Tag Archives: gaspesie

Friday 9th October 2015 – I HAD A QUIET …

… day today, just leisurely meandering back towards New Brunswick and winding up my marathon journey.

I was up at the usual time, as usual, but I had quite a few things to organise and sort out. And as a result it was about 11:00 when I finally hit the road.

horizontal axis wind turbine cap chat windfarm gaspe peninsula quebec canadaThere’s a huge wind farm just down the road at Cap Chat. It was impressive back in 2010 and it’s even more impressive now.

Highlight of the park has to be this. It’s claimed to be the world’s biggest vertical-axis wind turbine, reaching a height of 100 metres. It’s quite possible to go up to the top of it for a good look around but, of course, there was no-one here today

It’s a monster of a machine and won’t half pump out the power, but I can’t help thinking about all of the strain that’s being placed on the bottom bearing. It won’t last long and it will be a swine to change, I reckon.

ctma vacancier les mechins gaspe peninsula quebec canadaNew stop was the Verreault company’s dry dock down the road at Les Mechins to see what was going on in there.

This year we have the CTMA Vacancier in here receiving an overhaul. And here’s an enigma if ever I saw one. In Europe, ferries have a strictly limited working life, rather like school buses in the USA. Greece however has an exemption due to the thousands of islands and hundreds of Greek ferry services, so many time expired ferries end up in Greece.

But what happens when the Greek ferries are exhausted? Most of them go across the Mediterranean to Izmir in Turkey where they are cut up for scrap because that is all that most would have been fit for.

But not Egnatia II.

She was built in 1973 and sailed as the Aurelia across the Baltic. Later, she became the St Patrick II and sailed on many Irish routes as a duplicate summer service, as well as being the relief ship on many other routes in the winter when other ferries needed service or overhaul.

In 1998, when her 25 years was up, a Greek exemption was obtained and she sailed as Egnatia II on the route between Brindisi and Patras.

When her time was up there, she was on charter in Spain for a while and then ran an emergency ferry service back in the Irish Sea.

By 2002 she was thoroughly worn out and was laid up ready for breaking, but instead was sold to Coopérative de Transport Maritime et Aérien (the CTMA). That company named her Vacancier and she underwent a refit here at Les Mechins later that year to prepare her for her new life as a cruise ship running between Montreal and the Iles de la Madeleine.

And so Happy Birthday to the CTMA Vacancier – 42 years old this year.

I had a drive around Matane afterwards. I’d never been for a good look around the town. I’d have preferred a good walk around but by now the weather had broken and it was pelting down – a proper autumn rainstorm we were having.

This about finished me off for the day, even though it was fairly early. I headed up the River Matane valley into the Appalachians but the weather became worse and worse. By the time I reached Amqui I couldn’t see a thing and so there was no hope of finding a place to doss. And even if it did, I’d be soaked in humidity and condensation because the insulation would be soaked.

But a cheap motel came to the rescue. It had a microwave and I had a tin of baked beans. And even better, just across the road was a chippy, so chips and beans was the order of the day for supper.

And I really enjoyed that too!

And, as an aside, this time next week I’ll be back home.

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Thursday 8th October 2015 – THAT WAS ANOTHER …

… sleep of the dead last night. I was watching a film on the laptop but after about 20 minutes I gave it up as a bad job and that was that. I didn’t feel a thing until the morning and I was awake long before the alarm went off.

I’d been on my travels too, and they really were travels. I’d started off back on the buses, doing the regular Friday night run that I used to do for Shearings – up around Central Scotland and that area. Then Cecile and I were living somewhere in Belgium and it was midwinter. We had a day and a half spare and so I suggested that we go off to the Arctic Circle. I had three Cortinas in various conditions (all of them running, after a fashion) and I chose the worst one to do the trip, if I could remember where it was and if the Council hadn’t towed it away. But although it took me about 30 seconds to pack (and I was amazed at how little I needed) it took Cecile almost all of the day and a half to make herself ready.

Finally, I was in Stoke on Trent with someone whom I used to know and we were just stilling around doing very little and talking. And Zero put in an appearance too.

All in all, I’m surprised that my journey through the night hadn’t thoroughly worn me out. And on waking up I noticed that there was no condensation on the roof even though I’d been cooking in here and it had rained during the evening.

sawdust barge gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaThere’s no photo of my spec from last night, because while I was putting away everything into Strider I noticed through the trees some movement in the bay away in the distance, so I shot over to see what it was.

I know that there’s a sawdust barge that works the coast around here collecting the waste products from the sawmills to take to Matane and while I wouldn’t recognise a sawdust barge even if I were to trip over one, this one looks as if it could be something to do with that.

autumn colours cabin in forest gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaI went back on the road, having forgotten about photographing my camp, and instead of going around the coast I ended up in the mountains taking a short cut.

The autumn colours up here really are magnificent. You can understand why it is that I enjoy travelling round the eastern part of Canada at this time of the year. And to live in one of those cabins over there would be superb. If only I could see the sea from there.

riviere au renard gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaI rediscovered the sea at Riviere au Renard and found myself head-on in a howling gale. I parked up and went for a walk around the harbour but the wind blew me back to Strider and so I didn’t get to see too much.

The harbour was however quite full of fishing boats but many of them were up on stocks. The fishing around here these days has been having an enormous struggle since the collapse of the cod industry in 1992

gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaThe north coast of the Gaspé Peninsula – the southern shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence – is really beautiful.

The road along here is something comparatively new. It’s all up steep headland and down into deep inlets, and in almost every inlet there’s a small fishing village with a quay and a church, and is usually called St-Something or Anse (Cove) au Something Else.

Every one of them is extremely photogenic but the difficulty that you have is finding a good uninterrupted view of the place.

gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaPrior to the roads being here along the coast, the only access to these small villages was by sea and you’ll remember when we were in Matane the other day we visited the marine museum that was situated in the old quay from where all of the coastal boats used to depart.

And if you know anything about cloud formations (which you will do if you’ve been reading this rubbish for any reasonable length of time) you won’t need me to tell you where the northern shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence might be.

bulk carrier ship superstructure gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaWhile I was stopped and having my lunch, I noticed this object way out in the gulf. And it was moving too, and so with the telephoto lens I squeezed off a good long-distance shot.

You can’t tell what it is from here, but from the headland at the back it was easy to identify. It’s the superstructure of a large bulk carrier heading down the Gulf of St Lawrence towards the Atlantic. As I said before, it’s hard to understand why so many people were unable to believe that the world was round when you see evidence like this.

maersk container ship gulf of st lawrence gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaTalking of ships, we haven’t had a real ship of the day for a couple of days. And so when I saw this one steaming (or rather dieseling) past the foot of the headland upon which I was standing, I had to take a photo.

She’s too far out for me to be able to identify her name but she’s one of the fleet of Maersk Container Ships and according to the company’s interactive fleet map, 24 hours after I saw this ship, the Maersk Carolina was leaving the Gulf of St Lawrence and the Maersk Palermo was still in the river.

It’s more likely though to be the Maersk Penang that had arrived in Montreal from Antwerp and was now on its way out to Halifax.

From here I went off to find a place to stay. As I said, it’s becoming darker earlier and earlier and I don’t want to be caught out again.

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Wednesday 7th October 2015 – I HAD YET ANOTHER …

… really bad night last night. Only on this occasion there wasn’t any particular reason for it. I was still awake at 02:00 this morning, which is not like me over here, is it? And worse still, I had no idea why that might have been.

I crawled under the shower and then made a coffee but I still didn’t feel much better.

grande riviere baie des chaleurs gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaAnyway, to wake myself up, I made myself another mug of coffee and went down to the harbour for a walk around and some fresh air.

And, strangely enough, this would have been quite a good place to have stayed for the night. There was plenty of space here and there were quite a few boats up on stocks. I could have tucked myself in here quite happily in the peace and quiet and been well away.

Still, you live and learn, don’t you?

la roche percée baie des chaleurs gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaHaving fuelled up Strider, I set off again and after a good drive I pulled up on a rest area to admire the view and drink another coffee.

We’ve all seen this rock before haven’t we? It’s La Roche Percée, the Pierced Rock, and we came by here before. It’s said to be one of the hundreds of places where Jacques Cartier made a landing and erected a cross.

If he really did land at all of the places that are claimed as his landing sites, he would probably be still out there now, but this time it’s probably correct because no-one could invent a description of this particular site without having visited it and there isn’t another place that resembles this in the whole of the St Lawrence estuary.

I was away with the fairies for about an hour up here too in the lovely sunny late-morning, and then I set off again to continue my travels.

perce baie des chaleurs gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaWe’ve seen the town of Percé before and so I won’t trouble you with another photo of the town itself. The only thing that you need to remember is that half of the buildings are motels and the other half are tourist attractions.

But all of that notwithstanding, we certainly haven’t seen the town and the rock from this angle. And although you can’t see the hole in the rock, this is certainly the most exciting angle to view everything. But itwas quite an effort to take the photo. There’s nowhere to park except at the side of the road and there’s an endless stream of traffic up the hill.

railway locomotive station gaspe baie des chaleurs gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaWe finally solve the mystery of the railway when we arrive at the town of Gaspé. All of the railway installations have been swept away and there’s a huge tourist information building constructed on the site.

And parked out at the back of it is the train here. We’ve seen dozens of locomotives like this and so I think that it might be one of the GP38 family, but I’ll need to check up on that.

railway train locomotive station gaspe baie des chaleurs gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaThe girl in charge of the tourist information office told me the story of the train, so now I can tell you all.

VIARAIL stopped running the trains to Montreal about 6 years ago and abandoned the line, so she said. It’s now a tourist scenic railway that runs just as far as Percé and back again in the summer months with no connection to the main line at Compbelltown, which should make life interesting if they ever need to replace the loco or send it away for repair.

But that’s not likely to happen as the service didn’t run this year. It seems that important work is needed to be done on the line but the Quebec Government hasn’t done it. “Maybe they’ll do it ready for next year” she said, and I’m not convinced that she believed it either.

The latest update on all of this is that Jean-François Turcotte told me “that was RS-18u 1849; it’s been trucked-out to the active portion of the line and is now used to haul woodchip, cement and windmill parts along with three other RS-18u’s. The carriages for the former l’Amiral tourist train are still in Gaspé, AFAIK.”

And Anthony Bernard Prince said ” A lot of track maintenance work will be carried out on the 3rd section of our railroad between Port-Daniel and Gaspé this year (2021). The majority of the work will be carried out between Chandler and Douglastown. 15,000 ties will be replaced, many crossings will be replaced, and thousands of tons of ballast will be spread.”

The town of Gaspé is a nightmare to negotiate as the whole road system is torn up for repair. I eventually made it to Tim Horton’s but didn’t stay long. Instead, I moved on and I’m now esconced at the site of the old World War II military defences for the bay. It’s a little-known fact that I had the UK fallen to the Germans in World War II, the Royal Navy would have come and set themselves up over here in the Gaspé.

And on the way out of Gaspé on the way to here here I drove past two motels that I hadn’t noticed in 2010. Where were they when I needed them?

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Tuesday 6th October 2015 – WHAT A NICE NIGHT!

Flat out last night quite early on, sung to sleep by a huge flock of geese across the river from here. And I remember absolutely nothing at all until the alarm went off. Definitely one of the best night’s sleeps that I’ve had far quite a while.

a trace of condensation n the ceiling, but considering that I cooked a meal inside here last night, that’s no big deal at all

And so I was up and about quite early and I was able to catch up with a huge pile of paperwork that had been building up.

river bonaventure baie des chaleurs gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaAnd do you know what I did after that?

I made myself a coffee, found my breakfast biscuits, and then sat sat down for a whole three hours in the beautiful morning sunshine and read a book. And I didn’t move from my seat at all.

Mind you, I did have company. There’s one in every village and the one in Bonaventure was on the quayside looking in the bins for the cans and bottles that have a deposit (that’s a bit thing in Canada). He came over for a chat, which annoyed me because I really just wanted to sit quietly and read.

viarail railway station new carlisle baie des chaleurs gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaafter a very relaxed morning I set off, and a little further down the road I came into the town of New Carlisle. There was a sign there for the railway station and so I went down there to have a look around.

I didn’t think that I was going to be in luck though and see a train, I reckoned. Last time I was around here, which was back in 2010, there was some kind of VIARAIL passenger service – once a week to and from Montreal and the town of Gaspe if I remember correctly. But having had a good look around here, there’s been nothing moving on this line for quite a while.

viarail railway station new carlisle baie des chaleurs gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canada
That’s despite the fact that in the station building there’s still some kind of daily train service advertised to and from Montreal. But I’m not taking this sign seriously. There was a sign on the side of the building advertising “bureau à louer – working space for rent – contact VIARAIL” and I imagine that they are referring to the station building. That looks rather terminal to me.

All in all, this paints a rather sad picture of life out here on the Gaspé as far as public tranasport is concerned.

While I was in the area I went into the town of Paspebiac and did a load of food shopping because I was running low on food. I also finally discovered a Tim Horton’s and so I was able to upload a pile of stuff up to the internet.

paspebiac baie des chaleurs gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaHaving stocked up with food I went off to look for a nice place to have a late lunch. And I didn’t travel very far before I encountered this beautiful sandspit down at the harbour in Paspebiac.

There’s camp site right down there at the end of the sandspit – closed for the season of course – and also a port and some marine installations. And so I went down to the port and sat watching the sea for a good while, ate my butties and read a good book. I’ve certainly caught up with my reading on this trip around Eastern Canada this year.

baie des chaleurs gaspe peninsula highway 132 quebec canadaThe road further out along the Gaspé really is beautiful and I could have taken a thousand photos along here – except that I had taken them all when I passed by here in 2010.

But this area is quite busy as far as people go and I ended up being overtaken by the dark before I had found a place to sleep for the night. You have no idea just how quickly – or how early – it goes dark around here. Even though we are farther east than almost any point in New Brunswick, we are still on Quebec time which is an hour behind. Consequently by 18:00 the light has already gone.

In the end, I abandoned the search and ended up in Grande Riviere at an overpriced dosshouse that called itself a motel. This would have been a splendid place to stay 20 years ago, but it’s not had a lick of paint or a new carpet on the floor in all that time and it’s definitely tired.

But at least there’s a microwave, a fridge and a coffee machine so once more I can get some money back by not having to pay for a meal out.

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Sunday 4th October 2015 – I DUNNO …

… what I had eaten last night, but I had an appalling night where I didn’t sleep a wink due to the most violent indigestion. I can now tell you all about my digestive tract such as where it is and how long it takes for something to work its way through it, because I could feel it on its travels for every inch of the way.

And so feeling like death warmed up, I eventually hit the road and headed east

mv camilla desgagnés harbour matane st lawrence river highway 132 quebec canadaAfter a brief drive I ended up in the town of Matane and went for a good prowl around the harbour.

I was very impressed, and also very lucky to see this ship in the harbour. She’s the Camilla Desgagnés, a heavy-icebreaking cargo ship and she has several claims to fame. Perhaps the most important is that, depending upon which book you read or who you talk to, she was either the first or the second modern commercial ship to navigate the North-West Passage and holds the rather unique honour of being the only “eastern” supply ship to service and provision communities on the “western” side of the Passage.

Secondly, she’s an unlucky ship and has suffered a couple of major incidents. In 1993, she was abandoned in mid-Atlantic after her engines failed, right in the path of an approaching hurricane. Furthermore, a couple of years later, she was abandoned once more after her engines caught fire

mv ctma voyageur harbour matane st lawrence river highway 132 quebec canadaAlso in the harbour, and I was very tempted to go over and see about negotiating my way on board her, was the CTMA Voyageur.

She’s the ship that provides the supply and provisioning service to the Iles de la Madeleine, off the coast of Prince Edward Island, and there’s room on board for a few motor vehicles. However, she was all loaded up and they were just shunting a couple of trailers on, ready to depart. And not only that, it’s a good way out to the Madeleines and I didn’t know when I would be likely to be able to make my way back.

mv camille marcoux harbour matane st lawrence river highway 132 quebec canadaAlso in the harbour moored next to the CTMA Voyageur was the Camille Marcoux. However, we all know about her because we have sailed upon her a couple of times – once in November 2010 and again in September 2014. She’s the ship that runs the ferry route between Matane and Godbout on the northern shore of the St Lawrence.

Our trip in 2010 was quite noteworthy, as I’m sure you remember, because we had tickets for the ferry to Baie Comeau from here but Bane of Britain somehow contrived to park himself in the wrong ferry queue.

I was feeling a little better by now and so I went for a coffee and something to eat at Tim Horton’s and to use the internet there. I managed to pick up my order without throwing it all over the floor this time, and I was there for about three hours because I was really finding it difficult to move.

river matane gaspesie highway 195 quebec canadaMatane is effectively the gateway over to the southern shore of the Gaspé Peninsula and there is a pass through the Appalachian Mountains at the headwaters of the Matane and Matapedia Rivers.

Out of Matane, you follow Highway 195 up along the valley of the Matane River and the scenery here is really beautiful even if the light is quite depressing for photography purposes. You could take hundreds of photos of the scenery here and still not do the area any justice.

covered bridge river matane gaspesie highway 195 quebec canadaThe higher up into the mountains we go, the more impressive the scenery becomes.

And it’s not just the natural scenery either but the man-made scenery too because we encounter several covered bridges across the river. The longest covered bridge in the world is in Hartland, New Brunswick, but Quebec has very much more than its fair share of them, as far as pure numbers are concerned. And those that are left (because hundreds have disappeared) are very-well maintained.

headwaters watershed matapedia river matane gaspesie highway 195 quebec canadaAt the headwaters of the River Matane we start to climb up and over the watershed into the drainage basin of the Matapedia River.

This road is another thoroughly impressive road with some really impressive scenery, and it bounces you up and down everywhere as you climb steeply into the Appalachians. And then, just as steeply, it drops you down into the valley of the Matapedia River, where we rejoin Highway 132 at Amqui.

And it was along here that I decided that I couldn’t go on any more. Around the bend, a motel appeared offering rooms with cuisinettes for just $49:95 plus taxes. Furnished like something out of the 1950s, nevertheless I’ve stayed in far worse places than this for far more money too.

I booked myself in, found my room, went inside and, still feeling like death warmed up and with it only being 16:45, I promptly crashed out and that was that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

marconi radio station pointe a la renommee gaspe quebec canadaYou might remember me talking about Marconi and his bouncing of messages across the Atlantic. Of course once they reached land at Cape Race they would need to be bounced by shore stations and we saw one of those on the coast of Labrador.

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

motel le campagnard matane quebec canadaAnd so I’m still on the Gaspe – in a motel in Matane.

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

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

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Monday 1st November 2010 – THE ONE THING …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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