Tag Archives: john cabot

Saturday 25th November 2023 – I WAS HAPPY …

… that it was today that I went on the bus to the shops and not yesterday.

Yesterday was a cold, wet windy miserably day but today was one of the nicest days that we’ve had for ages and it was a real pleasure to be out.

It was the kind of day where, had things been different, I’d have made a flask of piping hot coffee and gone for a nice long walk northwards along the coast with the camera, but how things have changed in that respect.

Things changed a little in bed last night too because I seem to have had something of a rather more relaxed night. That’s a good thing from the point of view of sleep but a bad thing from the point of view of adventure. The only adventures I have these days are these rather vicarious ones at second hand as my ethereal spirit goes walkabout during the night.

At the hospital they keep on asking me if I want sleeping pills, and I keep on turning them down. My little nocturnal voyages are about all the fun that I have, given the way that things have turned out.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and struggled to my feet, and then having dressed, I toddled off into the dining area to take my medication.

Back here I transcribed the dictaphone notes from last night – and it didn’t take me long. I was with a bunch of pirates last night. We’d gone ashore in the High Arctic somewhere amidst all the snow and the ice. Some of the descriptions that the crew was giving off about the are in which they found themselves were extremely poetic, including things like “if it wasn’t for the cold you’d never realise the danger” etc. A couple of the crew wandered away during the night to explore and we didn’t know if we’d be lucky enough to see them next morning etc. As it became light next morning we were rounded up into some kinds of fishing parties. We’d tried to do some fishing the evening before and had caught some cod but this morning we were going to go out on a full-scale fishing operation to revictual the ship. That involved a couple of the rowing boats with a net spread between them and the two rowing boats rowing round in a circle towards each other to tighten the catch inside the net. We were busy organising this when I suddenly awoke

It’s a shame that it ended at that point because I would have loved to have seen how our fishing expedition unfolded. When Richard Hakluyt transcribed John Cabot’s notes in order to include them for publication in his “Principall Navigations” in 1589 he came across Cabot’s delightful description of the Labrador coast and "The cod were in largeness and quantitie … that they stayed our ships".

When my book about the Labrador coast finally hits the shelves, you’ll notice the difference. Constant over-fishing by industrial trawlers decimated the cod fishery so much that in 1992 the Canadian Government imposed a moratorium on cod-fishing. And so all the big industrial trawlers moved off elsewhere and the small subsistence fisherman along the coast was deprived of his livelihood and fell into desolation and despair.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall us working our way down the Nova Scotia coast on our voyages of 2003 and 2010 when we picked our way through the decay and dereliction of piles of abandoned fishing equipment.

But while we’re on the subject of pirate ships … "well, one of us is" – ed … we’ve encountered pirate ships before.

In 2017 when we were on our way back from visiting Rhys in South Carolina STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I came across a pirate ship. His Nibs quickly recruited an ad-hoc crew and set sail for the Spanish Main in order to wreak havoc amongst the treasure ships heading back from New Spain to the Old World.

And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, his antics on the High Seas on his way home from looking after Kathryn at University in Ontario in 2011 led to questions being asked in the Canadian Parliament.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed there was a story about me being at some kind of formal party with about half a dozen other people, having an enormous amount of difficulty trying to keep still, having to keep moving my legs quite regularly. This led to some kind of commotion about food but I can’t now remember very much about this issue of food except that it was something that had caused it.

There was time for a quick wash and brush-up and then I headed for the bus. He was late arriving and with not being able to move around it was quite cold.

However there was a really beautiful blue sky. Jersey stood out really clearly on the horizon this morning and it looked as if I could reach out and touch the Brittany coast across the bay, it was so clear.

There was no ice or frost on the car windscreens which is no surprise as we are only 50 feet from the sea here and in the face of the prevailing westerly winds, but once we were out of the wind, all of the cars parked at the side of the road were iced up.

At St Nicolas no-one made the sign of the Cross today, but after I’d done my shopping I had a pleasant chat about historic buildings with the guy drinking coffee next to me as I waited for my bus home.

The only marzipan that they had was this tricolour stuff but I don’t suppose that it matters under icing. I have to use what I can.

They did have soya yogurt to make my naan bread but it’s only sold in packets of 8 so I’ll be making a lot of naan bread dough tomorrow.

Coming back up the stairs was another nightmare. There’s no doubt that I’m actually moving easier – that was quite evident today and I’m pleased about that – but I can’t lift my leg high enough to climb the steps and we had another gymnastics morning.

But I’ll have to have a word with Severine when I see her again and find out what she can do for me.

Having put the food away I made my cheese on toast and then came in here, where I promptly fell asleep.

A ‘phone call awoke me. The paperwork has come in from the engineer and the co-property committee has decided that they want a couple more quotes. Could I organise it?

When I lived in Expo, that was a co-property and there were enormous issues about an apartment owner who would launch himself into all kinds of unauthorised adventures and then bombard the committee with all kind sof paperwork, and I remember very well many of the issues that arose.

Consequently, I told them that if they give me an authorisation I’ll do it quite happily but I’m not doing it without any authorisation.

This afternoon I soaked all my fruit – and found that although I had all kinds of things in my baking box I didn’t have any glacé cherries, or bigarreaux confits as they call them around here. They had some advertised in LeClerc’s home delivery catalogue so I hope that they’ll still be in stock when I send off my order.

So we now have currants, sultanas, raisins, figs, cranberries, some of that dried gelified fruit, desiccated coconut, ground almonds, banana chips, dried orange chips and the odd partridge in a pear tree divided into two lots – a small one for the pudding and a big one for the cake – soaking in a mixture of vanilla, fleur d’orange, rum essence, brandy essence, all kinds of spices and probably a few other things too.

It’ll be in there for a week or 10 days, being stirred and fed with more liquid over that period ready for a baking session next weekend.

But the essences of rum and brandy are interesting. It’s not available in France – after all, if you have the real stuff, why use artificial? But there’s a chain of shops called “Bulk Barn” in all of the big cities in Canada – something like an old UK “Weigh and Save” on steroids.

Rural Canada is just like the 1950s which is why I really like it, and home baking and that kind of thing are major occupations. And when I was in the one in Fredericton last year I made a wonderful discovery and several bottles of essence found their way into my suitcase for future use.

And by God is it strong!

Back here afterwards I crashed out again, for ages this time, and since then I’ve been de-duplicating one of the backup drives.

Tea tonight was baked potato with salad and a veggie burger in breadcrumbs and that was as delicious as usual.

So now I’m off for a hot drink or two and then I’ll dictate the radio notes ready for tomorrow when I’ll prepare the programme. There’s naan dough to make as well as I’ve now run out.

Something else that I’ve run out of is chocolate biscuits. However when tidying up the shelves the other say I found a couple of packets of industrial ones about which I’d forgotten. I’ll finish these off and bake another batch of biscuits next weekend.

That should keep me out of mischief for a while.

Tuesday 9th July 2019 – HAVING SAID ..

… that I was planning on an early night last night, I wandered back to my cabin and began to watch a film. However, I never even made it past the credits, so tired was I

And it will be the same tonight because I feel totally wasted. It has been a really hectic day.

Something of a struggle to tear myself out of my stinking pit at the sound of the alarm. However I did make it to breakfast at the appropriate time, but it would be wrong to say that I was the life and soul of the party.

During the night we had sailed down the Eyjafjördur fjord and moored at the quayside in the town of Akureyri, the “Capital of the North”, just as Tintin did in the Aurora in The Shooting Star.

First item on the agenda was a trip out to some archaeological ruins but as our bus wasn’t until 09:15, I had time to chill out for a while before leaving. At least, that was the plan, except that my reverie was interrupted by the cleaner bursting in to clean my room.

But I made it onto the quayside in time and much to my surprise the driver was from Wolverhampton. Married to an Icelandic girl whom he had met in London, she wanted to return home so he came too. And just like us, he has no intention of ever returning.

We also learnt a few Icelandic definitions today. A tree is a tree, a wood is two trees standing close together and a forest is three trees ditto.

This morning’s destination was Gasir, an abandoned Norse village about 11 kms away. And when I say “Norse” I don’t really mean it because although it’s from the late Norse period, it’s actually a settlement just occupied seasonally by merchants trading with the area.

We don’t know for sure who these traders were but the discovery of German goods from the pre-Hanseatic days and alse English trade goods is very significant.

There were the remains of a church here and these were quite visible following some excavation, even down to the churchyard wall. Plenty of foundations of booths too, many of which have never been excavated. It was quite a big, busy place during the trading season.

So why was it abandoned? The answer is that you can see from the photo the spread of alluvial silt that has accumulated. Most boats anchored in the river to the side of the settlement but round by the 15th Century the accumulation of silt made this impossible.

It’s very tempting to consider the influence of the mini-Ice Age of this period that put an end to the Medieval Warm period, and look for a change in the weather, the tides and the currents causing the build-up of silt.

But one thing is quite clear. The archaeological investigations of the area so far carried out have turned up absolutely nothing of any size whatever. Trinkets that were easily lost or discarded and broken objects, but nothing of anything that would be classed as a large object. There was no wood discovered of any importance.

This points to what would be described as an “orderly evacuation” of the site where everything possible would be taken away for re-use, rather than a panic-stricken flight such as you might have when invaders arrive and the inhabitants take only what they could carry, or an evacuation following a fire.

Something else I learnt about Iceland this morning too. There are horses everywhere, thousands of them, and we asked their purpose. And the reply can only be given with an Icelandic accent, which is impossible to do in a text format, so you’ll have to do the best you can.

“Ven the horssiss is born they go out into the fields and learn to become ponies. Zen ven they get to four years we go to ride them. And of they bite and kick too much ve make zem into sausages”

So now you know.

On the way back I sat next to our Norse expert, hoping to pick his brains. However he must have had a hard day too because he dozed off and slept all the way back to the ship. So much for that!

After lunch we decided to have a little rest for a few minutes before setting off on our travels. We would meet again at 14:00. I remember seeing 13:50, but the next thing that I remember was that it was 14:10. I needed to put my skates on.

I ended up heading off on my own. Right out of the city to the Air Museum, the Motorcycle Museum and the Museum of Industry. But my admission pass didn’t cover them after all of that, so I headed back to town, stopping off at a few civic museums on the way.

One of them had an exhibition of maps and one of the comments startled me. It went something like “improvement in ships and navigation techniques in the 15th and 16th centuries meant that mariners could visit the New World” or something along those lines, completely forgetting that the Norse had been visiting the New World for 500 years prior to Cabot and Columbus.

Nothing else of any great interest although my admission pass covered them, but we did discover a Toy Museum. Several toys such as pedal cars and kiddies’ tricycles parked outside and Strawberry Moose enjoyed them immensely.

Further along on my route back I came across an ice-cream parlour that sold – would you believe – vegan ice cream, so I stocked up with a large coconut ice cream, that cost me almost €5:00.

Across the road was a signpost pointing up a steep path to the Botanical Gardens, so I staggered my way up there. And “stagger” was the word because it was long and steep.

But well worth the climb because not only was it beautiful, blue poppies and black tulips included, but the smell was delicious. I sat there for a good half-hour to soak it all up, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that this isn’t like me at all. As I have said before, and on many occasions too, the only time that I would ever be likely to take a photograph of a flower would be if an old car were parked upon it.

Back down into town where I was nearly squidged by a couple of cars, I discovered that many restaurants are selling vegan options. No danger of me having difficulties about eating out – except the price of course because things are horrendous here.

After tea I had a nice hot shower which helped me to relax after my efforts. I washed my clothes too – I need to keep up-to-date with my washing as I don’t have much stuff. Then I girded up my loins. It’s going to be another very long day so I need to be on really good form. I remember the rush around that we had last year and if anything it’s intensified.

Still, no peace for the wicked.

There was another beautiful sunset so I stayed on deck and watched it as the pilot helped us navigate our way out of port and then came back down to go to bed. I need a good sleep ready for tomorrow.

Wednesday 31st October 2018 – THE BODY CLOCK …

… is working well again to day.

Never mind the awakening at 01:30 – that’s the kind of thing that happens quite regularly these days, but the being wide-awake at 05:20 can only be good news, especially as I needed an early start.

The downside of all of this is despite being off on yet another nocturnal voyage during the night, all that I can remember is that I was shepherding around another group of young ladies. But as for why, I don’t have a clue now and isn’t that disappointing when I’ve spend the evening with a bunch of bouncing beauties?

06:10 I was out of bed and it took me just 2 minutes to pack the rest of my stuff.

But not all of it.

I’ve lost the top off one of my little water bottles – one of the ones that I use to bring soya milk and fruit juice with me when I come on a Sunday.

Well, when I say “lost it” what I mean is that I seem to have brought with me the top off one of the bottles that I didn’t need and so threw away. And I must have thrown away the good top with the bad bottle, if you see what I mean.

Anyway, by 06:30 I was on my way to the railway station and it’s a long time since I’ve been out and about this early.

And doesn’t the station look beautiful in the artificial lighting?

At the railway station, instead of catching the 07:09, the 06:36 was rather late so I hopped on that without having to wait around at all.

As a result I was early in Brussels, but the Carrefour in the station was open so that I could pick up some raisin buns and some fruit for breakfast.

I didn’t have to wait long – just long enough to eat my breakfast in fact, before we were ushered up onto the platform for our train.

And on there in the windswept weather the train soon put in its appearance and we could clamber aboard. And just for a change, I was first on board.

And then we had to wait.

dDe to the late arrival of the portion of the train that arrives from Amsterdam, the TGV was 12 minutes late leaving the station.

It was one of the same rather elderly TGVs but it was much cleaner and tidier inside than usual, although there was no water in the washrooms.

And the journey was so uneventful that I can’t remember a single thing about my seating companion

15 minutes late arriving in Paris Gare-du-Nord but the Metro was quite rapid and, for a change, half-empty.

And we were on the platform at Montparnasse-Vaugirard with 20 minutes to spare.

There wasn’t even enough time to have a look around. I’d only been there a couple of minutes before they called us up to the train. And I ended up sitting next to a nice young girl, but unfortunately she wasn’t interested in having a chat.

We set off on time too and for the first 30 minutes or so I caught up with my beauty sleep.

Once I’d woken up, I carried on with my “Voyages Of The Norsemen“.

Bearing in mind that the book was published 104 years ago, it’s a totally fascinating read.

For example, Hovgaard quote a beautiful story that “There is a tradition among the Eskimos in Labrador about a fierce race of men of gigantic size and strength, who delighted to kill people. But these men themselves could not be killed by either darts or arrows, which rebounded from their breast as from a rock”..

Can you think of a better description by isolated people of small stature when they talk about Europeans of the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries dressed in breastplates? It’s now accepted unequivocally that Martin Frobisher did in fact reach and explore Baffin Island in the 1570s and breastplates would have been in his wardrobe, but it’s interesting to speculate about who might have been there before and dressed in breastplates too.

It’s a similar kind of situation that I mentioned years ago about the old Mi’kmaq legend of Glooscap building a giant canoe and planting trees in it, which can, from the isolated mind, be no better description of the building of a European ship by European people on the coast of Nova Scotia long before the arrival of John Cabot.

The train pulled in on time at Granville station, which is always good news.

Here on the platform we were met by a couple of giant pumpkins. It’s nice to see the SNCF employees enter into the spirit of Halloween.

And that wasn’t all either. All the way down into town I was assailed by all kinds of demons and ghoulies. Someone whom I knew was chased into a pit by the demons, but was dragged out by the ghoulies.

On the way past the boulangerie I stopped to pick up a baguette for lunch. It’s been a long day and I’m hungry.

On the way up the hill, I looked over the wall into the harbour.

There was Victor Hugo moored up, all dressed in some kind of corporate advertising as if she had been hired to go off on a private excursion

I heard somewhere that one of the Channel Islands ferries had been broken down for a month during the holiday season and had cost the operators a great deal of money.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in the summer I did mention that I hadn’t seen her sister for quite some considerable time.

I had a very late lunch and then for the rest of the day I vegetated. I had a visit from the neighbours who invited me for a drink on Saturday, and I managed a walk around the headland later.

But it’s cold. 11°C in here and this would ordinarily be the signal to switch on the heating. Winter has arrived at last and it’s only going to get colder.

But I’m not. I’m going to be and I’m going to stay there. It’s a Bank Holiday so there’s no alarm tomorrow. I intend to have The Sleep Of The Dead, so just you watch someone come along and spoil it.

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 – AND WASN’T THAT A WASTE OF TIME?

I finally had my blood count results back today. And the total has dropped from 9.8 to 9.0 – that’s not far short of 10% – in a week. And not only that – some of the things that needed to go up have indeed gone up, but some other things that needed to go up – including the most important things like the haemoglobin – have gone down. According to the infirmière who comes twice a day to inject me with the anti-coagulant, this means that it’s not just a simple case of dilution of the blood but that there’s something much more serious going on somewhere.

This means that it’s time to put Plan B into … errr … operation. Tomorrow, I’m going to see about having a chat with the Médecin Général of my Health Insurance company to see what he thinks about me having a second opinion somewhere with a specialist.

But as you can tell, I am not amused by all of this.

I didn’t manage to make it to Worleston last night by the way. I ended up being sidetracked elsewhere. I started out on the borders of Shropshire, Cheshire and Wales, my old stamping ground from many years ago. I was heading back north towards Crewe, I suppose, and I had the wife of a friend in the car with me. She was complaining about her husband, how he was all untidy and disorganised and how she wished he was like another one of the people that we knew. I cautioned her about that, because in my experience the tidiness and organisation of our other friend was nothing but superficial and just underneath the surface was a kind of chaos worse than ever you could imagine.
So back at my place in France where I brought a coach home – an old Ford R1114 with a Plaxton Supreme body. I drove it down the lane as far as my concrete parking place (which is most unlikely) and managed to turn it round at the bottom and park it facing uphill (which is impossible). I had a few things to do there and then went off for a walk, which took me right out to the southern edge of Stoke on Trent, somewhere round about Blurton or Trentham. Here in the middle of the road was a football match taking place – one team in green and the other in white. It wasn’t a suitable place to play a football match because the road had quite a steep slope, the top of which was defended by the green team. Stanley Matthews was playing on the green team and word had gone out that if his team won, he would be made man of the match, so right at the end of the game the green team had a shot on goal. The white goalkeeper, none other than Lev Yashin, stood there watching the ball, making no effort to save it. When I asked him about it, he replied that Matthews deserved the reward. And so I headed back home, reckoning that it would take me about an hour to walk from here (yes, quite!) and I ended up heading through the centre of Stoke-on-Trent. I was passing by the bus station at Hanley (I go a strange way home, don’t I?) just as a former work colleague was arriving. he told me that my absence was missed because the boss wanted to see me and a pile of other people (who he named). It turned out that the people who he named were those who were top of the list to receive a promotion and so I was wondering whether this meant that I was in a line to receive a promotion too. This was certainly some quite exciting news and I regretted that I hadn’t been there at the time.
The next part of my voyage was even more interesting, because I was actually a nun! (And before anyone ever says anything, my brother really was a nun, although not very many people know this. Every time he was up before the bench, the magistrate used to ask him his occupation and he always replied “nun”). I was going for an interview for a religious post and having a really good chat with the interviewers. They showed me a kind of green plastic key with holes in it at strategic places and asked me if I knew who it was who made the most profit from this. Of course, I had no idea and so they told me that it was eBay. That surprised me, but they replied “when you are using this to do something like buying 30,000 ice creams, by far the greatest percentage of the money is taken by eBay”. I was astounded by the figure of 30,000 and it clearly showed. “Didn’t you realise that as part of your duties you would be taking 30,000 children out for walks?” I replied that I hadn’t given it any thought at all and that if this were part of the duties of the post I wouldn’t hesitate in carrying it out. It was the way that the matter had been presented that had caught me off-balance. But it turned out that the question of the green key related to a form of payment, rather like some kind of credit card. It was inserted into a slot, something similar to an old punch-card data input system, to confirm a payment made on credit.

But going back to the previous night, I was here on my own all morning (it might not sound relevant, but you’ll see how it all develops) as Terry went off to do some work and so, in a mad fit of nostalgia, I played some music that I had on the laptop, and played it pretty loud too. One of the tracks (if that’s the correct word to use) was the “Simple Minds” live concert that I mixed for Radio Anglais
a while ago, and I do have to say that it’s probably the best live concert that I’ve ever mixed. The music is probably the best too, and it features the track “Someone Somewhere in Summertime”. And as I was listening to it, I picked up on the words
“Somewhere there is some place, that one million eyes can’t see”
“And somewhere there is someone, who can see what I can see”
And while I’ve found the place, what I haven’t found in all of my life is someone who can see what I can see. If I had to name the biggest disappointment of all of my life, that would be it, and maybe the vision (because it was more than a simple dream) of the Girl From Worleston the other night is something subconsciously to do with that. As you all know, I’m a great believer in the subconscious, instinct, second sight and all of that.
Anyway, have a listen to Someone, Somewhere in Summertime.

In other news, I’ve not done too much with my dictaphone notes because I’ve been rather sidetracked, dealing with issues arising from the very controversial historian Dr Alwyn Ruddock.

She was (because she died in 2005) a well-known and respected historian who did a great deal of research into the Italian banking families of the 15th and 16th Centuries and during her research, she came across some so-far undiscovered information concerning John Cabot. According to her press release into the Academic World, this information would radically change our perception of the discovery of North America in the 15th Century.

She signed a contract with the Exeter University Press to publish a book, and began to undertake some serious research into her subject. She was sent information from a couple of other historians who had uncovered hitherto-unknown documents and who felt that she was best-placed to use the material, but she dismissed most of that in a rather offhand way.

The upshot of all of this is that she never published her book and when she died, hordes of scholars were eager to peruse her notes to see if they could bring her research to a conclusion and to bring into the public domain her rather startling discoveries. Unfortunately, they were all confounded as in her will, she had left instructions that all of her research notes, photographs etc was to be destroyed unread. And indeed, her executors had shredded 87 sacks of documents and all of the clues to her discoveries were lost.

I’ve never ever met a scholar who has wilfully destroyed his or her research notes. Most scholars have an assistant who will carry on the work if the unforeseen should occur, or else they bequeath their papers to a University so that another researcher could pick them up. And that’s how research should be carried on – as a community project. And if you find that all of your work is ultimately incorrect, then scholars should be sufficiently detached from their subject to contradict themselves, as I have seen several scholars do.

But now all of this work is lost and the poor researcher who discovered some documents in the British Library in 1987 and which were kicked into touch by Dr Ruddock now has to creep back up a dark alley to rescue them and start again, after a delay of almost 30 years.

And we are still no nearer to finding out what it was about Cabot’s voyages to North America that, according to Dr Ruddock, would change our perception of the discovery of North America.

Sunday 21st September 2014 – WHAT I SAW ON THE LABRADOR COAST

Not very impressive, is it? In fact, I feel rather cheated after going to all of this trouble to get here in the first place.

However, rolling Newfoundland fogs are a well-known phenomenon in the Gulf of St Lawrence as anyone who remembers my visit to that island in the Gulf of St Lawrence in May 2012 might well remember. And there have been enough marine accidents in the Gulf due to the rolling fog to underline the point, so it’s not really that unexpected.

I had a wild night last night anyway, here hemmed in between a couple of vehicles on the quayside in the shadow of the Apollo. It was as if the wind was trying to tear the roof of the Dodge.

I was up too at about 05:50 thanks to the alarm, due to the fact that the shipping company offices open at 06:00. The 08:00 sailing has been cancelled as expected but we had to report back at 09:00 for further news.

At 09:00 we were informed that there would be an unscheduled sailing at 10:30 so we all made our way to the docks where, using a rather large shoehorn, all of the waiting vehicles were squeezed on and off we went.

But the poor Apollo is looking rather worse for wear these days, a lot worse than she did in 2010. A good refit would do her the world of good, or perhaps there’s another redundant cross-channel ferry somewhere that needs a new home. The Apollo could then go to a nice retirement home in the sunshine somewhere in the Aegean, the usual abode of old and tired Ro-Ro ferries.

Despite the miserable weather, I made it down to Old Fort, or Vieux Fort as the authorities insist on calling it. This is the far end of Highway 138, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we reached the other end of the road
in May 2012.

There’s just this gap of a couple of hundred miles in the road that will never be completed in the lifetime of anyone reading this rubbish.

Old Fort was discovered in 1504, officially that is, by Breton whalers who had some kind of whaling plant here similar to the one that we visited in Red Bay in 2010

But I say “officially” because there’s considerable evidence to suggest that places such as this were well-known long before they were officially “discovered”. The whalers and trappers who worked out of these places kept the locations of their enterprises secret so that the competition wouldn’t move in, but with Cabot’s voyage of “discovery” in 1497 (and it’s certain that Cabot knew what he was going to find), there was an impetus for the Breton and Basque whalers and the like to formally “discover” the locations of their enterprises in order to forestall the English.

And with that, I had a slow meander back to the harbour at Brador Bay which will be my location for tonight I reckon. I’m hoping that the weather might improve tomorrow because if we are still having the fog and the rain, I’ll have to postpone my voyage around the Trans-Labrador Highway until next year.

-2

EPIC HALL

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