… I’m sitting in a dingy motel room in Baie Comeau, a town that was built in the 1930s to handle the timber and subsequently the paper trade relating to all of the forests and so on around here.

At that time it was effectively the farthest north-eastern town (as opposed to “settlement”, of which there were plenty) in Quebec. They hadn’t yet discovered the iron ore and aluminium that led to the creation of Sept-Iles further up the coast.

>What’s interesting is that they have a rail link from here to Quebec City, would you believe?

There’s just about 10 kilometres of track on this side of the river to handle all of the paper traffic from the mill and then a rail ferry takes it across to Matane on the south shore of the St Lawrence from where it’s shipped by rail to Quebec City.

There’s quite a bit of sea traffic too. There are two huge freighters, of which this is one, anchored in the bay waiting to get in while a third one, the Australiaborg, owned by a Dutch shipping company, is currently being loaded at the dockside.

And of course there is the ferry over the St Lawrence to Matane. I’ve made a note of that for the return.

And don’t think that I’m complaining about my motel room either because I’m not. I’m on the economy budget plan as you know and a room here has only cost me $49 so I’m happy with that.

And not only that, it’s on the main road and nicely positioned for tomorrow when I head off into the interior. The Labrador Trail, Highway 389, starts just about 1km from my door and I’ll be on that tomorrow.

Talking of railways, sometime tomorrow I’ll be encountering the railway line that runs from Sept Iles up to Labrador City and all of the iron and aluminium lines in the interior. It might mean nothing to you at the moment but if you have ever read The Land God Gave to Cain by Hammond Egges, then this is the line that they were building all throughout the story, so it has some kind of literary interest.

My motel last night at St Simeon, despite being expensive, was quite comfortable and I was up and about quite early going for a little walk.

From here there’s a ferry across the St Lawrence that I sailed on in 2001, but I’m not going that way – I’m going much further along the river from here and then heading into the interior

But I’m not to be denied my ferry trip.

Back in 2001 I passed over the Saguenay River on the ferry that crosses here and I took it again this year.

But when I arrived here in 2001 it was dark and in the morning it was freezing cold so I didn’t gat to hang around too much and photograph the scenery. One of the things I had always planned to do was to come back and photograph it properly in the daylight, and here I am today.

And Strawberry Moose had a good photo opportunity today. Master Bates, Seaman Staines and Roger the cabin Boy, the crew of the Felix-Antoine Savard, did the honours as His Nibs posed for the camera. Luckily the ferry was comparatively empty.

And as for the weather, it might be freezing but at least we have bright sunlight. It could quite easily be raining.

I’m really off the beaten track now though. As well as the St Lawrence River and the scenery, I’ve encountered my first serious waterfall.

I think that this is the Riviere Sault aux Moutons – the River Leap-Sheep ad if the sheep were leaping over that waterfall they must have been pretty good. We have a parking place and a sign, but that’s our lot. Had this been in civilisation, we would have had a fanfare and a marching band, together with coloured lights.

There are several other ferries across the St Lawrence and I went to check them out. At Forestville, where there’s a ferry over to Rimouski, I was distracted by this.

Forestville was formerly an important logging town and to move the logs down to the river, they had a log flume. This was a wooden trough filled with water and they floated the logs down to the shore in it.

If you’ve ever been on the log flume ride at any adventure park, then you’ll be pleased to know that that attraction has been based upon this idea.

So here I am at Baie Comeau. I arrived at about 14:30 today so you are probably wondering why I didn’t press on. The fact is that the next motel once I hit the Labrador Highway is 213km away at Manic 5 and the route planner that I downloaded before I went says that it ought to take me all of 8 hours to do it.

It’s an unpaved dirt road with many bends apparently and with three long single-track bridges. I reckon that I ought to plan a full day to do that and if I do get ahead of myself I can drive on to Fermont, just another 250 or so kms further on.

There’s a few places to stop there as well.