Tag Archives: goose bay

Tuesday 19th September 2017 – HAVING BEEN …

… out like a light during the evening, I found it difficult to drop off to sleep last night. Long after midnight and I was still trying to drop off.

When I finally did drop off, it was a difficult night with tossing and turning and all of that, and it was a struggle to leave the bed when the alarm went off.

But leave the bed I did and after breakfast and a little work on the laptop, I was out on the road by 09:30.

First disappointment was at the docks. There were a couple of big ships in there but there were road works, the bridge across the canal was out of order and, try as I might, I couldn’t find my way out there.

In the end I gave it up as a bad job and headed out of town.

First stop has of course to be our famous Tracel de Cap Rouge out on the edge of town.

Tracel is of course a French word and it’s where the English word “trestle” come from.

And this is probably the most magnificent trestle railway bridge in the whole of North America, even if it is made of iron and not of wood.

Cap Rouge is said to be the site of the first permanent settlement in North America.

In an effort to establish themselves in the New World in competition with the Spanish And Portuguese, the French sent colonists here in 1541.

However scurvy and what has been enigmatically described as “deteriorating relations with the natives” led to the surviving settlers being recalled to France.

There was a road – the Chemin du Roy – which was the first public highway in Nouvelle France, running between Quebec and Montreal.

I spent a good while over the years tracing its original route although much has been lost to modernisation and coastal erosion.

I never found an original plan of the route, but my assumption is that the road hugged the coast around here, somewhere along the line of tbat footpath.

Like I said, coastal erosion did for a lot of the original route.

You can see here where the official sign (which don’t necessarily follow the route, but never mind) points off to the right, but there’s a nice straight road ahead.

That disappears off down there and comes to a sudden stop at the bank in the bend of a river.

Yes, don’t count on the official signs.

The Chemin du Roy is signposted to follow the highway which is to the left of the photo just here

But when you see the orientation of this traditional Quebec cottage and the pathway that passes in front of it, it’s easy to imagine where the original trace of the Chemin might have been.

One of the things that we do when we are driving around is to look for proper football pitches.

They are quite common these days but when I first started coming to Canada they were few and far between.

This is the first one that I ever noticed – in Neuville – and access to photograph it was always difficult. But today, for some reason, it wasn’t a problem to go down there and photograph it properly.

A little earlier I talked about road alignments along the Chemin du Roy.

The area around Donnacona has been badly hit by coastal erosion and so tracing the original route is quite difficult.

But seeing a house orientated in this fashion with the trace of a track running past the front of a house, it’s easy to imagine where the original course might have been.

And here we had a moment of excitement.

As I pulled up here, I noticed an old guy peeking out at me from his window across the road. And he walked out onto his porch for a closer look.

“Are you having a problem with this?” I shouted across to him. He turned tail and walked back into his house.

When you see on an old map a street called “rue du Station”, you have to go to investigate … “well, one of us does” – ed.

I wasn’t expecting much because if you think that the Beeching cuts in the UK were severe, they were absolutely nothing compared to what happened to the railway network in Canada.

There are a few freight lines still operating, but passenger service outside the major cities has gone more-or-less completely. There’s nothing here in the former “rue du Station” to indicate what might have been a railway station.

But this is much more like it, isn’t it?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen one of these before in 2010 when we were in Goose Bay.

And here’s another one – a Bombardier “Auto-Neige” from the late 1930s, I reckon.

It’s for sale too, and if I had room in my suitcase this would be coming back to Europe with me because I think that it’s gorgeous.

On the two occasions that I’ve been to Deschambault I’ve been soaked with rain and I’ve never been able to photograph the town properly.

One of the places that I came here today to look for was the Ile Richelieu. The navigable channel up the St Lawrence is quite narrow here and there are rocks and rapids and the island was the icing on the cake for any defensive force.

The French built a fort out there on the island to control the passage upriver but a combination of a rolling fog, a very high tide and a strong wind enabled a British fleet to slip by and on to Montreal before the French could bring their guns into action.

Deschambault regularly appears in lists of the most beautiful villages in Quebec and it’s a listing that isn’t undeserved. That building over there is, believe it or not, the Town Hall

It’s not the only building in the place that’s in that particular “North American ante-bellum” style. The convent (every town worth its salt in Quebec has to have its convent) is also in the same style.

In our quest to fill out the missing gaps in the Chemin du Roy I’d seen an old track away by the Moulin de la Chevrotiere that would correspond with what I knew about the original trace of the route

I went to have a look, and I could identify ditches that resembled those that Becancour and Lanouiller – the architects – had specified for the sides of the road, and the stones of the type that they had specified to be placed in the marshy parts of the roadway.

We are told that at Grondines there’s a huge submarine electric cable that runs underneath the St Lawrence

This takes electricity from the Lower St Lawrence hydro plants (such as the Manic and Outardes complexes) over and into the USA.

There’s no visible trace of the cable from what I’ve been able to find, but this “Hydro Quebec” transmission post just outside the town might give us a clue as to where the cable might disappear into the earth.

If the village of Grondines has any claim to fame, it might be for its windmill.

When a Peace Treaty was signed with the Iroquois and the land was subsequently parcelled out to the local gentry – the Seigneurie System – one of the duties of the Seigneur was to provide a mill for the peasantry to grind their corn.

A water mill wouldn’t be much good on a slow-flowing river because the river would be frozen up for four months per year.

A great many windmills were thus erected by some of the Seigneurs, several of which survive today.

I arrive at Trois Rivieres just in time to be caught in the rush-hour traffic. And seeing as there are major roadworks in the town I reckon that I lose a good hour of my time.

I have to hit the Highway instead and arrive in Berthierville just as the light is starting to go.

Berthierville was the home of Formula One racing driver Gilles Villeneuve and it’s another place that I’ve always managed to miss while I’ve been out and about on my travels.

But today I make a determined effort and actually manage to track it down this year.

One last thing to do, and that’s in Repentigny down the road.

That’s to track down the hideously modern Church of Our Lady of the Fields – Notre Dame des Champs.

I’ve absolutely no idea what the designer of the church – Roger D’Astous – must have been smoking when he was drawing up the plans, but he’s managed to produce something that is so hideous that it’s almost attractive.

By now I’m running extremely late and there’s no chance of reaching Montreal tonight. But there’s a motel down the road that’s very tired and very shabby – and also very cheap.

They do me an excellent deal on the room, which is very good news, and I celebrate by having a shower and washing my clothes.

Pasta, mushrooms and tomato sauce make a nice meal, and then I crash out while working on the laptop.

I’m definitely beginning to feel the pace now.

Sunday 17th September 2017 – THAT WASN’T …

… a very successful night at all.

Nothing wrong with the room or with the bed – but there’s a light aluminium porch thing over the door to the room and the force of the torrential downpour that started at about 03:00 and cascading onto the porch put paid to any thoughts that I might have had about sleeping.

But I must have been asleep at some time because I was away on my travels again during the night. We were back with the cars again during the night, and back where we were a while ago with three cars all of which should not have been on the road for one reason or other. One of them was my green Vanden Plas 1300 with its collapsed floor, but worse than that, when you switched on the wipers and the lights, it took five minutes for them to warm up before they would work. And so I set out one evening in the driving rain, switched on the lights and wipers and, as usual, nothing happened. But the rain was teeming down so fast I couldn’t see, so I was obliged to stop at the side of the road. And with no lights, this was an extremely dangerous thing to do. It put the wind up me so much that once we were on our way I rolled it down the hill into town and left it there, and walked back to tell everyone what I had done. It hit me only then that leaving the car there with no tax, people are bound to notice it and if I go down to retrieve my possessions later, someone is likely to call the police to say that I’m stealing things, and this is all going to become very uncomfortable.

I was out of the motel fairly promptly and down the road in the direction of Forestville.

The road down to the shore was closed for repair and so a diversion was posted.

And thanks to the diversion I discovered much more about the town. There were parts of the town that I certainly didn’t know existed – such as the church which I hadn’t seen before.

It’s a much bigger town than I ever thought before.

But here I had a disappointment.

There’s a ferry across the St Lawrence from here to Rimouski and it’s one that I haven’t taken before. But I won’t be able to take it today.

Today is the day that it changes schedule from three crossings per day instead of two, and the 11:30 crossing was cancelled. Next sailing is at 17:30 and I have far too much to do to wait around.

Instead, I went to the supermarket which was open for some more salad stuff and the like – stocks are running low here.

Next stop on the road was at Les Escoumins.

I’ve driven through here on several occasions but I’ve never actually stopped for a look around. And this was something that I was hoping to put right today.

And so instead of the new main road, I took the older road that runs into town.

Despite the miserable, depressing wet weather, I went out to the headland at the mouth of the river.

The cross that is there is quite significant. It relates to an event that took place in the early 17th Century when the earliest Christian missionaries arrived here amongst the Innu.

They found that a cross had already been erected on this spot. How it had come to be here was a mystery.

It is known that Jacques Cartier, on his voyages here in the 16th Century, erected crosses wherever he landed on the shore, but there was no record of his having placed one here.

From where we had parked there was an excellent view across the bay to the town.

Or, at least, there would have been had the weather not been so gruesome.

But thinking on, I’d been lucky with the weather up to date. I can only remember one other day of miserable weather when I’ve been on my travels – that day in Western Newfoundland.

On the western edge of the town, the road has been realigned too.

You can see where the modern alignment goes, off up there to the right. The older alignment is over there to the left.

And I remember that we have been up there on one occasion and took a photograph of the view back down here. And the weather was much better then too.

There was just one more place to visit, and that was out at the back of town.

There’s a waterfall here and that’s quite attractive, but back in the olden days there was a mill here that made use of the water power.

The river is an important salmon river and so there was a salmon ladder and all that kind of thing here but since the mill has gone, so has everything else.

The river has reverted to its natural state.

No prizes for guessing where I am now.

I didn’t get my ferry crossing across the St Lawrence earlier, and so that means that I get the ferry crossing across the entrance to the Saguenay Fjord.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have crossed over on this ferry on several previous occasions.

And so we all pile aboard and await the signal to be off. The ship that we are sailing on is the Jos Deschenes.

Owned by the Quebec government, she was named after a Montreal taxi-driver who refused to accept a couple of English-speaking tourists and made them walk to the airport.

For this major act of defiance, he was honoured by the Quebec authorities.

You are probably wondering why there isn’t a bridge across here these days, seeing that bridges have been erected almost everywhere else.

The fact is that the fjord is an important shipping lane and if you were with us in April 2012 as we drove up the fjord, you would have seen the sizeof the ships that go up there

And the site here is so constrained that it’s not possible for any bridge built here to have sufficient clearance for the larger ships to pass underneath.

I’m running incredibly late for my lunch. It’s well after 14:00 now in fact.

I’m heading for the docks at St Simeon – that’s my preferred lunch stop today. And as I round one of the bends in the road, I can see it over there.

And unless I’m very much mistaken, the weather seems to be clearing. If I’m not careful, I might even find the rain stopping in a moment.

We’ve been here a few times, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall. We’ve even stayed here a few times in the past.

There’s a beautiful quayside here with an excellent view of the town and it’s just the ideal place for me to sit and eat my butties.

I was right about the weather. The rain has eased off, but there’s still a roaring wind and there’s quite a rough sea running.

Talking of seas, when was the last time that we had a Ship of the Day? Goose Bay and the Fairlane if I remember correctly.

But today, steaming … “dieseling” – ed …down the St Lawrence towards the open sea we have an ideal candidate.

She’s too far out for me to read the name, which is a pity, but with the telephoto lens I can pull out a really good shot of her as she goes by.

On the way back round again I take a diversion off Highway 138 to go to visit the sleepy little village of Port au Persil.

I’d passed briefly through here on one of my many trips through the Charlevoix but I’d never actually stopped for a look around.

This was another one of the things that I wanted to put right today, even though the weather was not on my side.

While I was walking around the old harbour, I fell in with a couple of English people who had come here in a hire car from Toronto. We had a little chat while I admired the view of the little harbour.

I was right about the view of the place too. It’s a really pretty little village even in the miserable weather.

And I was lucky that the photos actually came out so well given the conditions. They could have been much worse than this.

By the time that I’d done the lap around the back of the Charlevoix, the weather had improved dramatically.

My first stop was at Baie St Paul, because, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall, we’d come here last time and witnessed a large building burning to the ground.

I was keen to see what had happened to the site.

In actual fact, the site has been cleared and a huge hotel complex, the Hotel Le Germain, has been built on the site.

It’s an incredibly upmarket hotel by the looks of things – you can tell this from the noise that the hotel makes about its “free parking” – as if that’s something of a novelty.

Which it probably is in a hotel of this style.

And by the looks of things, the Charlevoix tourist train makes a call here too.

I’m actually looking for the sea – or rather river-front.

I’ve never actually made it to here and that’s another thing that I wanted to do, because I have a special reason for being here

But first, we can sit here and admire the beautiful day, because the weather has now changed dramatically and I’m in shirt sleeves now.

And this is the reason why I’m here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when we were here in April 2012 we had seen an abandoned goelette beached here.

We’d tried to reach it back then, but we were confounded by a high tide and a running river.

But this year, I’ve timed my arrival correctly and found another was across the dunes and the river.

And it looks as if my efforts are only just in time. Because there’s not all that much of her left.

Even in the five and a half years since I was here last, she’s taken some battering and there’s not all that much of her left.

Goelettes were small but very sturdy sailing cargo ships (although this one seems to have been motorised) and carried out the coastal trade along the St Lawrence.

The road network is comparatively recent in eastern Quebec and the only way to move about back in those days was by sea.

There were dozens, if not hundreds, of these goelettes going up and down the river from port to port delivering goods and transporting people, but today there wan’t behalf a dozen left.

Climbing over Cap Tourmente towards Quebec there’s the most incredible view behind me of a hanging cloud hovering over the valley where Baie St Paul is situated.

There’s too much traffic for me to leave the vehicle to photograph it, but by judicious use if the hard shoulder and the rear-view mirror I do the best that I can.

And I’m quite pleased about how this has turned out.

Just one more photograph before we arrive in Quebec City.

It’s quite out of focus and distorted but it was taken though the windscreen of a moving Strider of an object moving towards up in wicked light.

But it’s really quite an exciting photograph because it’s a diesel multiple-unit heading towards us on the Charlevoix Tourist Line.

So what’s happening here then? This isn’t what I was expecting to see at all.

Due to the loss of light and confusion at the road works, I’m at the wrong motel in Quebec.

This is the first one that I ever visited and where the story about Quebec showers comes from.

Nothing has changed either, and we even have the same landlady. But she’s done me an excellent price for the two nights that I’m staying here and there’s a fridge and a microwave in the room.

What with one thing and another, I’ve not yet bought an evening meal since I’ve been on the road. With the slow cooker for when there’s no microwave, I’ve been self-catering for all the time that I’ve been here.

And isn’t that a pleasant change?

Friday 15th September 2017 – I’M BACK …

… on the road again today. My stay around the Coasts of Labrador has come to an end.

But I still remember a huge, mixed-up kind of ramble during the night where I was going around all of these little settlements and cabins out on the coast.

And that’s surprising because I had yet another bad night’s sleep. Like I say, they come in cycles … “ON cycles, you mean” – ed … and we’re in one right now.

So after breakfast and sorting myself out, I took my leave of my landlord and went to find the offices of “Them Days”. That’s a magazine that publishes traditional stories about the Labrador coast.

As you know, I’m still looking for the grave of the most famous man in Labrador. It’s here in the Happy Valley Cemetery, but that’s huge and I couldn’t find it the other day.

Much to my surprise they didn’t know where it was either. But a few ‘phone calls later and I was told “he’s in the United Church Cemetery” part”, which of course is the biggest part of the cemetery.

So after an hour, and with the help of a very vocal local yokel, we came up unsuccessful. But there was a phone number there so I called it. And much to my surprise, the woman there didn’t know where he was either.

But it did lead to an interesting conversation. She asked my name – which I duly gave.
“Eric Hall? Let me see – you were in church on Sunday weren’t you?”
Our Hero – “did you see a thunderbolt then?”.
Anyway she promised to phone me back (and Josée’s phone is a godsend on this trip).

While she was making “further enquiries” I continued to search, and all of a sudden I came across it.

I missed it because I was probably expecting something much grander, seeing how his name was on everyone’s lips as the most famous man in Labrador 100 years ago.

Here then lies Gilbert Blake, the man who rescued the remains of the disastrous Leonidas Hubbard party and who accompanied Mina Hubbard on her trip into the interior to complete her husband’s work.

Ha also led countless subsequent exploring parties into the interior of Labrador and was never given credit for much of what was “discovered”.

The lady from the Church phoned me back to say where it was, and to my dismay, I had to turn down the opportunity of a lifetime.
“I spoke to Gilbert Blake’s daughter. If you would like to see her to chat, she’s available”.

But it’s 550 kms to Labrador City and it has to be done before dark. I was obliged to turn down the opportunityand I doubt that I will ever have the possibility again.

Usually, this rubbish is littered with photos of old cars in people’s gardens. But we’ve never had a photo of a garden with an old aeroplane in it.

I’ve no idea what it is, but it’s small, an early jet-fighter type of plane, and it won’t ever fly again this side of a miracle.

Labrador is certainly a different place from that respect. Nothing ordinary here.

Having fuelled up, I hit the road. About an hour later than I was intending.

About 20 miles outside the town there’s a cleft in the hills where you can see down to the works that are taking place at Muskrat Falls.

As I’ve said before, I’m not going into the rights and wrongs of the project – enough has already been said – but anyone who saw the photos of my first trip to Labrador will seethings differently now.

So off we go down the Trans-Labrador Highway into the interior.

And you’ll notice that it’s not quite autumn yet. The leaves on the deciduous trees haven’t “turned”

And you’ll notice a few changes to the highway too since we first came here. You’ll remember what a struggle it was over some of the worst roads in the world.

Today, it’s an asphalted, paved highway all the way to Labrador City.

With all of the work going on for the Muskrat falls project, a lot of trees have been removed and rock blasted away.

This opens up a whole new vista – views like this one of the Churchill River would never have been possible 10 years ago had they not blasted away some rock to put in a pylon to carry the cables.

You can see where the evergreen trees have been pulled out, and the first growth of deciduous arctic willow that is growing back in its place.

It’s that time of year, isn’t it?

In a week or so’s time it will be the annual tribal meeting of the Innu people, and they are preparing the site ready for the gathering.

I would ordinarily tell you what it’s called, but the problem with Innu names that it’s quite something to read them, never mind remember them.

I talked about the road just now. The one that we are actually on is the third attempt.

It dates from about 2011 – 2012 and it follows pretty closely in most places the line of the second road that we took in 2010.

The earlier road is what they called the “Tote Road” and dates from the period after the occupation of the Goose Bay air base by the Canadian Air Force.

If you thought that we had a struggle in places back in 2010, you can barely imagine what it must have been like in the 1970s.

The road was 10 times worse, single track, and following the contours rather than being graded across the valleys and though cuttings.

But regardless of your opinions, you’ll have to admit that they have done an excellent job of the new highway.

You can see it (and the power transmission cables) disappearing away over the hill in the distance, and it goes on for ever in just this kind of condition.

On the old dirt road, with the 70kph speed limit, in some places it was more like 70 kilometres per week. Here today, it’s a mere 80 kph but with no obstructions to slow you down.

But you slow down every now and again to take a few photos.

You’ve seen the scenery before but I bet that you’ve seen nothing like this.

There are miles and miles of forest where it seems that we have had a major forest fire fairly recently. You cans ee that some of the trees are scorched and blackened, and others have been completely destroyed

The whole of the place is littered with miles and miles of scenery just like this.

About 80 or so kms (I can’t remember now) from Labrador City I pull into Emeril Station to see what’s happening.

This is on the line from Sept Iles to Schefferville and serves the iron mines and the Innu community out there.

We have a line of wagons waiting for a locomotive, and also this dismantled dumper lorry – one of the huge 50-tonne ones- waiting to make their way north.

But I don’t see any locomotives, although I can hear a whistle away in the distance on the line to Wabush and Labrador City.

50 kilometres or so outside Labrador City, we can see that autumn has finally arrived here.

We’re deep in the interior now, and on the north-facign slopes exposed to the arctic conditions, they will be the first to catch the cold air.

Not quite the brilliant colours we are used to, but we are a couple of weeks earlier than usual this year.

Before I had left Happy Valley, my landlord had given me an address for B&B in Labrador City. I phoned her (thanks again, Josée) and she did indeed have a room free.

It took some finding with the roadworks but it was worth the effort. Not only was it the best place where I’ve stayed, it was also, believe it or not, the cheapest. I’ll be coming back here again, that’s for sure.

And hats off to Strider. He struggles on fuel as you know, but since he’s had his overdrive fixed, he seems to be a little better.

So much so that instead of the maximum 420-km distance that he seemed in the past to be able to travel, we’ve just come a mammoth 542.7 kilometres and although he’s below a quarter of a tank, the orange light hasn’t come on.

It is a good road these days – 80kph with the cruise control on all the way – and it’s still not what I would like, but it’s a vast improvement all the same and Strider can be proud of himself.

Thursday 14th September 2017 – I’M NOT SLEEPING …

… very well at all just now. It was another pretty miserable night from that point of view and I didn’t have much sleep.

I’d been on my travels too, but no idea where to because it’s all gone out of my head … “beacuse there’s nothing in there to keep it in” – ed … now.

Another thing that I didn’t do is to take my tablets. Not when I have an early start like today where I need to be on the road by 08:00.

And I arrived in North West River at 08:45, beating my local guide by about 30 seconds.

While he was busy provisioning the motor boat, I was busy provisioning myself. We are going quite far today – a lot farther than WE DID AT CARTWRIGHT.

It’s for this reason that I need to stock up with the supplies because there’ nothing whatever where we are going.

And so leaving North West River behind us, we head off down Hamilton Inlet.

We’re heading due east, in the general direction of Rigolet and the open sea.

But we’ll be turning off a long way before then – going probably about a quarter of the way down and then turning off to the north.

The first settlement that we pass is the rather enigmatically-named “Butter and Snow”.

I’ve no idea why it was so named, although it is known that the family who lived there, called Rich (although I have seen it spelt “Ritch”) owned a cow.

There was still a permanent resident there a couple of years ago, and he would be here today had he not died in a skidoo accident.

While you admire the absolutely stunning scenery of the Hamilton Inlet, maybe I should fill you in on a little history of Inner Labrador.

In the late 18th and early 19th century the Hudsons Bay Company recruited Scotsmen mainly from the outlying islands of the North, to come and work here.

That explains the proliferation of family names such as McLean, Campbell, Baikie, Goudie and the like.

There was a very strong French-Canadian presence here too and a rival company from Paris – Revillon Frères – set up competing posts in the area.

That explains the presence of French family names, the most famous of which is Michelin.

The job of these Europeans was to liaise with the natives and deal with the furs that the Innu and Inuit brought in.

Very often, being left to their own devices out of season, these “European” people would go off on their own to spy out the possibilities of the land.

Many chose to stay here after their term of engagement ended, and they quite often set up on their own account as trappers and fishermen.

But the fact is that they all would have died, because the climate here and the living conditions can be vicious.

The only thing that saved them were encounters with the Inuit – or occasionally Innu – women.

Most of the men took native women as partners and it was they who showed them how to survive in the extreme Labrador climate.

Each family would settle in its own cove or river mouth, and that was where they would fish, and hunt and trap in the hinterland.

Occasionally though, you might find a mixture of families living in the same cove.

What might have happened is that a family only had daughters, and sons from neighbouring families would marry the daughters.

These men would stay on to inherit the traplines of the wife’s family, rather than taking the daughters back to their own coves.

And the fishing and trapping lifestyle was carried on until, I suppose, the last 60 or 70 years.

Firstly the huge American air base and secondly the Government’s controversial resettlement programme resulted in the exodus.

But everyone here who is native to the area is what one would call a Métis – the offspring (sometimes many generations removed) of a “European” male and a “native” female.

A former phrase used quite commonly until about 50 years ago is now considered to be offensive

People still come out here regularly to the cabins of their ancestors, whether for weekends or holidays.

And a limited amount of trapping is still carried on. There’s a fur buyer in Goose Bay and a couple of fur auctions in Montreal and Winnipeg.

But mainly it’s to escape from the towns and return to the olden days.

Rather than take the direct route, because there’s quite a storm brewing up in the Inlet, we are hugging the coast.

And threading our way through the offshore islands – the North West Islands in fact.

According to the censuses of 1935 and 1945, these were inhabited by the “Baikie” family. Hordes of them in fact.

So after about 90 minutes of sailing (or, rather, motoring) we arrive at our destination.

This is the abandoned settlement of Mulligan, and it’s probably the most famous of all of the settlements out here.

And its claim to fame is that is was the home of possibly the most famous person in Labrador – Lydia Campbell.

I’ve come here with one of Lydia’s descendants. He’s going to show me around the settlement and later on, we may well be going to meet her.

And so we moor the boat up an the bank and step ashore – back into almost 200 years of history because the “Campbell” of our story is a late arrival.

He didn’t turn up from the Orkneys until the early 1840s

Mulligan was a huge settlement by the standards of the day. At one time there were 20 families living here and the settlement had its own school.

By the time of the census of 1935 there were 6 families of 32 people, all Baikies and Campbells.

And in 1945 there were 8 families of 39, and we have acquired a family called “Chaulk”.

the hump of earth that you can see in the foreground is said to be the site of the cabin of the more famous Campbells.

Of course, it’s long-gone now, just as they are. But it’s still interesting to see the site where they are said to have lived, even if there is very little left to see.

No memorial of course, because it’s not exactly on the tourist track here.

Of the more modern descendants of Lydia Campbell, that is their own former family home from before the relocation.

It still receives some occasional use and is currently undergoing a process of renovation.

Who knows? We might even end up with some more permanent residents. Wouldn’t that be interesting? But it’s unlikely.

By the time of the turn of the 20th Century most people had forsaken the traditional log cabin for a wood-plank house.

And then promptly realised their error, for nothing is as suitable to the Labrador environment than a traditional log cabin.

But one family has kept its original log cabin, and kept it in excellent condition too, regularly painted and maintained.

This is what all of these villages would have looked like 150 years ago – minus the paint of course.

By now, after all of our issues, it was lunchtime. So we sat in the shade and ate our butties.

I was regaled with stories of life out here 70 years ago, and life in Labrador in general.

But one interesting fact that I was told was that the red berries – the partridgeberries – were unknown in Mulligan when the place was in permanent occupation.

Today, there are partridgeberries everywhere all over the ground. You can’t move for stepping on them.

There’s something else around here that you can’t move without stepping in.

I can personally vouch for the fact that it’s a lie – bears DO NOT go to the bathroom in the woods.

Before we move off from here, there’s just something else to see. And it’s how Mulligan has been brought into the 21st Century.

One of the cabins here has not only an array of solar panels but a wind turbine too. Just like me back home.

So let’s hear it for the solar panels. Hip, hip, array!

Now comes the exciting bit – we have to get across there to thefar bank of the river.

And in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a sand bar blocking the passage for the boat. I have a feeling that the next part of our adventure is going to be very cold and very wet.

And I don’t have waders.

We’ve made it across to the sand bar anyway, but our adventure is only just beginning.

We now have to reach across the creek to the shore and I’ll tell you something for nothing – this water is deep and it’s freezing cold.

And I have no footwear either – no point in having that soaking wet.

So up to our waists almost we were obliged to wade.

And then a good trek through the woods in bare feet, which was probably not a good idea.

But we made it all the same, and here we are at Mulligan Cemetery, the home of the most famous woman in Labrador – certainly in the 19th Century.

and here is the heroine of our story, Lydia Campbell.And what an effort it has been to reach her grave.

She was born in 1818 and in 1848 in a second marriage she married Daniel Campbell, not long out from the Orkneys with the HBC.

Family tradition has it that Campbell knew absolutely nothing about life as a “liveyer” and Lydia taught him absolutely everything.

Later, as she grew older, she lamented about the loss of traditional “liveyer” skills, apparent even in her own lifetime.

As a result, a visiting clergyman encouraged her to write a book about the traditional liestyle of a “liveyer” woman and the result – Sketches of Labrador Life by a Labrador Woman is probably the most significant book ever to come out of Labrador

My guide took me to see the grave of his grandmother, Druscilla. I’d seen from the various censuses that his grandfather had lived alone with his children and I had wondered why.

And the date on the tombstone gives us a clue as to the cause of death.

November 12th 1918. That was at the height of the Spanish Influenza epidemic. It wasn’t as overwhelming down here as on the coast but nevertheless it had quite an impact

Of all of the other graves here in the cemetery, this one is quite important. In here are buried what are believed to be three bodies

One night, part of the bank underneath someone’s house collapsed and a pile of bones, believed to be of three people, were washed out.

They were sent to St John’s where there were examined and said to be “Inuit bones of historical date”. They were reburied here in 2004.

We’d spent so long in the cemetery that the tide had come in quite a way, and if we thought that it was deep coming in, it was even deeper going out and I was perishing.

Not only that, the wind had got up and the Inlet was now a churning mass of waves . We were going to be in for a rough passage.

Our trip to the abandoned settlement at Pearl River was summarily abandoned and we turned back.

But what made my day, and made me quite proud was my guide who tol me, afer all of the wrestling that we had done with the boat and the river “you’re some tough cookie”.

We were heading back that way, in the general direction of North West River, and that was what was awaiting us.

In fact there were several storm clouds building up all around us

They do say that Labrador is very much like the Auvergne in the respect that “if you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes – it’ll soon be different.

It was round about here that we had the legendary moment of
Our Hero – “is that a sailing boat over there?”
Local guide “it’s an island with a couple of trees growing on it”
Note to self – arrange appointment with opticians on return

But then, I suppose, if I’d been able to see what I was doing, I would never have set out.

Our next stop, which was going to be our last one given the weather, was the settlement of Sabesquacho.

Or however you might like to spell it because I’ve seen it spelt a thousand different ways

There never was an approved way of spelling many of the place round here in the 19th and 20th Centuries and people wrote down the names as they heard them

This was the home of the “Michelin” family – or, at least, one of their homes because they had spread out quite a way down the bay.

My guide told me that at one time there had been as many as 12 children (and presumably the adults too) living in that house.

Big families were not necessarily prolific here though. You’ll find many families with 6 or 7 children but the death rate was appalling.

Despite this being a British colony until 1949, there was no Government Health Service here until modern times. From about 1900 until the 1980s you had the “Grenfell Volunteers” and prior to that, there was nothing at all.

As well as the Michelins, there were a few Pottles living here in the vicinity in the censuses of 1935 and 1945

And of course we still have the summer cabins for the families, mot of whom resettled in North West River.

The cabin on the left is said to be a cabin of former permanent occupation but the one on the right is more modern.

And you’ll notice the ty bach on the extreme left. No plumbing of any sort here.

Having made a race of it when conditions allowed, we made it back to North West River, beating the torrential downpour by a matter of minutes.

There were some kids playng around on the quayside when we arrived. “I wonder how long it will be before one of them falls in” I said

“Pushed in, more like” muttered my companion

And so considerably lighter in weight and considerably wetter, I headed for home. My wallet was considerably lighter too but I may not be coming here again and I needed to make this visit now

Final trip for today was to Goose Bay airport.

My landlord had told me where there were several planes on display, including an Avro Vulcan “V-bomber” of the 1950s and 60s

Of course I didn’t want to miss out on seeing that and so I took a deviation on the way home topay it a visit. After all, I remember these from my childhood on the beach at Ramsgate

and remember yesterday when we saw the football ground in town?

Here, would you believe, is one on the air base. And it’s in much better conition too.

Actually, it’s no surprise really to find a football ground here. There were various branches of NATO air forces(British, Dutch, German) who came here during the war so I imagine that it’s something to do with them.

Everywhere else that I wanted to visit in town was closed by the time that I returned wo I went back to my digs, had a coffee and shower, and washed my clothes in the washing machine.

Tea was potatoes, veg and onion gravy made into a kind of soup, and then an early night. I was totally exhausted.

Wednesday 13th September 2017 – IN THE HAPPY VALLEY CEMETERY …

Our Hero, looking for the grave of Gilbert Blake, arguably the most famous Labradorian of the early 20th Century
Man in digger, digging a hole
two men in suits, watching aforementioned man in digger digging aforementioned …

Our Hero, quite casually and lightheartedly to man in digger –
“what are you doing? Putting them in or digging them up?”
Two men in suits – “We’re police officers. Would you mind leaving the scene immediately?” (You could easily imagine the “or else …”)
Later that evening on Goose Bay Radio “following a court order obtained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, an exhumation was carried out in Happy Valley Cemetery this afternoon …”

Yes, it’s all been happening here today, hasn’t it?

Last night was another rather restless night.

I seem to be having them in cycles just now – a batch of good nights followed by a batch of not-so-good nights. And it’s annoying in a way, but can’t be helped.

But I did manage to go out on my travels last night, which is a good thing. It involved my red Cortina estate XCL 465X. The back axle had locked up and so I had taken it for repair. When they opened the halfshaft, a pile of water, not oil, flooded out.
“Ohh, we’ll have to wait for another 41 rinses then” said the mechanic. That filled me full of foreboding because that was going to work out to be extremely expensive and I wasn’t sure whether I could afford the cost of the repairs.

It was nevertheless a struggle to leave the bed and when I did finally make it to the living room, mine host was already there preparing breakfast.

I waited quite a while for my tablets to work and then I joined my housemates for breakfast. And this is the first place on my travels where I have ever been offered soya milk. Apparently mine host’s wife drinks it.

Once I’d gathered my wits about me, Strider and I set out for North West River to see what had happened to the guy whom I was supposed to meet.

At the Labrador Interpretation Centre, I met the lady who had been so nice to me two years ago. To my surprise, she remembered me.

And as for my contact, he’s “gone to his cabin until Friday”.

However, as a stroke of luck, she reckoned that she might know the person to whom my contact was intending to introduce me.

And the reason why it should have been yesterday was because today, he was going … exactly to where I wanted to go.

But she took my number and promised that she would have him telephone me as soon as he returned.

There are three cemeteries in North West River.

The influenza victims are said to be in the earliest one, but all that I could find was this headstone of Thomas Blake, aged 59, died in November 1918.

It’s hard to say what the day is, but if it’s the 12th, that might well tie in with what we know. The Sagoma with its infected crew arrived in Cartwright on 20th October and the infected Harmony arrived at Okak on 4th November.

But in the cemeteries, all of the old original “trapper” families of Hamilton Inlet are represented.

Here in this photograph, we have, for example, a couple of Meshers from Rigolet, a Michelin and a MacDonald.

The origins of the “Michelin” name are unclear. But there was a French trading post here on the south side of the river where Sheshatshiu stands today, and it might be connected with that.

Plenty of Blakes and Baikies as you might expect, and also dozens of Goudies.

This is the grave of Sarah Michelin, née Goudie and her name certainly rings a bell, although I can’t think for the life of me why.

In fact, everyone who is anyone is here – except of course for Gilbert Blake, even though he will for ever be associated with North West River.

Now I know that I shouldn’t smile about events in e cemetery, but sometimes it’s just not possible to stop.

Murdoch McLean, a beloved husband and father is buried here. And it reminds me of the American visiting the cemetery in Arbroath.

“Here Lies Jock McTavish, a loyal husband and devoted father”
“Now isn’t that ust like the Scots? Burying three men in one grave?”

But this next grave is enough to wipe the smile off anyone’s face.

Two young children aged almost three and almost four. Same surname, but different parents. probably related though died on the same day and buried in the same grave.

That’s the kind of tragedy that always seems to befall isolated communities like this. And the cemetery was full of the graves of small children.

This is the “Paddon memorial” in North West River.

Labrador was a British colony – not part of Canada – until 1949 but was treated even worse than Africa, with no infrastructure and no medical service.

It was a charitable organisation – the International Grenfell Organisation – that provided medical services here. And then only from the early years of the 20th Century.

It was Dr Harry Paddon and his wife – and later their son William – who came here from the IGA to deal with the health issues of the “liveyers” and the Innu and Inuit communities.

They are still fondly remembered in the community, despite Harry having on one famous occasion blotted his record by describing some trappers as “backyard bunny hunters”

Having done the tour of the cemeteries I went down to the beach.

The beach here in North West River is quite famous, being one of the nicest accessible beaches in this part of Canada.

But I would be very wary about bringing your bikini or your cozzy here because it’s not exactly sun-bathing weather and the water is freezing.

For lunch I went to sit on the dockside to look at the river.

But there’s also what was the Hudsons Bay Company offices over there, and also the North West River terminal of the chairlift.

The bridge here is of comparatively recent construction. Prior to that we had the chairlift, and prior to that it was either kayak, canoe or ice skates.

Having had a little … errr … relax, I decided to go for a stroll in the warm sun.

While I was walking along the boardwalk towards the tipi, I finally had my telephone call.

The person for whom I was looking was now back from up-country and I told him what I was hoping to do.

This led to quite a lengthy discussion and we worked out a cunning plan for tomorrow. I need to be back here for 09:00 and that means yet another night in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

The highlight of North West River is the Trappers’ memorial. The whole raison d’etre of the town was as a centre for the trappers.

The Hudsons Bay company had a store here where trappers would trade their pelts for supplies.

And if you were in dispute with the Hudsons Bay Company, as many people were, the French company Revillon Frères had a rival post on the opposite bank of the river.

Now, isn’t this the right kind of place to live?

In my opinion it’s the most beautiful place in the whole of North West River in which to live.

Believe it or not, it’s not all that old. It was erected in 1995. And it’s not a kit home either, but constructed out of local materials by local craftsmen.

And they can construct something for me at any time they like.

You’ll remember that yesterday we visited one of the very few farms here in Labrador. Today we’re having a crafty peek at someone’s greenhouse.

I’ve absolutely no idea what it is that he’s growing in there – there was no-one around to ask – but I certainly admire anyone who gives gardening a go around here.

Mind you, having said that, it was quite the thing around here when the Grenfell Association ran the show before Confederation in 1949.

One of the things that I wanted to do was to take a drive down to North West Point on the southern side of the river.

This was the site of an American radio post in the 1950s and is something of an environmental disaster because the US Military cared nothing about the territory of Labrador.

A Canadian Government Environmental Report of 28th November 2011 “highlights chemicals of concern with concentrations exceeding the applicable criteria”.

I’d done some research to find out where the access road might be, but unfortunately, it seems to have been all ploughed up and impassible.

I wasn’t going to risk taking Strider down there and these days, I’m not up to doing a hike of any distance in these kind of conditions.

It looks as if I shall have to forget this one.

Instead, I continue down the gravel road, and I’m not disappointed by what I find.

I could show you 10 photos that I took from this spot but instead I’ll let you have a glimpse of just one – which I think might be of the docks and seaplane base down at Terrington Basin.

That’s where the ships come in, and where we saw the Fairlane the other day.

Talking of the seaplane base, which is at Otter Creek, we’re in luck yet again. Here on the slipway is Airborealis’ C-GNFZ.

She’s a De Havilland DHC6-300 – a type that is much better-known as the “Twin Otter” and is one of the more successful low-capacity commercial passenger planes, ideal for travel out here.

She was built in 1980 and as you can see, she’s still going strong.And, for a twin Otter, quite appropriately here at Otter Creek

But an earlier claim to fame for Otter Creek took place here.

Prior to the air base there was very little here at Goose Bay. The people who came here to build the air base had nowhere to live and so set up a squatters’ camp here on this spot.

They were soon moved on by the US authorities, but it’s here that it all started.

And here’s a thing!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have more than a passing interest in football grounds. And here is probably one of the most unlikely football grounds that you will ever encounter.

And, more to the point, who does the team play against? I can’t imagine that there’s much in the way of opposition around here.

And from here, I had my encounter in the cemetery.

Back here, I had more baked beans, baked potatoes and vegan sausages and yet another early night.

And it’s not as if I’ve done very much either.

Tuesday 12th September 2017 – I’M IN GOOSE …

… Bay right now, and this bed-and-breakfast is far too posh for me. Even the spare toilet rolls in the bathroom have little hats on.

But then I shouldn’t even be here. I should have been staying somewhere else but according to mine host here, the guy whom I’m looking for is “out of town” and that’s a huge disappointment.

It means that yet another one of my projects has tombé à l’eau, as they say back home in France.

Last night, I had another disturbed night’s sleep – maybe crashing out for an hour or two in the afternoon yesterday didn’t help. But it took ages to go off to sleep, and I was tossing and turning all night.

But I was on my travels too. Back running my business and it was a Saturday morning, really quiet, and so I wandered away. I ended up at a house ful of people who were visiting someone who was quite ill.People were being let in to see this person two at a time, and there was a lot of noise coming from that room. Eventually it was my turn, and found that the sick person was another former friend of mine. She had a puppy with her – apparently her cat had died. She wasn’t interested in talking much about anything serious – just chatting about nothing. I asked her why her house was surrounded by scaffolding and she gave me a weird look. The other person there said that the house was a wreck and falling down, and this was apparent, although the house wasn’t as bad as the one next door.
Somewhere along the line I was in my bedroom when I noticed a young rat in there. That filled me with dismay.

After breakfast, I set out to tidy up my living accommodation, and that took me longer than i intended too.

And then I had to take it all out and load it into Strider. Luckily I’d tidied him out the other dayso that didn’t take too long.

I could also take a photo of the caravan too. Expensive, but it was the only thing available and I was quite comfortable in there.

And so I went to cash up, and it wasn’t quite as painful as I was expecting. But then again, to do things like this you need to bite the bullet.

It also gave me an opportunity for Strawberry Moose and me to say goodbye to our crew.

Nothing had been too much trouble for them. I was made very welcome and I’ll be delighted to go back and carry out a further exploration.

The road into Cartwright the other day was beautiful and well-worth a photograph. But with it being late afternoon, I had the sun in my eyes to the west.

Not so this morning though. I have the sun at my back and the view is even better.

That’s Main Tickle over there again, I reckon.

Somewhere down there, I reckon, is Muddy Bay where the orphanage was.

It’s impossible, apparently, to go there by road and so we were obliged to go by boat the other day.

But the weather was nothing like as good as it is today and so the photography wasn’t as good as it might have been,
and that was disappointing.

At a certain point the Métis Trail goes over the brown of a hill and just for a brief moment there’s a view in the distance of what I reckon might be Paradise River.

You can see why Cartwright gave it its name, can’t you?

This new zoom lens that I have bought is doing really well and while it’s not as sharp as I like, it’s producing the goods fair enough.

Cartwright wasn’t clearly the only one who considered it to be Paradise.

It looks as if a native Canadian has chosen this spot for his homestead and, honestly, who can blame him?

It’s the kind of place where most of us would like to settle if we have the chance – and I’ll show you my preferred spot in due course.

This is one of the places where we always stop to take a photograph as we drive by – it’s where the Métis Trail rejoins the Labrador Coastal Drive.

It’s the first place where Labrador City appears on the signs – only 813 kilometres away – and it’s only another 500 or so kilometres from there to the North Shore of the St Lawrence and Highway 138.

And I’m not going to be there for a good while yet.

Although this is one of my favourite spots on the Labrador Coastal Drive, this isn’t my ideal place – at least, from a personal point of view.

But with a stretch of 414 kilometres without fuel and any kind of facilities whatsoever, this would be the ideal spot for a couple of fuel pumps, a small motel, a little food shop and coffee bar.

But of course they won’t let me in live permanently in Canada, will they?

Around here on the dirt road the speed limit is 70kph. And although I was doing … err … about 70 kph I was passed by a lorry as if I were standing still.

A few kilometres further on, there he was on the side of the road, receiving the care and attention of the local Highway Enforcement Office, a member of which was busily writing out a ticket.

It’s the first time EVER that I’ve seen Highway Enforcement out here, and if anything is a sign that times, they are a’changing, then this is it.

Somewhere hidden in those trees is another sign of the times – a Highway Labour Camp.

And they need it too because the road – bad when it was new in 2010 – was even worse in 2014, worse still in 2015 and absolutely disgraceful this year.

They can’t let it disintegrate much more than this, surely?

One of the main arguments put forward about the veracity of the Norse sagas of Vinland concerns the cattle.

The Norse are said to have brought cattle with them, and how they had them grazing in the meadows. This is dismissed as fantasy by the critics.

But there certainly are peri-Arctic meadows in this region – dozens of them in fact, and from what I have seen there are more and more of them developing as the forests are cleared, whether by fire or other means.

Another thing that there are plenty of are eskers. These are like sand ridges and stretch for miles.

But they aren’t brought by rivers but by glaciers. The stones caught up in the glaciers rub against each other and are slowly reduced to sand.

When the glaciers recede, the sand is dumped along where the edges of the glaciers would have been, and they are spectacular where roads have been cut through them.

I mentioned earlier where my ideal spot in Labrador would be.

If I could settle here, I would be extremely happy. But also extremely isolated too because it’s miles from anywhere.

Situated at N52° 52′ 30″ and W58° 19’52” in fact.

You can see what I mean about these peri-Arctic meadows. They are all over the place these days.

And assuming that the climate was kinder in the 11th Century – in the middle of the “Medieval Warm” period, there would have been many more too.

Bringing cattle here would not have been any problem whatever, especially if the cattle had been used to life in Greenland.

There’s another enormous work camp here at the side of the road.

We’re currently up on the Eagle Plateau and so it’s called, rather imaginatively, “Eagle Camp”.

I thought at first that it was something to do with Highway maintenance, but closer inspection revealed that it’s all “Valard” – the company that is constructing the electricity transmission cables across Labrador.

Mind you, the highway DOES need attention. It was resurfaced with loose gravel in 2015 and it’s already been ripped to pieces.

At one point I hit a hidden dip, the rear end of Strider lifted off the road and I was going sideways heading for the drop off the verge.

We had an exciting couple of seconds (which seemed like a couple of hours) as I wrestled for control of the vehicle. But we are still here.

I mean – you can see what the labrador Coastal Drive looks like simply by glancing in the rear-view mirror of Strider.

At this point we have loose gravel being thrown about everywhere and clouds – and I do mean clouds – of dust thrown up behind us.

No wonder that you spend so much time fighting for traction if you are thrown off course by the lumps and potholes.

But at least it’s not like the time in the Utah Desert where the trail was so rough that I was travelling slowly and the wind was so strong and in the wrong direction that I had the unnerving experience of being overtaken by my own dust-cloud.

But oh! Wait a minute! Look at this!

When we were here in 2015 we noticed that the asphalting of the highway had started – but had come to a sudden stop with patches of gravel road in between.

But now, the asphalting has extended far beyond where it was back then. There’s the sign telling you to prepare for the gravel road, and there’s the guy cleaning off the edges of the road.

Another 5 years and it will be asphalt all the way.

But despite how good the road might be, there are still challenges to face, such as the incessant climbs and descents.

We’re travelling from south-east to north-west and all of the river valleys around here are going from south-west to north-east.

You can see over there the line on the right – that’s the road back up the other side of this valley. On the left is the track of the Valard cable from Muskrat Falls.

But here is the final descent for now. That’s the valley of the Churchill River, and to the right are the towns of Happy Valley and Goose Bay.

That’s not quite my destination for tonight though – I’m driving on to North-West River where I have things to do.

But I’ll leave you here to admire the beautiful scenery.

But a little further on is the entrance to the controversial Muskrat Falls hydro-electric project.

And opposite is the camp of the protestors. Not quite as big as the Faslane camp, but it’s limited by law, and here all the same.

I’m not going into the rights and wrongs of the project, because everyone has his or her own opinion about it, but it’s one of these things where, from my own point of view, the environmental and cultural objections outweigh the profit considerations.

But then again, as I keep on saying, I don’t have to live here

But leaving aside Muskrat Falls for the moment, I clatter across the metal bridge over the Churchill River.

It’s been known by several other names, such as the Grand River (which it certainly is) and the Hamilton River, but it was renamed the “Churchill” upon the death of Sir Winston.

But whatever name it might have, it’s certainly the most famous river in the whole of Labrador,and probably the most important too.

As usual these days, arriving in Happy Valley, I find a different dirt road heading east and follow it all the way that I can.

And on this particular road, I can’t go any further. But it certainly brings me to a spectacular view over Goose bay and the head of the Hamilton Inlet.

It’s very easy to picture the scene as the first European explorers – maybe Louis Fornel the fur trader or maybe John Davis of the Davis Straits – or maybe even the Norse explorers – made landfall here.

But hats off to this guy here at Birch Lane Farm. It’s not everyone who would attempt commercial farming in a place like this.

But he seems to have plenty of crops and a good growth of hay, so it looks as if he can make a good go of it.

It totally undermines the opinions that people have about the “Frozen North” – just as it did when I saw the shipping container marked “Alaskan Agriculture”.

A quick call in to the port here at Terrington Basin in Goose Bay to see who’s about.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a “Ship of the Day” and we strike it lucky here. We have the heavy load carrier Fairlane who left Shanghai on 12th July and came here via the Suez Canal.

That’s a long way to come for any ship and it makes me wonder what it was that she was bringing in.

At North West River we hit a temporary setback. My contact isn’t answering his telephone so that rules out my accommodation and my project for tomorrow, which is a disaster.

Not only that, the B&B in the town is fully-booked up.

The motel has a room, but it requires me to drive all the way back to Goose Bay to pick up the key as the unit here is unstaffed. And the girl at reception is particularly unhelpful.

So badger that for a gale of soldiers. A quick telephone call (thanks, Josée for the ‘phone) conjures up a bed in a B&B in Happy Valley, at a price rather less than the motel. I can do that so I cancel the motel room.

But it’s frightfully posh in here – way out of my league. The spare toilet rolls in the bathroom have hats on.

I’m more used to the kind of place where you can “spit on the deck and call the cat a b@$t@rd” as you know, but beggars can’t be choosers, not by any stretch of the imagination

At least I can use the microwave here, so it’s beans, sausages and spuds for tea. And then an early night.

I’m whacked!

Friday 6th January 2017 – I HAD ENOUGH …

… pasta left over and so tonight I made myself a big tomato dish for tea, with enough left over for the next two nights too.

Onions and garlic fried together, and then added a tin of kidney beans, a tin of Macedoine vegetables, a big handful of peanuts, assorted spices and herbs and then a big dollop of tomato sauce.

And do you know what?

It was absolutely delicious. And it should be even better over the next couple of days if it follows the usual plan.

You might remember that I was planning on an early night last night. But I couldn’t drop off to sleep early and ended up doing some work on the laptop. When I noticed the time, it was 00:45 and that was the end of my early night.

I slept right through too, and awoke about 5 minutes before the alarm went off. And if I had been anywhere during the night, I don’t remember. It was like that.

Later in the morning I went out for my baguette, just down to the supermarket on the corner, and came back with a couple more plastic crates too. I have quite a collection now – so all that I need is a Plan to inspire me to pack them with stuff. But that’s not going to happen until the Spring now at least and maybe not then either.

Apart from that, I’ve spent most of the day reading up on stuff. More stuff on North-West River. It’s the worst thesis that I’ve ever read, it has to be said, but much of the gossip that’s in it, that you don’t usually find in a thesis, has helped me answer a few questions that I’ve had running around in my mind, and also solved a problem that I’ve tried to resolve in the past about the “old road” between Goose Bay and Churchill Falls.

I’ve had a crash-out too, as you might expect, and then it was tea time. And now it’s bed-time. An early night I hope, and a good sleep I hope even more.

But before I go, I’ve found a beautiful epitaph about Labrador. It was written by Judge William Malone as he took his leave from Dillon Wallace after they had been into the Labrador wilderness in 1913 to find the final camp of Leonidas Hubbard on his disastrous expedition of 1903.

“I’m leaving the country though with a feeling of profound regret. I wish I were just going in with you instead of going home. I never had that feeling before on leaving the wilderness, but this country has exerted a peculiar fascination upon me. I understand what it was now that drew you and Hubbard on and would not let you turn back. I have learned what you meant when you called it “the lure of the Labrador wild.”

And that’s certainly how I feel each time I cross the border into Quebec. And the more that I read about Labrador, the more I realise just how much I miss it and how I want to go back there.

I’m getting all nostalgic, aren’t I?

Thursday 1st December 2016 -I HAD A …

… very bad night last night.

Well, sort-of-ish anyway.

Remember yesterday when I told you about that good book that I downloaded yesterday? So there I was last night reading it and I happened to notice the time. 03:30 it was.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been so deeply engrossed in a book like that, I have to say. I was well-away. But anyway, I closed down the laptop, turned off the light, and went to sleep – or, at least, tried to.

I must have dozed off eventually because it was the alarm that awoke me. And surprisingly, I didn’t feel too bad just then. I’d been on my travels too, although I don’t remember anything about it right now.

After breakfast, I lay down here on the bed and closed my eyes for 5 minutes in order to build up my strength ready to face the morning. Next thing that I knew, it was 11:20. i’d been out if it for over three hours. And serve me right too.

I’d missed the bank to pay my lodging, so I mustn’t forget under any circumstances to do that tomorrow. Otherwise I’ll be out on my aspidistra. And coming back from the shower room, I walked into the wrong room. I knew that I would end up doing that sooner or later. Did I say that I’m in a different room here? It’s the cheapest in the house but I have negotiated a good deal so I’m not complaining. It’s just not my usual room and so it’ll take some time to become used to it.

After lunch I cracked on a little with my pages on Happy Valley-Goose Bay. It’s amazing the stuff that has come on line since the last time that I researched into this in early 2011. Tons of stuff and I’m spoilt for choice these days.

Something else that I did this afternoon has shaped my plans for next week. You know that Caliburn was hit in the rear a few weeks ago and needs to be examined. And I’ve also been keen to go home for some time, just for old time’s sake.

And so I rang up the insurance and made an appointment with their expert for Tuesday afternoon. and it’s at Evaux-les-Bains, and so that means that I have to go home. And that’s what I’m going to do. I’m seeing Alison on Saturday afternoon, and so on Sunday morning I shall hit the road and head back.

My plan is to stop on Sunday night at Meaux, and on Monday night at Montlucon – a Première Classe each time. And then go and have Caliburn sorted out on Tuesday and go back home for a few days.

For tea I made a kidney-bean whatsit, with enough for tomorrow night. And then I’ve been searching on the internet. OH Leuven are playing away on Saturday night at Tubize, just south of Brussels. There’s a reliable train service which is quite interesting, as so seeing as I have never really been to Tubize, I’m thinking of it.

Or as William Shakespeare might have said “Tubize or not Tubize? That is the question!”

Monday 28th November 2016 – I WAS RIGHT …

… when I said the other day that I would probably find the Delhaize at Bohan closed if I were to come here today.

Well – I was half-right anyway. Had I come here this morning I would have found it open. But I didn’t – I didn’t arrive here until this afternoon and by then the supermarket here was well-closed.

It wasn’t much of a guess though really, was it? Knowing how things pan out when I’m involved, you should have had the mortgage on it.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it were an out-of-town retail outlet but here it is, in pride of place right in the town centre, on a site that’s been used for retail purposes for maybe at least 90 years if an old postcard that I saw had anything to do with it.

But as luck would have it, and quite surprisingly if you are a regular reader of this rubbish, there was a boulangerie open up the side street to the right,and I was able to grab a loaf of bread.

I’d had yet another bad night – this one probably the worst that I’d had so far. and I was awake long before the alarm went off. I’d been travelling too – round Labrador as it happens and I’d been promoting some complicated and difficult projects that I found very hard to explain.

First down for breakfast, even before the staff yet again, and then back to my room and carrying on with my work on Labrador and the Happy Valley-Goose Bay web pages that I’m writing. And I’m stuck. I’ve forgotten the name of a ship that I saw in the harbour and I can’t identify it from the photo. All I know is that it’s the Woodwards oil tanker that takes the fuel out to the outports and isolated islands in the Labrador Sea.

After my butties I set off to Bohan. And it was cold too – the ice warning was going off which was no surprise as the temperature had dropped well below zero during the night and there had been frost everywhere this morning. I sorted out the woolly hat to go on my woolly head.

There was a really good reason for wanting to go to Bohan, because it’s another place that has a lot that I would find interesting.

Amongst them is what is called the Pont Cassé – the broken bridge. And if you really need to know who it was who broke it, the answer was that it was the French Army. They blew it up on 11th May 1940 in order to prevent the German Army and its tanks from using it to cross over the river

And when they blew it up, they did a really good job of it too.

It was “repaired”, if that’s the right word, with a temporary wooden structure but during the German retreat they set it alight on 6th September 1944 and it burnt down.

And after the war, the decision was made in 1947 not to replace it.

It’s possible to walk onto the bridge these days – it’s not fenced off – and so I did.

And you can tell from this photograph exactly what kind of bridge it is can’t you? It’s a railway bridge of course if you need to be told, and more than that, it’s another tacot or “rattletrap” – one of the
chemins de fer vicinaux or local tramway-type railways that littered Belgium just as well as they littered France and which we had near us in Marcillat en Combraille.

And talking of my home area in the Combrailles, if you think that the railway line from Pionsat to Gouttieres with its 9 years of existence was quite ephemeral, you haven’t seen anything yet.

This railway line had a lifespan of just about 5 years. It was opened on 5th May 1935 and came to a rather sudden end on 11th May 1940 as I mentioned just now when the French army blew up the bridge.

But even that pales into insignificance when we talk about the extension of the line.

Just over there is the railway station. The line came to a full stop over there in 1935 but the decision had been taken to extend the line into France. Just down beyond the railway station is the French border and beyond there is the town of Sorendal.

This was the terminus of the Ardennes tacot – the metre-gauge rural railway network of the French, and on 17th October 1938 an extension was built to join them together.

While we admire the back of the railway station and what might be a signal cabin to control a set of points that might have worked a siding that looks as if it might have gone to the left just there, I’ll tell you an even more tragic story about the line.

And that is that despite only being opened in October 1938, the French closed the border at the outbreak of war and this part of the line didn’t even manage a whole year of working.

There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that this was the old railway station. There wasn’t anything carved on the stone or any old sign that might have given me a clue – it just looks exactly as anyone might expect.

Thoroughly magnificent and thoroughly over-the-top, which was a feature of these rural railway stations. No wonder that the lines didn’t last all that long with this kind of expense.

This is the line-side of the station – the roadway today is the track-bed and there is a pile of waste-land in front of the building that might easily have been the platform.

It looks as if it’s derelict now – all closed down and with damp rising up the stone walls. But it was at one time a garage and then later became a dwelling-house. But there’s no land with it unfortunately, and it’s far too big for me, as well as needing far too much work.

But before we leave the Pont Cassé, all 90 metres of it, let me just explain to you why it took until 1935 for the railway line to reach here.

It actually reached Membre in 1913, construction from Gedinne having begun in 1909. But then we had the war of course and afterwards, we had to wait for the Belgian economy to restart. And then we had the decision as to how actually to reach here because it’s a horrendous civil engineering problem.

In the end, they dug a tunnel through the rock, a tunnel of 22O metres in length and which was one of the marvels of Belgian engineering. Unfortunately, the portal at this end is on private property and overgrown so it’s not accessible.

While we are on the subject of bridges, this is the road bridge over the Semois.

Of course, it’s not the original. There’s no need for me to tell you what happened to that – and on the same day that the Pont Cassé went up too. They didn’t do things by halves.

We had another temporary type of bridge subsequently, so I was told, but this one here is built of concrete and dates from 1957

So back in the town again, I went to have a look at one of the oldest houses in the town.

It’s called the Maison de Marichau and it’s said to be one of the very few remaining examples of traditional Ardennais architecture that’s remaining.

Although in dreadful condition, it was classed as an ancient monument in May 1973 and is currently undergoing renovation – and not before time either if you ask me.

Not a lot seems to be known about the history of Bohan.

It first seems to be mentioned as a fief of Orchimont, where we were the other afternoon, in 1205 when the Lord Of Orchimont, Badouin passed it over to his younger brother Rigaud.

However, you only have to examine its situation here on an easy crossing of the Semois with several valleys feeding in from all points of the compass to consider that it must have been quite an important ford here, and subsequently a settlement, for hundreds of years prior to that.

The river here by the way looks as if it has all the air of a natural border or frontier, and that was indeed the case in the early Middle Ages.

Long before the emergence of national states here in north-western Europe, it was the church, with its various bishoprics, that divided up the country amongst themselves, and when we were in Bouillon the other day we noted that the Bishops of Liège managed to hang on to their independent provinces until as late as 1795.

But the River Semois was the frontier between the Bishops of Liege and the Bishop of Reims. The southern side of the river was part of the Bishopric of Reims and in 1190 came under the control of the Abbey Church of Mézières, where it surprisingly stayed until 1802 when it passed into the hands of the Bishops of Namur.

All of this makes me so surprised to have seen nothing mentioned whatever about a fortress. Obviously the Lord of the Manor would have to live somewhere impressive and in view of the town’s strategic importance right on some kind of border I would have expected the town to have been fortified and some kind of fortress built.

In fact we are told that by 1287 it had become the seat of a feudal nobility and villages on both sides of the river depended upon it. But if there had been fortifications and a fortress here, mention of them has escaped me.

Bohan is next in the news in 1559 when the territory is willed to the two daughters of Gerlache de Bohan. And in 1605 it passes into the hands of one Jan Baptiste van den Bosch. He’s of the family “du Bois de Fiennes” and Lord of Drogenbos in the Province of Brabant, and it stays more-or-less in the hands of his family until maybe 200 or so years ago.

And this is probably the reason why it’s part of Belgium and not, as you might expect, part of France, even though the Semois would make a wonderful natural boundary.

I said “more-or-less” just now because we all know that this area is the “cockpit of Europe”, with marauding armies passing back and forth through here continually even as late as 1944.

We’ve seen how the French went on the rampage all around here in 1635, recaptured by the Spanish in 1652, the French again in 1657 and finally back to the Spanish by the Treaty of Rijswijk in 1697. And then we had the Wars of the Spanish Succession, the Wars of the Austrian Succession, the Napoleonic Wars and so on.

But by 1830 and Belgian independence, things had settled down and there were 130 houses counted here. Forestry products were important, as was agriculture, especially as the area seems to have a microclimate that makes it a couple of degrees warmer than one would expect here. There are excellent alluvial soils due to regular periodic flooding of the river and it’s sheltered from the winds.

There was also quite a substantial cottage industry here, making nails.

But surprisingly, 100 or so years ago, this area was quite famous for tobacco growing and all around us are open barn-like buildings that were actually the drying sheds for the leaves.

It seems that in 1876 someone brought some tobacco plants back from Kentucky and to everyone’s surprise, they flourished here and grew like wildfire. But all of that has been abandoned now – not that I would know a tobacco plant if I were to see one.

As for the church, this was built in 1760 and seems to be dedicated to St Leger. Its construction was financed one-third by the commune, one-third by the Lord of the Manor and one-third by the Monks of the Abbey of Laval Dieu in Monthermé.

It’s certainly not the first church on this site. There’s a reference in a will of 1235 in which a “Clarisse de Gedinne” leaves a sum of money for the “repair” of the church at Bohan, and a ducument of 1190 seems to imply a church here too. We don’t know what that one looks like, or why it was replaced.

This church is built of stone brought from a quarry at Don-le-Mesnil, near Charleville-Mézières.

Its tower is 30 metres high and formerly contained two bells. The larger one, cast in 1860, was taken away by the Germans in 1943 to be melted down. It was replaced in 1949 and a third bell was added in that year too. The second bell is apparently called Marie and was cast in 1839 and repaired in 1909.

The interior is quite basic. We have the typical paintings of the “Chemin de la Croix” which date apparently from the very early 20th Century and the painter is unkown. There’s the principal altars and two side altars are also present, one dedicated to Mary and the other to Joseph.

There are several statues too, including ones of St Antony of Padua, St. Theresa and St Hubert, and several paintings that are signed “Renon Letellier de Charleville, 1827”, as well as a painting of Mary that seems to be older than that.

As well as the church, there are a couple of other places of religious significance in the town.

This is a calvaire, a calvary, and seems to be dedicated to Mary as far as I can tell. I think that that’s a statue of her over there in her grotto. It must be some kind of spring too because I could see water cascading out under the road opposite this spot and discharging into the river.

I wonder if that is what is covered up by the tarpaulin.

And this does remind me of the story that I heard about the Quebecois painter who was asked to paint a picture of the Calvary. He came back with a drawing of John Wayne and several United States troopers on their horses.

As for the wooden construction on the left of the photo, I wonder if that’s an old tobacco-drying shed.

Here by the side of the river we have a very peculiar couple of stones. They are called the “Marriage Stones” because some kind of weird ritual is performed here by newly-weds after the church service.

The purpose of this ritual is apparently to symbolise the difficulties that married couples face during their life together. And I suppose that seeing as this is Belgium, the greatest difficulty that they might encounter is to deal with this ritual in the pouring rain.

There’s a hotel over there, the white building down at the end of the road. And I missed out on an opportunity there because it advertises long stays with breakfast for just €30:00 per night, which would have done me just fine.

I decided to make a note of that for future reference, which I duly did. But would you believe that Brain of Britain forgot to make a note of the name of the place.

Ahh well! I suppose that I shall have to carry out some further research.

And now I’m done. I had a coffee and went off home for my butty and another early night.

After all, I’m off in the morning.

You can stay here and read all of this – all … errr … 2554 words of it.

Sunday 27th November 2016 – I FINALLY FOUND …

…some football this weekend, at my third attempt.

U S St Menges were down to play E S Vouziers this afternoon and not only did I manage to find the ground, the teams were actually out there warming up when I arrived, ready to play.

That makes a pleasant change from just recently, having missed all kinds of matches just now.

But what was really interesting was when I walked into the pie hut. The woman behind the counter took one look at me and asked “coffee?”. First time that I’ve been here too!

My fame must be spreading, that’s all that I can say.

So once the match kicked off, we all settled down to watch the game.

And in the words of the good old cliché, it really was a game of two halves too.

In the first half, it was a pretty even game. E S Vouziers – in the black-and-white – looked slightly the better team but that was failing to take into account two of the US St Menges players.

US St Menges had two attackers who looked streets ahead of anything that ES Vouziers could offer and they combined to make really good attacking play.

The St Menges n°7 and n°9 were really having a good first half and it was absolutely no surprise to anyone that the end of the first half found then 2-0 up. And they were really good value for that score too.

And so we all went off for a half-time coffee and a warm because it was freezing out there.

Now I’m not sure what each of the trainers put into the half-time cuppa because we had two different teams out there on the field for the second half.

The two US St Menges attackers had gone completely off the boil and were pretty much anonymous for the second half, whereas the ES Vouziers players came out full of beans.

Vouziers scored within two minutes of coming back on the field and at the end of the match they ran out 3-2 winners. In the second half, they were hardly troubled by US St Menges.

One of the most dramatic half-time turnarounds that I’ve seen for quite a bit.

We had a brief interruption – or, at least, the spectators did. It’s hunting season of course and we are right in the Ardennes here.

Consequently, we had the 21st-Century version of the Chasseurs Ardennais driving past the football ground, on quads, in pick-ups or on these 4×4 machines that you can see here in this photo

I hate hunters with a passion, as you all know, and I shan’t bore you by ranting on about them right now. You can take it as read.

Just across the river, in a tight meander of the River Meuse is the hamlet of Iges, part of the commune of Glaire since 1971. That’s the village church that you can see just here.

The village has a claim to fame in that it was in the Chateau de Bellevue that Napoleon III met Kaiser William during the signing of the surrender document to end this phase of the Franco-Prussian War after defeat at the Battle of Sedan in 1870.

The French soldiers were confined in the open air as prisoners of war, the meander serving as the boundary of the camp. Some were here for 10 days.

It’s also the site of one of the crossings of the Meuse by Guderian’s Panzer Armies in May 1940 in the early days of World War II.

Talking of World War II, you’ll remember on Friday when we went to see the spot just to the north of St Menges where Fairey Battle L-5581 from 88 Squadron RAF crashed into the trees and its crew, Sergeant FE Beames (observer), Sergeant WG Ross (pilot) and LAC JHK Gegg (wireless operator/air gunner) were killed.

I told you at the time that I’d try to track down the graves of the crew and my search led me to the communal cemetery of St Menges. It’s listed as a Commonwealth War Cemetery so I reckoned that it would be a good place to visit.

My search around the cemetery was rather like that of Tuco near the end of The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly but I eventually found the plot.

There’s no site book here, no Union Jack or anything, and the plot is rather small. I was told that just one coffin was used and that rather unfortunately tells us rather too much about the condition of the bodies when they were recovered.

But it is typical of many plots in may cemeteries in this part of Europe, as I said the other day. Three graves in a quiet corner – pilot, navigator, rear gunner – monuments to the absurdity of the Fairey Battle.

I had a bit of a bad night last night. Up and down a couple of times, couldn’t sleep, awake far too early. First down to breakfast, before the staff yet again. And then back to carry on with Happy Valley and Goose Bay.

Having hung my damp clothes from last night on hangers on the curtain rail over the radiator, they were dry by lunchtime too. That was impressive.

And so, off on the attack this afternoon.

I had my pizza tonight down in the village and now I’m off to my room. I’ll try my best to have an early night and a good sleep. My time here is quickly drawing to a close.

Saturday 26 November 2016 – IT’S NOT BEEN MY LUCKY DAY TODAY!

I went out for my bag of chips tonight as usual, only to find that the chip shop is closed for its annual holidays this weekend.

But no matter – I went off to Bohan. I’d heard that there was a football match on tonight at 20:00.

I arrived there at 19:30 and found a signpost to the football ground – exactly where I had expected it to be from a quick view of an aerial photograph. I could even see the floodlights too, which confirmed that a night match was eminently possible. But when I arrived, the place was in total darkness. and that’s how it stayed.

I went for a drive up along the river into France and toured around for half an hour, but on the way back I passed by the ground again and – still in darkness.

I went back to the centre of the town of Bohan and parked up Caliburn in order to go for a wander around and see what was going on. And I was surprised to find that, for such a small town, it was a thriving hive of industry.

There is a small Delhaize supermarket for a start, and then one or two other shops including a boulangerie, and more than half a dozen restaurants, including a pizzeria which was interesting to discover.

I made a good note of all of these. The supermarket is enough to entice me back on Monday to do some shopping instead of going to Alle – it’s about the same distance. And I’ll be able to see the town in the daylight too.

But my walk did take me to a cafe-type of place stuck in a corner of the square. This was a fast-food restaurant too and they served up some of the nicest chips that I have ever had – and that’s saying something. And so I had my chips after all.

A shame about the football but at least it brought me out of my cocoon and into a new situation and a new town with some good facilities. And as I said – I’ll be back in the daylight to have a better look. Just you wait to find out that Monday is its official day of closing. That’s what usually happens, isn’t it?

Once I had managed to drop off to sleep, I had a really good night. Well away in fact without a single disturbance.

I’d been on my travels too – off visiting my brother of all people and then I had to return because I was taking an exam which consisted of three subjects, for which I was not prepared at all. There were half a dozen of us and as we were glancing through the question paper I suddenly realised that I had left the notes that I needed, along with my house keys, in my jacket which I had left at my brother’s. I had to telephone him to arrange for him to bring them up, but it meant that I would have to leave the room in which case I would be disqualified and have to resit it. But if I didn’t have my notes I would fail, in which case I would have to resit it anyway.
Sometime later I was driving Claude and Françoise somewhere and dropped them off where they had to walk about 100 yards to wherever they were going. They told me how I could work my way back through the village to return to where I had come from, but I wondered why I couldn’t simply do a U-turn and go back the way that I came.

First down to breakfast, and before the staff yet again, and by the time I’d finished I was still alone. But at least the old man who waits on had a little chat to me, which made a change.

And apart from talking to Liz, I cracked well on with my web pages. I’ve arrived in Happy Valley-Goose Bay in Central Labrador and I reckon that I’ll be there for a good few days now. There’s tons of stuff to write about, including how two countries walked in to a third country and built a wharf and an airfield, without even a word to the country concerned.

Later on, I had a shower, washed my clothes for the last couple of days and put on some clean ones. And then seeing as the noxious brat had been let loose in the lounge, I hit the road for my appointment with destiny.

But well-fed and watered, I’m back here now. Another early night, I hope, Then we’ll see if I can have a really good night’s sleep again. I feel much better when I’ve had a decent sleep and I’ve already had a little crash out just now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I didn’t imagine this though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even the mosses are changing colour too.

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

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

Thursday 10th March 2016 – I HAD A SHOWER …

… today, and I’m not talking about anyone from … "you aren’t still doing that, are you?" – ed.

First time since the end of January in fact, the morning of my operation. But then I couldn’t have a shower with my soluble stitches in place. I had the clearance from my surgeon on Monday but what with one thing and another, it wasn’t until this evening that I had one, while my pizza was cooking.

That’s right. It seems that Thursday night is pizza night in Sauret-Besserve, and so I made my own. Tomato, mushrooms and onion with tomato sauce, vegan cheese and herbs. And it was delicious too. So much so that there’s none left for lunch (which is just as well, for I’m not here for lunch).

During the night, I was having rather a fitful series of voyages halfway around the world. The first part featured me as some kind of sheriff or marshal (I’ve clearly been watching far too many westerns before I go to sleep) and I was keeping an eye on a bunch of drunken factory workers dressed as either Indians or baddies who were on the way to the seaside but there were three hours or more of the train travel before we got there and someone needed to keep an eye on these people to make sure that they weren’t up to no good. But at this point, I awoke rather dramatically so I didn’t see how this was going to develop.
But never mind – I was soon back to sleep and found myself in Canada for some reason or another. I was at Rachel’s and Darren’s and the first night that I was there the bottle of gas in the gas heater ran out. And was I cold! I had no heat, no hot water and nowhere to make any coffee in the morning. But then I remembered that there was a bottle of gas in the verandah – like I have at home – so I went to fetch that and couple it up. But before I could do that, I was interrupted by someone like Sherlock Holmes, with Doctor Watson and a third man. This was round about the time of the disappearance of Holmes, and Watson was struggling on his own to solve a couple of cases, but he wasn’t making any headway. But Holmes returned and we had the meeting between Watson and Holmes-in-disguise, with Watson fainting and having to be put to bed. Holmes then started to shave off his whiskers, which clogged my yellow-and-white razor. but this part of everything was filled with some delightful anachronisms (like the black-and-white Sherlock Holmes films of the 30s) with record players, LP records, plastic macs and so on in this scene of Sherlock Holmes. But then I started to talk to Darren about this gas again and Rachel was saying that it doesn’t matter now because look how the temperature has gone up.
After the obligatory walk down the corridor, I went off to Mid-Wales where I was driving along this road – on the right as it happens on a dual carriageway, and in the distance was this enormous rain cloud. I was in my car and had just been overtaken by this huge lorry, who clearly couldn’t care less about conditions on the road. The road was soaking wet and he was splashing spray everywhere and at times you just couldn’t see anything.We drove down this hill with the lorry sending spray everywhere and soaking the pedestrians and policemen gesticulating at the driver. We ended up in one of these big mid-Wales towns (but nothing like any Mid-Wales town that I ever knew) and by this time I was driving a Van-Hool Alizee coach of the late 1980s, the type that I used to drive when I worked for Shearings but which was white with no writing. There were a variety of ways out of this town – at the junction there were five roads out. One of them, a diagonally left-of-straight-on, went under a railway bridge and up a hill, round a right-hand bend and then higher up to a set of traffic lights. That was the way that I went. Just after the bend parked on the left in a restricted area was a purple mark I Escort van with a “four plus two” 1963 number plate (which, seeing as how they weren’t made until 1967 was something quite surprising), and next to it was an old 105E Anglia. I was wanting to stop and take photos of them but there wasn’t anywhere to stop, we were climbing up the hill and there was all kinds of traffic queues. I thought that I would never get to the top of the bank at this rate, stuck here in this enormous traffic queue for the lights to get out of town.

After breakfast, I carried on with my Canada 2015 notes. I’ve finished the dictaphone notes for September and I’m now incorporating the blog notes into the text. That might take a few days as there are quite a lot of those. So far, I’m on that place where I camped overnight about an hour and a half from Happy Valley-Goose Bay (but travelling backwards).

So in a few minutes’ time, a nice clean me will go for a walk and then I’ll be off to bed. I have to be up at 07:00 tomorrow ready for my early morning drive to the hospital at Montlucon. I am not looking forward to that.

Tuesday 29th September 2015 – THAT WAS A NICE …

… night too. despite the rainstorm that we had, and despite having to leave my stinking pit twice due to reasons that any man of my age will know, and despite me having a neighbour arrive at some point, I was really comfortable in my little bed. So much so that I was awake and out of the bed long before the alarm went off.

And it was warm (well, comparatively warm), to such an extent that I stood outside Strider, lowered down the tailgate and made myself a coffee in the open air. And it was here that I engaged my neighbour in conversation.

He and his wife were from Newfoundland and had a 1999 Chevy pick-up with a camper back. They’d come round from Baie Comeau and were telling me about the road. We discussed fuel consumption too, and he dismayed me by saying that he could do from Goose Bay to Blanc Sablon on just one tank of fuel. Mind you, it cheered me up to a certain degree when he said that he had a 135-litre tank. That compares to Strider’s 70 litres or something. And how I wish I had that size of fuel tank. But of course I will settle for an improved fuel consumption.

He knows the area here quite well and he drew my attention to the structure under which Strider was parked.

According to him, these are the remains of a cable car. Before the highway – and the bridge – were built, they still needed to pass stuff over the river to whatever settlement was over on the other side and to start the construction of the plant and cabins that formed the basis of the town of Churchill Falls.

if what he says is true, then it can’t be true about the cable car at North West River being the only one in Labrador. But we shall see what they mean by all of this.

Another thing that he knew was the footpath that led to the best view possible of the falls, although it’s not possible to see the falls in all their glory – the best views are just inaccessible.

It’s quite a hike, although not a difficult one, but it’s well-worth the effort. I was pleased to reach the end pf the path because there’s a splendid view of the gorge itself from there. I’ve never seen a view quite like this – the Grand Canyon excepted, of course Apparently, I’m 240 feet up just here, according to the Neighbour from Newfoundland.

He was right about the view of the falls not being spectacular. The falls themselves are spectacular, of course, but you just can’t reach the immediate vicinity of them, or found a spec directly opposite to take a good photo.

In any case, the falls themselves aren’t anything like as spectacular as they used to be. They really were impressive back years ago but the river was diverted to provided the drop for the hydro-electric power plant and so only a small fraction of the water falls over the waterfalls today.

My neighbour also told me of a crashed vehicle that was lying on its roof further on down the road.

And so I kept my eyes peeled, and I found this one here. It’s not on its roof of course but it hasn’t half been knocked about. This gives you yet another clue about the state of the road around here. As for the yellow tape that’s around it, that’s Police marking tape. It shows that the Police have inspected the vehicle, and that it’s sealed off to warn people not to enter.

But it’s not by any means the state of the road that’s responsible for may of the accidents – it’s the state of the drivers.

The speed limit along the Trans-Labrador Highway is 80 kph and I have the speed limiter on Strider set at just 80 kph. But everything on the Highway is going past me like I’m standing still, including these two lorries. And these aren’t just simple artics either, these are two of those road-trains pulling two trailers and these road trains are notoriously unstable at the best of times on the best of roads.

And talking of unusual loads on the road (although road trains aren’t by any means unusual) how about this one? We started off with a police car in front flagging down the traffic and telling us to move right off the edge of the road. And then this came along.

This is some kind of huge electrical unit, and it has two lorries in charge of it. There’s one pulling it, and the one behind it is pushing it along. The purpose of the pick-up in front is to clear the road because with the configuration that this unit has, it can’t even take a bend like this and keep on its own side of the road. It took up most of the road.

I’ve been noticing, as I’m sure that I have already told you, that there’s some kind of urbanisation taking place along the Trans-Labrador Highway. This is the lake that we’ve all seen before, about 40 kms out of Labrador City, when we came by here on previous occasions.

There was a cottage there previously, but now we seem to have a couple of other cottage down by the lakeshore. And this is the kind of place where I would like to live, with this really gorgeous backdrop and a really beaautiful view of the lake in front.

Last year when we were in Wabush, we heard all kinds of sories about the iron ore mine closing down and how people were going to desert the town in droves.

I made a diversion into the town to see what was going on in here, and as you can see, the buildings of the iron ore mine are still there standing. And furthermore, I didn’t see anything that suggested to me that people were deserting in droves. There were no more houses up for sale or to let than you would expect to see anywhere else.

But of course, that’s not to say that things won’t be different in another year’s time.

I stopped off at Tim Horton’s for the internet and a coffee, and then I went on to Fermont, in Quebec, for fuel as it’s the last station before the Northern Quebec wilderness.

I also went to look in the “boomerang”. We saw a photo of it last year – it’s the big, high, long building that has a huge shopping gallery on the ground floor and a pile of apartments up above. I’ve never been in there before (except to sound out the hotel in 2010) and so I was curious to see what it was like.

It’s certainly a labyrinth on the ground floor, but what surprised me was that a good proportion – probably 30% or 40% – of the shops were closed down and empty. At least the Co-op food store was open, which is more than can be said for the one in Labrador City which seems to have closed down since last year.

The road out of Fermont into the Wilderness goes past Mont Wright and the Arcelor Mittal iron mine, what is said to be the largest iron ore mine in the world, and it’s the reason for the town of Fermont being built – to house the workers. Mont Wright was once a mountain, but so much iron ore has been extracted that it’s fast becoming a hole in the ground.

The mine tailings stretch for miles, and from here up on a ridge at the back you can see some of the workings. And I do mean “some” because they also stretch for miles. It’s really impressive from that point of view, but we saw last year what has happened at Gagnon, another huge iron ore mine. When that was exhausted, it was simply abandoned and is now an environmental disaster.

And now, from the beautiful morning that we had today, we have now descended into a dreadful and miserably wet evening up here.

We’re having wind, fog and squalls of rain and although you can’t see it, we are back on the dirt road. And a miserable wet and muddy dirt road it is too, with very little sign (if anything) of any improvement to match the major work that has taken place on the Labrador side of the border.

I’ve found a place to park for tonight. It’s in a lay-by and I’ve dug myself in in behind one of the emergency telephones, with a lorry to keep me company through the night – although he didn’t stay for long.

And the weather seems at last to be improving. There’s a beautiful red sky right now, and so that might promise well for the morning (at least I hope so) but it’s cold, so I’m going to snuggle myself down in my sleeping bag and keep warm like that.

-3

Monday 28th September 2015 – WHAT A GOOD NIGHT …

… that was last night in Wood Cottage. I had had a good shower and shave, done a machine-load of washing, had a nice tea (rice and vegetables seasoned with a packet of dried onion soup), spent some time on the internet, and then flat-out upstairs in a nice heated bedroom.

And you can tell how good a sleep I had had, for I was on my travels again. I’d been playing for a Welsh Premier League football team in a European competition and we were so unprepared that we had been playing for just 18 minutes and we were already 3-0 down. And then there was a call on the public address system for the stadium electrician, and so Terry had to leave the field to go to deal with the issue and so we were down to 10 men already.

But that did bring back memories of a match at Pionsat. We were in mid-game and the siren at the fire station sounded, so two of the players ran from the field (they were volunteer firemen) and went down to the station. And they came back later when the emergency was over and rejoined the game.

And while you admire the view of the Innu community’s settlement at Sheshatshiu across the river, let me tell you about the internet here at North West River.

North West River is a small settlement, the farthest north that it is possible to go by road in Labrador (and then only since about 1982), and across the river is a First Nation settlement. An outpost of civilisation it most certainly is, and yet the internet speed here is a good ten (and I do mean 10) times faster than the speed that I have at home.

I said that North West River has only been connected to the national highway system since about 1982 when the road bridge was built. Prior to that, we had the coastal boat that called here once a week.

But North West River is actually on the north side of the river, and civilisation (in the name of Goose Bay and Happy Valley) is on the south. To cross the river to civilisation, you had your canoe in the summer and your ice-skates in winter but in the very early 1960s a cable-car from the UK was installed here and this was luxury!

When the bridge was opened, the chair lift became redundant. The town bought it for the symbolic dollar and it’s here on display on the site from which it used to operate.

The site is next-door to the Labrador Heritage Museum, and that’s my next port of call.

The museum is situated in the old Hudsons Bay Trading Post and part of the exhibition is a fully-restored store inside, complete with many period products. The museum is officially closed as it’s now out of season but I’ve managed to blag my way in for a private tour. It wasn’t the Trading Post that interested me (although it did) but there was quite an exhibition about the boats that plied the coast here but also a big exhibition of artefacts from the Leonidas Hubbard and Mina Hubbard expeditions, including photos that Dillon Wallace had taken on his travels with Leonidas.

And I was right about the Labrador flag. The blue is the sea, the green is the forest and the white is the snow.

I spent a good couple of hours in the museum and then I went off for another wander around the town.

I’d noticed on an old map that I had seen that by the side of the dirt track out to the north, there was an airstrip indicated. It’s no longer used since the town has a road connection with the airport at Goose Bay, but I still thought it might be an interesting thing to try to find.

And here we are. This is the airstrip – now built-on in places and with some light industry in what I imagine would have been the airstrip building

That wasn’t all the excitement out here either.

I’d seen some people way out in the distance looking as if they were working in a field, and so I walked right over there to talk to them. They are indeed working in the field, pulling up their crop of potatoes, and here’s the evidence. They reckon that this is a bad year for their spuds but I’d be happy with a crop like this.

They told me that carrots, cabbages, lettuce and a few other crops are grown here but people keep them near to their houses as they need quite a lot of tending. Potatoes don’t need much tending at all and so they can grow them out in what passes around here for fields. I reckon that it’s just sand but at least that will warm up quickly once the sun comes out, as anyone who has sat on a beach will tell you.

From here, I went for a drive around the Innu settlement at Sheshatshiu but I won’t be posting any photos of it here. In fact, I didn’t take any at all.

There’s a reason for that. Sheshatshiu is an artificial settlement built under the extremely controversial Government plan of regrouping all of the outlying Innu settlements into larger centres of population with a concentration of services. But unfortunately it’s destroyed the lifestyle of the Innu and given them nothing to replace it. Just like the settlement out at the Davis Inlet, Sheshatshiu is a hotbed of despair, destitution, alcoholism and drug abuse, and you can see the hopelessness everywhere.

This is something that I’ve seen in other First Nation and Native American settlements – the hopelessness.I would have thought that Europeans would have learnt to leave the native communities alone and let their way of life evolve at their own pace.

By Europeans, by the way, I mean people of European origin, whether or not they are 10th Generation Canadians.

Talking of First Nation settlements, there is about half a dozen of them further up the northern Labrador coast (and that’s a lot less that there used to be before the Government’s controversial compulsory resettlement policy) and the only access that they have is by sea.

The Northern Ranger is the ship that carries out the service and calls at each of the settlements, making the tour once a week. And here she is, at the quayside in Goose Bay loading up for – I imagine – Cartwright and the enigmatically-named Black Tickle.

There was a great deal of activity at the Goose Bay airport too. A couple of helicopters were taking off and landing, there was a whole stream of light aircraft coming in to land, and there was a cargo plane over there at the terminal.

It’s all go since Valard began all of the work on the hydro plant at the Muskrat Falls – it’s brought piles of changes to the area, but it’s still a far cry from the days when this was an important port-of-call on the Atlantic Ferry in World War II and subsequently a major NATO base during the Cold War.

I came here in 2010 and the place really was derelict in those days but now it’s being tidied up a bit.

The hangars were in a desperate state in those days but now they seem to be in use for light industry. And talking of Valard and the construction works here, in one of the hangars is a company that specialises in buying, selling and repairing heavy plant and machinery. And I bet that there’s a great deal of that needing repair too, seeing the amount of work that they do and the conditions in which they are doing it.

I fuelled up Strider again (you need to fuel up at every opportunity out here) and set off for Labrador City after that.

And while you can no longer go to visit the Muskrat Falls due to all of the construction, the construction work has opened up some astonishing vistas that were no longer visible previously. This is one of them – you wouldn’t have seen this a few years ago. And it’s not the only one either. There are plenty of them and the whole scenery is changing.

It’s not only the Muskrat Falls that is undergoing major construction work. I’ve been noticing dozens and dozens of new cabins and homes springing up all along the Trans Labrador Highway that were certainly not there previously.

Some of them are quite banal as you might expect, but one or two of them have been built by people with a sense of the unusual and the eccentric. This home has quite fascinated me and I could quite happily live in a house like this – especially the tower bit. I love that.

One thing that I do like about Labrador at this time of the year is the beautiful autumn colours.

The northern side of the valley catches the sun and is quite sheltered from the wind and so there are plenty of deciduous trees that grow up there. And here, there’s a spectacular view of a deciduous forest and as the colours change for the autumn, they are magnificent. I could sit and look at these colours for ever.

When I came by up here in 2010 the road was thoroughly dreadful and it took hours to cover just 150 kilometres. Today though, it’s all different and we have a really modern and quick black-top highway so that we can cover the ground as fast as we like (subject to the 80 kph speed limit of course).

Just here, you can see a sample of the old road along which we used to have to travel and you won’t be surprised that it took so long to cover the ground. However, I am glad that I did the route when it was still a challenge and a struggle. It’s nothing like that now of course.

By economising on the performance of Strider, I’m managing to stretch out the fuel consumption a little. And so I didn’t call at Churchill Falls to fuel up. Strider won’t do the 550 kilometres to Labrador City of course, but I still have 40 litres in cans in the back. And so I’m heading to the sheltered little rest area by the Churchill Falls to spend the night

But talking of Valard and construction and the like, this is Churchill Falls airport and it never ever looked like this.

There’s been a considerable amount of rebuilding and expansion that’s gone on here this last year or so, and you can see who are the major customers here, judging by the amount of Valard vehicles parked in the car park.

And Valard vehicles are everywhere – at one point a stream of 5 Valard pick-ups passed me in the opposite direction and at almost every track off into the forest there are one or two parked up.

Now, I’m on the rest area. I’ve put my 20 litres of fuel in and I’ve settled down in the back of Strider, listening to the pouring rain beating down upon the insulation on the roof. I’m going to crawl into my sleeping bag in a minute and watch a film. And if I fall asleep during the film, then ask me if I care.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: goose bay

Tuesday 19th September 2017 – HAVING BEEN …

Sunday 17th September 2017 – THAT WASN’T …

Friday 15th September 2017 – I’M BACK …

Thursday 14th September 2017 – I’M NOT SLEEPING …

Wednesday 13th September 2017 – IN THE HAPPY VALLEY CEMETERY …

Tuesday 12th September 2017 – I’M IN GOOSE …

Friday 6th January 2017 – I HAD ENOUGH …

Thursday 1st December 2016 -I HAD A …

Monday 28th November 2016 – I WAS RIGHT …

Sunday 27th November 2016 – I FINALLY FOUND …

Saturday 26 November 2016 – IT’S NOT BEEN MY LUCKY DAY TODAY!

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

Thursday 10th March 2016 – I HAD A SHOWER …

Tuesday 29th September 2015 – THAT WAS A NICE …

Monday 28th September 2015 – WHAT A GOOD NIGHT …

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