Up early again though and brought all my photos up to date (I wish I could say the same about the notes, though) and having made a couple of trips to the car, it’s now loaded up and Strawberry Moose and I are now comfortably installed inside.
Once we finally managed to leave the car park (which wasn’t easy) we headed off across the city and rhe traffic to go to look at the rapids of Lachine. This GPS that I bought all those years ago is really doing the stuff and I am impressed with that as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin
First stop was however to find some food for lunch for the next few days and so I headed for a convenient supermarket. But never mind the food for a moment, take a look at this car.
It’s a Dodge Saturn, and let me ask you, when did you last see a car as rotten as this on a British road? I have to think long and hard and maybe 30 years ago you might have seen one like this. I don’t even remember any of my tawis being this bad.
The area that we are in, by the way, is clearly an impoverished area of the city judging by just about everything. it’s called Verdun, and the name seems to have been inspired by a group of soldiers returning to Canada after World War I and having witnessed the French city of Verdun after a FRanco-German artillery duel there.
The rapids at Lachine, for all their hype, aren’t all that much to write home about and in a sense are disappointing. But they were certainly much more disappointing to Jacques Cartier who was hoping to find the promised North-West Passage to “La Chine” and the Indies through the St Lawrence and instead came to a shuddering halt at the rapids.
Still it was a nice morning and the walk through the park was very pleasant in the sun so that was something.
After lunch I drove back through the city and along the road that passes by the docks and out to Repentigny where I rejoined my previous quest for the search for the remains of the Chemin du Roy – the old highway of the 17th Century that was built to connect Montreal and Quebec. I managed to do a little work but was interruped by a thunderstorm and driving rain. With that I scuttled to shelter, a motorway service area on the Highway at the back of Lavaltrie, and I’ll be staying here for the night. No point in moving on in this weather.
