, although these days they only go to Terminal 2 and you need to take the internal tram-shuttle round to there. And then of course I had to enquire of the direction to the aeroplanes, never having been this way before.

We had all fun and games at the baggage check-in. First of all, my luggage weighed a mere 17.1 kilograms. I’m definitely losing my touch, aren’t I? And then the girl at the check-in dropped my passport into the conveyor. That brought Terminal Three to its knees for a good half an hour. Who needs machine guns and dynamite to paralyse a transport network when Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly are on the loose?

As for the security control, that was the most painless that I have ever encountered. Straight in, straight through and straight out without even a hint of inconvenience and aggression. Quite the reverse in fact – the couple of young people working there actually had a sense of humour and a laugh and joke with the passengers. Other airports and border crossings should take not of this. If every other passage through "Security" was as pleasant as this, every journey would be a pleasure instead of being so stressful.

I’ve complained bitterly about airport security in the past so it’s only correct to give credit when it deserves it;

The aeroplane was late, as you might expect, and we had to be bussed out across the hardstanding because it’s Air Transat again and they can’t afford the full terminal fees. And I know that I said that I would never ever fly Air Transat again but this year, what with my incredibly late booking, the cost of a flagship flight across the Atlantic was well into four figures. With Air Transat it was less than €500 and that’s the cheapest price that I’ve ever had across to Canada in modern times. It might be easier for a lion to swallow his pride than it is for me to do so, but I can do it whenever there’s some of the folding stuff involved.

But Air Transat is going downhill. There wasn’t even a hint of anything on the in-flight entertainment that I wanted to watch, even as a captive viewer. In fact under the heading "Classic Films" there were just three – and they dated from the turn of the century. Hardly what I would call "classic". I ended up listening to music on my phone instead.

The in-flight catering was absolute rubbish too. I’ve never ever eaten so badly on a long-haul flight in all my life. Just a hot wrap of grilled vegetables for lunch and a sort-of pizza slice for tea, and that’s your lot. Mind you, I had been warned about this by someone who actually works for Air Transat, and that was the reason for the extra baguette and butties that I made yesterday.

full length mirror in toilet air transat airbus A330 canada september septembre 2016You may remember – or long term readers of this rubbish my remember – the Air Transat flight from a few years ago with the full-length mirror in the gentleman’s rest-room. And so we had another one on this flight too – which is what looks to be a reasonably-modern Airbus A330 by the way.

There’s clearly a purpose for these mirrors, and I’m sure you come up with your own ideas. For me, all you need is a paintbrush and a pot of varnish and then I can gloss over all of my shortcomings.

And so we headed out well across the Atlantic, our arrival becoming later and later as the headwinds kept pushing us backwards.Our estimatedtimeof arrival, which should have been 13:14 had we taken off on time, became 14:15 aswe left, and ended up at 14:27

Now, reading the notes that I’ve been typing about Air Transat, you might be thinking that I’m pretty well-disillusioned about the airline. But nothing could be further from the truth. Had I had this level of service on a Swissair or Lufthansa flight at €1335, I would have been beyond furious. But just let me remind you that I’ve paid a little more than a third of the price to do the same trip with Air Transat (and that’s not strictly true as Lufthansa wanted me to go via Dusseldorf). Given the situation, I’ve had my money’s worth from Air Transat and I don’t want anyone to think otherwise.

At least it’s not as bad as the legendary Air Fungus flight that set off from Ballyhoo to Montreal – a flight of 2200 miles – and when the pilot discovered after 1800 miles in the air that he didn’t have enough fuel for the remaining 400 miles, he turned round and flew back towards Ballyhoo.

air transat airbus A330 montreal pierre l trudeau airport dorval canada september septembre 2016We eventually arrived, and at a real air terminal too, and I was able to take a photo of the aeroplane. It’s not very good, mainly because I was using the phone camera and I had the sun in my eyes, and you can’t see the serial number of the machine either. But it’s the best that was available.

The queue into Canada was nothing like as bad as last time – only about four perpendicular lines, and with 9 immigration staff on duty we were done and dusted inside half an hour. I took advantage of the pause by emptying my rucksack of all prohibited food items – Canada seems to be becoming more and more keen on this sort of thing. But I was clearly observed nibbling on a forbidden orange or somthing because I was quizzed for a few minutes about any food that might be in my possession and a red cross was put on my entry form.

Whoops!

Next stop was the bus ticket machine. I’m here for three days now, having messed up over this Labour Day thing. I was supposed to do all of my errands tomorrow and move on tomorrow night but it’s Labour Day and so everywhere will be closed down. I can’t do anything now until Tuesday and so I’ll need an extra night at the hotel for a start. A three-day ticket costs $18 and that even includes travel from the airport into the city as often as I would like, and if that’s not good value I don’t know what is.

And I shall have to stop talking to myself too. Someone loitering near the ticket machine came over to me. He said that he was glad to hear another English-speaker and could I sort out a ticket for him. Americans are so lost outside their normal environment and so I was glad to help him.

montreal pierre l trudeau airport dorval canada september septembre 2016And what goes around comes around too because they have changed all of the hotel shuttles too. The gate has moved to upstairs and you need now to phone up for yourbus – there are no longer any tourneés.This was going to be a problem, as I predicted, because my Canadian phone charger doesn’t work and the battery is flat, but a kind man at the information desk lent me his phone and that was quickly organised.

I didn’t have to wait very long either, and the man who picked me up was the same man who has picked me up a few times now so we had a very interesting chat about old times on the drive down here. It’s good to be amongst friends.

comfort inn cote de liesse dorval montreal canada september septembre 2016The hotel is only 5 minutes away from the airport and so I was here in no time flat. I booked my room for an extra night, so much for the best-laid plans of mice and men, andin a change to the advertised programme I’ve also booked a room for the night before I leave Canada.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother and I’d go straight through off the overnight bus onto the overnight plane, but I have to remember that I’m ill and while I might be okay right now, whatever am I going to be like in five weeks time? This is no time for playing fast and loose with my health.

Having done all of the necessary, I went up to my room, liberated Strawberry Moose from his confinement in the suitcase and had a nice relax for a couple of hours, something which involved a couple of cups of coffee.

montreal public transport service bus 202 metro ducollege canada september septembre 2016And then I hit the town. There’s a bus stop right outside the hotel here and having observed from my window the times of the buses that pass by, I didn’t have long to wait. The 202 bus goes past the hotel every half an hour at about 05 and 35, and there’s a bus stop right outside the building.

This is why you always buy your bus ticket at the airport. The hotels along the Côte de Liesse are quite handy for the public transport, but you need to have a ticket handy when you leap on board.

metro train montreal canada september septembre 2016The bus goes down to the DuCollege metro station and that’s about about 30 minutes drive away. Here, you can take the underground into the city centre, or anywhere else that takes your fancy.

Ordinarily I’d go down to the Snowdon metro station and chanhe trains for the Côte des Nieges because there’s my little falafel place and even an excellent Indian restaurant but tonight, as it was early, I had a change of plan. I did change trains but I went all the way to the Jean Talon station instead.

rue jean talon vegetable market montreal canada september septembre 2016Just down the road is the legendary wholesale vegetable market and it’s a stunning place, full of traders and people and the most astonishing vegetables. But everywhere was closing down by the time that I arrived and there were just the private citizens buying up the leftovers. But it’s still a really exciting place to be even at that time of the evening.

From here, I walked down towads the Parc Metro station – the old Canadian Pacific railway terminus that i’ve shown you before. A Metro supermarket came up with a big bottle of epinette, the spruce beer that I love (and I have a fridge in my hotel room too) and I could organise some vegan cheese because it’s Sunday – pizza night.

At the side of the underground station is a pizza place that has always been very good to me in the past. Here I ordered my pizza as well as a bottle of root beer (after all, we are in Canada now) and then I was ready for home. And I didn’t have to wait too long for the bus at DuCollege either which certainly makes a change.

bus 202 cote de liesse dorval montreal canada september septembre 2016Coming back can be something of an issue because it isn’t easy to reach the hotel – there’s a motorway in between the hotel and the return bus route. However a friendly driver can usually be persuaded to stop at the overpass about 800 metres up the road and although it’s a bit of a walk back, it’s much quicker than doing the circular tour.

I was back here by 20:45 and by 21:15 I was cleaned, showered, clothes washed and in this beautifully comfortable bed. And here I’m staying until my name changes to Rip van Eric.

Thursday 15th October 2015 – NOT A SINGLE PHOTO …

… for the return journey today, and I’ll tell you why in a moment.

But I left you last night with me dozing off in the middle of a film. And I awoke to find that not only were we starting our descent to Frankfurt Airport, I’d actually missed my breakfast seeing as how I’d been asleep. And that’s not something that happens every day – missing out on a free meal. Mind you, I made sure that they knew that I was awake and so they quickly brought me my breakfast and coffee before we landed.

And I’m not quite sure if we landed or if we were shot down over the airport. It was a really rough arrival and when I looked out of the window I could see why. It was blowing a howling gale and teeming down with rain.

I had to travel right across to the other side of the airport for my connecting flight to Lyon. That took a good few minutes and a tram ride, I can tell you, as well as another passage through “security”. And I’ll tell you this – if the passage through “security” at Frankfurt could be completed in the same friendly, relaxed and informal manner in every airport throughout the world, then flying would be a pleasure. I spent more time discussing cameras with the guy at the gate than I did discussing security issues.

Our plane was parked up on the concrete pan right back across to where I had originally arrived, and so we were bussed right back over there. And as we turned around a corner of the building, a huge Airbus 380 took off right alongside us. It was absolutely immense and dwarfed the A340 upon which I’d arrived and which we drove past a minute or so later.

There was no chance of my taking a photo of my aeroplane in this wind and rain. I was drenched just crossing the pan from the bus to the ‘plane and it was freezing too – much colder than it was in Montreal and that’s a change. Anyway, it was a Boeing 737-300 that we had and it’s been years since I’ve flown on one of those.

And here’s a thing. Why is it that when the chief steward of the plane announces on the PA system announces that “you should not be sitting next to an emergency door if you are unable to open it”, they become quite upset and all peevish when you try to open it just to make sure?

And there was no snack for me on this plane either. But the stewardess found me a banana, which was very nice of her and I much appreciated it.

At Lyon, the wind and rain continued and it was even colder than at Frankfurt. We had a little drama on the tram at the airport as a foreign lady had boarded without having a valid ticket. She was waving around the receipt, claiming that that was all that she had received. However, when I had bought mine, two tickets had fallen out of the machine. I’d taken both with me onto the tram intending to give the spare one to the conductor, but here was the reason right before me.

At Lyon Part-Dieu, there was no train for 2 hours and so, now that there’s free public access internet at the station, thanks to the SNCF, I caught up with some stuff on the laptop and then went to the Subway around the corner for lunch. Handy places, these Subways, even though the price in Europe is twice what it is in Canada which is totally ironic seeing that food is twice as dear in North America as it is in Europe.

I had a good deal on the train – €33 and a bit – for my journey to Montlucon. And I had to run between trains at Riom as ours was 5 minutes late arriving from Lyon, so no time to photograph either train (no chance of doing the Lyon one at Lyon with the rain) and I arrived at Montlucon bang on time, with Liz waiting in the booking hall to take me home.

But I didn’t go home. Instead, she took me home for a nice meal and shower, and a nice warm bed. 2°C it was as we passed over the Font Nanaud and I can see me lighting the fire as soon as I return home. Have I ever lit a fire so early in all the time that I’ve been living here?

Wednesday 14th October 2015 – SO HERE I AM THEN …

bus orleans express coach riviere du loup montreal quebec canada canada… in the coach station at Montreal, having alighted from my bus.

We reached Riviere du Loup in the small hours and had just a half-hour wait until the bus from the Gaspé arrived. But waiting isn’t so bad. It’s in the back room of a big Irvings petrol station and so it’s warm, there are seats, there are toilets and there are food and coffee available for anyone who feels the need. It’s not unpleasant at all.

The bus was quite full but the seats are quite comfortable so it wasn’t too much of an issue, and I missed most of the journey because I’d dozed off before we’d even left the premises.

I was awake though for when we stopped at Ste-Foy on the outskirts of Quebec, and I woke up again for when we stopped at Longueuil. And wide-awake for when we pulled into the coach station. 20 minutes late, it has to be said, but that’s more to do with the amount of traffic on the road at that time of morning.

The 747 bus for the airport leaves from right down at the far end of the coach station and opposite the booking desks there’s an STM (Société des Transports de Montreal or whatever) where you buy your bus tickets. As the airport is outside the limits of the Montreal urban area, you need to buy a $10:00 day ticket (or an $18:00 3-day ticket) to travel on the bus to the airport.

No point in going to the airport yet though, because I’m hours too early. But round the corner from the bus stand is a café that does a very democratic breakfast and coffee, with free wi-fi and power connections available, and so I dug myself in there for a while.

The bus ride was totally painless. 30 minutes is the advertised time but I had no idea of how long it took because I had a comfortable seat and I was reading a book. It seemed like just a couple of minutes and I was taken by surprise when we arrived.

Upstairs to the baggage check-in and I deposited my baggage. And wimp that I am, my luggage weighed just 20.3 kg, hand luggage included. That’s astonishing because I’m always usually pushing it to the max when I come back.

Downstairs again now. First call was to the Immigration Service to enquire about the procedure for obtaining this mythical form IMM 1442 next time that I come back. Apparently, when I present myself to the immigration desk, I mustn’t let him stamp my passport. I have to be sent to the offices behind the check-in desk and ask there for the form. I’ll probably be interviewed and I have to explain things to them and I should be given the form that I need. The girl that I spoke to didn’t see it as being anything more complicated than that.

Second port of call was to the Subway. There’s one of them in the airport and it’s the cheapest, quickest place to buy lunch. And I’ve learnt now that, in order to avoid any confusion, I order a végétarien sans fromage and that is simply that. No confusion at all.

queue for passing security gates aeroport pierre elliott trudeau airport montreal canadaIt’s a very good job I came back early from my lunch because you can see more of the pantomime that is now taking place at the airport.

You’ll recall the 2.5-hour wait that we had to enter the country, and now we have a 40-minute wait to pass the “security” gates. On interviewing one of the people who was “controlling” the queue, we asked what would happen if the delay here meant that you were late for your flight. She just shrugged her shoulders.

Strangely enough, there was only an American woman and me who thought that this was objectionable. The other 800 or so people in the queue simply accepted it. I can’t believe just how docile and cowed the Westerners have become over these last 10 or 12 years since the Government started grinding their faces in the dirt. 800 people in uproar over this would change things in minutes but Western people these days have lost their sense of fighting spirit.

I spent most of my time in the queue chatting to a pleasant girl from Manitoba, and then we hit the “security” gates.

Pig-ignorant security guards barking out commands without a single “please” and that annoyed me intensely. I had another stand-off with another one of these very sad people and in the end I got her to say “please” when she asked me to take off my boots. I can’t believe that in modern-day Montreal it’s necessary to go to war to obtain a bit of basic and elementary human decency and politeness.

lufthansa airbus A340 300 aeroport pierre elliott trudeau airport montreal canadaThe plane was late, as you might expect, but it was well-worth waiting for. An almost-new, magnificent Airbus A340-300. Packed out to the gunwhales it was too, with just two free seats – one of which was next to me and so I was able to spread myself out.

The food, as you might expect with Lufthansa, was excellent indeed and the cabin staff was very helpful. Not much on the entertainment system, though, but I was able to see a couple of old Bundeslegia matches – Borussia Dortmund v Schalke 04 and then Bayern Munich v Borussia Dortmund, and then I dozed off while watching the new Asterix the Gaul film.

Saturday 15th August 2015 – NIGHTMARE AT DORVAL

We had another “sleep of the dead” last night – this change of air must be doing me good. So after a shower I went off to see if my room rate included breakfast, but of course it didn’t. Whatever was I thinking of? Breakfast is another 11:00CHF. It’s a good job that I picked up those bread rolls last night.

view from bedroom window ibis budget hotel glattburg zurich airport switzerland On my way back to my room though, I couldn’t help but admire the view from the window right outside my door. I thought that I could hear aeroplanes close by.

So in a minute, I’m off back to the airport even though there is hours before my flight. I might find a power socket somewhere that I can plug into – there are none here of course.

The tram came pretty quickly (so quickly that I forgot to photograph it) and the journey was quite simple. And while I was travelling to the airport, I came to a conclusion. My really bad experience last night was caused by nothing more than my lack of preparation – and the hotel can take most of the blame for this (just for a change).

Had it been clear in the hotel’s publicity that there was no shuttle to the hotel (but trams 10 and 12, and bus 510 pass in front of the hotel and a 24-hour bus pass can be obtained … etc), that breakfast was 11CHF extra, and that a Swiss adapter was needed for the electricity, then I would have been prepared, and my stay there would have been quite acceptable, instead of the totally chaotic mess.

But to give you one idea of the hotel, the coffee machine in the hotel sold at 3:00CHF. The same machine installed by the same company selling coffee to a captive audience at the airport was selling at 2:50CHF.

Negotiating the maze that is the airport is by no means easy, and we had another pig-ignorant security guard who doesn’t understand the word "please". All these people who were kicked around and bullied at school when they were kids have really been able to wreak their revenge on society with the massive expansion of what is laughingly called "security". The place was totally packed with people too

duty free shop at security check in zurich airport switzerland But on thing will tell you all that you need to know about the mentality of the Swiss – the "security" screening decants you straight into a huge duty-free shop.

And the number of people wandering around the airport carrying "duty-free" carrier bags shows that this shameless selling technique really works. It would probably work even better at the other side of the security check-in too, especially if it were to sell tranquilisers to calm the nerves (and pickaxe handles to deal with the security staff).

swissair airbus 330 300 zurich airport switzerlandI’m here watching them load up my plane. It’s an Airbus A330-300. And what’s more, I’ve even found a plug that will charge up my laptop.

In fact it didn’t take too much finding – rows and rows of empty seats all over the airport but just one row every now and again with hordes of people congregated around it

Boarding the plane was straightforward and, much to my surprise, the plane seemed to be almost new. Luxury wasn’t the word and the flight over to Montreal, although the longest that I’ve been on to date, was very comfortable. My meals were excellent too. The entertainment was not really my choice – I was even offered the chance to see The Great Escape
– however it wasn’t Christmas so I didn’t bother. Instead, I had Shaun the Sheep, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
.

One downside of the flight, nothing to do with the company of course, is that my neighbour’s idea of personal hygene was even less than my own.

With a window seat, the views outside were superb. With the airport being busy, I’ve never seen a queue like this of aeroplanes lined up in the queue waiting to take off. It was like the M25 at rush hour with all of them here.

The plane in front of us was something quite big and we had a wonderful view from right behind of it taking off. It’s probably the most impressive sight that I’ve ever seen, and there wasn’t much room between the tail of the plane and the ground. You can understand why so many tail strikes are recorded.

Having flown over a great big pile of tundra, we hit the St Lawrence River right at Sept Iles, and I recognised it immediately from the air.

alouette aluminium smelter sept iles quebec canadaThe bay itself was easy to identify, with its seven island and a pile of big ships anchored there, but what gave the place away was the huge Alouette aluminium smelting works and the port facilities that I’d seen in 2012 on my trip up the coast.

I’d wanted to see them from inside, but failing that, a view from the air is good enough.

lafarge quarry highway 132 montreal quebec canadaAnother thing that I have mentioned in the past are the huge LaFarge quarries on the outskirts of the city. They are not very easy to photograph from outside, as I had discovered once when I had driven past them, due to all kinds of fencing, lack of parking and so on.

However, here we were this afternoon, flying right over the top and here I was, sitting by a window seat. This was far too good an opportunity to miss, wasn’t it?

unacceptable passenger delay pierre trudeau airport montreal quebec canada 15 august 2015But don’t get me started on the ariport and Immigration, will you? Every day, during the mid-afternoon, about 20 long-haul jets arrive at Pierre Trudeau Airport, Montreal. If they are all full, that’s about 6,000 passengers (plus however many come in from other destinations).

The Canadian Government’s response is to have just FOUR (and for a short while, just THREE) immigration officers on duty.

My ‘plane was about 8th in, and I had a wait of 2.5 hours. I feel really sorry for the people who came in near the end and who were stacked up on the balcony because the immigration hall was full. Nowhere to sit, no water to drink, not possible to visit the bathroom. I could go on and on … "not with a bayonet through your neck you couldn’t" – ed.

Luckily I had some good music to keep me company, and that always calms me down. But finding, once through Immigration, that all of our suitcases had been taken off the carousels and dumped on the floor (and no-one knew where they were), and discovering that I’d left my cap on the ‘plane too, and I was off again, wasn’t I?.

Luckily the hotel bus was already there so I had to take my leave of my delightful companion with whom I’d been spending a little time just recently since I encountered her in the queue and we drove the half-mile to my hotel down at the end of the runway.

Having checked in, next task was to hit the city, and there’s a bus stop right outside the hotel. The bus 202 took me from here down to the Metro at DuCollege, and the metro took me to Snowdon where I made a stunning discovery – an Indian restaurant. From Calcutta, they are, but it was the nicest Indian meal that I had had outside Stoke on Trent. Beautiful, it was.

Bad news, though, is that my little ice-cream place on the Cote-des Neiges has closed down. A tragedy! So I had to make do with some mandarins from the outdoor office.

halifax nova scotia school buses parked up cote de liesse montreal quebec canadaGetting back from the town is not quite so easy – I have to go miles to find an overpass across the Cote-de-Liesse, but I came across some nefarious, nocturnal dealings here. There’s a whole pile of school buses, all from Nova Scotia and all on temporary licence plates, parked down the road. The drivers are, apparently, staying in my motel.

It seems that they are all time-expired (you can only use school buses for a limited number of years) and are being traded in for new ones, to be driven back to Halifax.

And back here, 22:00 (04:00 in real time), I just crashed out. And that was that.

PS- my phone number seems to be working, much to my surprise. It’s the same three figures as the last 4 years, but then 740-6186. If you don’t have the first three numbers, send me a message.