No reason to be alarmed, though. Strawberry Moose and his faithfful artillery crew, namely Roy the Ranger, have manned … "personned" – ed … the guns and are ready to repel all boarders – and a few day pupils too by the sound of things.

I’m deep in the Hudson Valley near a town called Schuylerville and while that name might mean nothing to most people, it used to be called Saratoga and that might mean a whole lot more because the battle here, in October 1777, put the writing on the wall for the British occupation of what is now the United States of America.

For four months of the year the St Lawrence is frozen over and the only way to send supplies to Montreal and Lower Canada is up the Hudson Valley, over the portages around the various lakes and then down the River Richelieu to Montreal.

At Saratoga there’s a bluff overlooking the Hudson River and whoever controls this bluff controls all of the upper Hudson Valley – a fact perfectly well realised by the rebels, and only belatedly by the Imperial power who had failed to stock up with supplies. The rebels made it here first and as winter started to draw on, the Imperial forces realised that they needed to move them off the bluff in order to restock themselves for the winter.

So on October 7th, 1777, the Imperial forces attacked and after a fierce fight, were pushed backwards off the bluff and right into the arms of rebel reinforcements, and that was that. This was the first nail in the coffin of Imerial domination of the 13 colonies.

So that was how I spent my afternoon, and a beautiful afternoon it was too and no mistake. So much so that I ran completely out of time. luckily though, although the visit cost me all of $5:00, the Tourist Information service gave me a campsite list and so I was able to find the campsite that I missed in the dark last night – must remember to finish earlier in the daytime.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my preoccupation with roundabouts in North America. When I fist started travelling here, finding a roundabout was a major achievement. Nowadays, though, it’s the “in thing” for towns to have roundabouts, almost a status symbol, for here at Malta on Highway 9, they have two in quick succession.

However, it’s all very well having roundabouts here, but it’s another thing completely about drivers knowing how to use them, as this truck driver has discovered, and he has come to a sticky end as he tries to turn off Highway 9 to go up to Interstate 89 and Montreal.

On a neagtive camber like this with a high centre of gravity like that, a dead stop at the “Give Way” sign and a slow and careful drive around would have been much more appropriate than showing off the handling capabilities of his rig. At least the cab hasn’t gone over, so he’s not hurt, except in the pride department, and also in the wallet I bet, because there were several of New York’s finest in attendance.

Why I was down here was for the huge Home Depot that I encountered last night. There was a sale on and so I stocked up with cheap tools – not rubbish but heavily-discounted stuff including a Ryobi all-in bit collection, the type that sells for about €35 in Brico Depot but here reduced to just $6:00. I can do all sorts of things with that.

My route is going to take me along the side of the Champlain Canal – the 19th Century water route between the Hudson and the St Lawrence. While much of it has been abandoned to due navigational improvements on the Hudson, there are still several locks along the route that are used.

This is lock 4 and I watched it being used by a pleasure boat, sadly the only type of traffic along here these days with commerical freight long-gone.

Ironically though, I’ve had lengthy (and I do mean lengthy) chats with 3 people today and they have all featured one thing in common – the scepticism of their Government’s foreign and militarist policies. All three of them have been as cynical as I am about all of this.

There’s an undercurrent of dissent running through the USA and people seem to be only able to express their discontent to foreigners. It really is just like the Soviet Union in the 1970s here, only that the authorities use ridicule and ostracism as a punishment instead of imprisonment. And believe me, ridicule and ostracism are far more devastating a punishment.

But yes, 50 years of fighting Communism, and now they have installed the worst aspects of it here in their own country? There’s something fishy here, and I’m not talking about the contents of Baldrick’s apple crumble.

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