So much so that if it wouldn’t have given me a guilty conscience I would have avoided paying the camp site fees. There was no-one around when i arrived, and no-one around when I was about to leave either. However, earlier in the morning, the patrolling ranger hand come by to chat to me because I wasn’t on his list, and he reminded me to pay at the gate “but you look like the honest sort anyway” – which just goes to show that they don’t know me very well around here.

I’ve been following Lake George northwards towards the head of the lake. Lake George is a cleft in the earth between two rather large solid lumps of limestone and this is another one of those places that quailfies for the Most Beautiful Places on Earth and as you can see.

Some of the views are stunning, specially when you consider that we are now in autumn and the leaves are turning. It’s definitely the best time to be here

I wouldn’t be here in the high summer though. It’s terribly trendy and frightfully twee, with the worst kind of boutiques all over the place, including the “Indian tepee” where you can buy genuine First-Nation artefacts, all dutifully stamped ‘made in China”.

That of course does remind me of the Indian who won first prize at the Boston Tea Party all those years ago. He was found next morning drowned in his tepee.

I did however meet a guy who, like me, lives with nothing but his solar panels and wind turbines, and runs his truck (an ancient Ford F250) on biodiesel. We had an extremely lengthy chat about all kinds of things, but going back to this summer thing, he was telling me that in the summer the population here is over 30,000 – but in winter they struggle to make 2,000.

Further along the Lake is a place called Silver Bay, and my first opinion was that it was one of those places that had “Strength Through Joy” that you found in Germany in the 1930s, churning out little Master Race clones, written all over it.

It turns out that I wasn’t all that far out either because further enquiry revealed that it is in fact a YMCA summer camp. Although I could do with getting myself clean and having a good meal, I didn’t want to hang out with all the boys and so I resolved to no hang around too long. But they get their money’s worth from a place like this.

As an aside, I should mention of course that out of season when there are no paying customers, the YMCA, so I was told, does open its doors to deprived children from the inner cities to give them a break, give them an experience of the countryside, and teach them leadership skills.

I made a few stops off along the route, for a variety of reasons, one of which was to look at this. It’s a tiny little waterfront lot with enough room to just about park a car and trailer, a storage shed, a boat ramp and a small dock.

The view from here is totally stunning as you can see, and furthermore, it’s for sale. I’ve determined to find out the price of the lot and if you don’t hear from me for a while, it’s because I’ll be lying down in a darkened room recovering.

But really why I’m here of course is to visit Fort Ticonderoga, or Fort Carillon as it was known when it was in French hands (even though in “The Last of the Mohicans” they insisted on calling it Fort Ticonderoga throughout). It’s the scene of several abject British military disasters and when you read this litany of errors it really does make you wonder how come the British managed to rule a quarter of the globe.

Failing to sweep away a defensive line from behind an earthen bank when you have a numerical superiority of over 4 to 1 and so abandoning a battle, even though your casualties are no more excessive than the defenders’. Or else a sentry fleeing from a charge of half a dozen enemy scouts, dashing into the fort to seek safety, and forgetting to close the gate behind him. I can go on and on … "not with a bayonet through your neck you can’t" – ed .

The purpose of Fort Ticonderoga was to control the entry from Montreal down into the Hudson Valley to New York (or, more precisely, the reverse of that route). That’s Lake Champlain right there ahead of us in this photo taken with the sun streaming into the lens of the camera (sorry about that), and that on the right is the river that goes into the interior where there are several portages and then you reach Lake George. All the river traffic that travelled between New York and Montreal – freight as well as British soldiers on the way to attack Montreal – had to come out of that little bay on the right.

Of course, when Fort Ticonderoga was finally captured by British (it wasn’t, by the way, despite what British history books might say – the French abandoned it round about the time that Québec fell to the British under General Wolfe) it served no useful purpose and so a further fort – Crown Point – was commenced a few miles further north and this time, facing northwards to watch out for the French advancing from the North to try to retake their possessions around here.

However, the rather dramatic collapse of the French in Upper Canada in 1759-60 rendered that fort unnecessary so some rather half-built ruins are all that remain. They are said to be in a spectacular setting and so that’s where I’m off to tomorrow.

But tomorrow morning I’ll show you all a photo of the view from my “bedroom” window here at Ticonderoga.