Tag Archives: newfoundland

Wednesday 6th September 2017 – THAT WAS SOMETHING …

… of a disturbed night last night. And I’ll tell you why in due course.

And it took the alarm to rouse me from my slumbers – and I was still there when Billy Cotton wailed out his reminder 15 minutes later.

Furthermore, I wasn’t in much of a state to do much when I awoke. Something of a difficult morning in fact.

Eventually I made it in for the inclusive breakfast. It wasn’t much of a breakfast either. It might have helped had I taken my soya milk in but I wasn’t thinking too much about that.

A little later I did manage to attack the blog and bring it up to date, as well as tidying up the room and making it look presentable. By 10:30 I was on my way.

Last night I’d made a little miscalculation. Grand Falls where I ended up was about 50 kms beyond where I wanted to me so I had to go all the way back.

I ended up back at Botwood – one of the towns that had been very high on my list of places in this part of the world, because it’s another place steeped in history of the kind that I appreciate.

The area was first officially visited in 1810 by an exploration party led by David Buchan

An early claim to fame is that it is the place of death of that last two known Beothuk natives.

had you come here even 50 years ago, the bay here would have been a hive of activity.

There were quays here and the railway brought wagon-loads of paper from the pulp mills at Grand Falls-Windsor and ore from the mines at Buchans.

But all of that has long-gone – the ore in 1984 and the paper in 2009. Nowadays they don’t have one ship per month in here.

And had you been here between 1937 and 1945 you wouldn’t have been able to move out there either.

For this was the raison d’etre of the town during this period.

It’s another one of these places that played a leading role in the development of Transatlantic flight, because the first commercial transatlantic passenger flights came into land right there.

The town, originally called Ship Cove and renamed Botwood after an early Minister, was originally tied to the sea as you might expect.

It developed a lumber business at the turn of the 20th Century and then, once the railway arrived, became a throving port.

But just after the First World War, the legendary airman Sidney Cotton – pioneer of modern aerial photography – chose Botwood as a base for his seaplane that he used for surveying and seal-spotting around the Newfoundland and Labrador coasts.

Charles Lindbergh, the “flying fool” was employed by Pan-American Airways to locate sites for the airline’s fledgling fleet of flying boats.

He and his wife flew into Botwood in 1933 having heard of Cotton’s base here. They surveyed the bay and approved its use as a base for flying boats.

As a result, Pan Am issued a contract with Boeing to develop a huge flying boat capable of flying the Atlantic, and the Boeing 314 “Clipper” was born.

In the meantime, BOAC had been doing research of its own into long-distance flight to link up the major cities of the Commonwealth. This led to the development of the “Short Empire” flying boat.

The two airlines co-operated in research for transatlantic flight, and in July 1937 the first several Transatlantic survey flights were made with the co-operation of both companies.

And in June 1939, the first regular commercial transatlantic passenger flights began. The route was Southampton – Foynes – Botwood and then either Montreal or New York.

During the Second World War, the “Empires” were requisitioned by the British military authorities and it was left to the “Clippers” and a few older Sikorsky S42 flying boats to continue the service.

In fact, somewhere out there in the area shown in one of the earlier photos, there’s a Sikorsky flying boat – a more modern VS44 named “Excalibur”.

On 3rd October 1942 she “bounced” on take-off and went under. 11 of the people on board were killed and, strange as it might be to mention it, the US military authorities are still even today searching for the bodies of the four people who are missing.

The area really came into its own during world War II.

This was when the concrete slipway was built (the big flying boats were loaded and unloaded by boat).

The British – and later the Canadian – government based a squadron of flying boats here that were used for anti-submarine defence around the north of the island.

That’s because the slow “Sydney Cape” or “SC” convoys used to assemble off Sydney and then sail up the Strait of Belle Isle and out around the north of the island.

German submarines were quite active in the area as you know from our previous discussions.

The port itself was protected by a couple of batteries of heavy artillery, of which the gunners passed what could only be a very boring war.

We actually have on display here a PBY flying boat – one of one of the types that was based here during the war.

This machine was taken out of service in the late 1980s and was donated by the Canadian Government to the town.

It’s official recognition as some kind of reminder or memorial to the role that the town played during the war in the fight against the submarines.

We talked about Excalibur a short while ago. Somewhere out there in the bay are twomore aircraft.

One of the military flying boats, a PBY Canso, crashed on landing in the bay on November 8, 1943 and seven people were killed.

A Hurricane, flying to Gander, ran out of fuel and attempted a landing on the ice. Unfortunately it broke throuh and sank, but the pilot was saved.

That out there was formerly an island. The “causeway” that links it to the mainland is an artificial causeway and dates from the Second World War.

The island itself is hollowed out and was used as a bunker or store for munitions and the like and there’s a whole series of entrances over there in the rock.

You might think that that’s enough wartime excitement for a small town like Botwood, but that’s far from the case

Probably the very first Act of War in North America took place here.

A German ore carrier, the Christoph V. Doornum was in dock here on the very day that War was declared, loading ore from Buchans to take back to Germany.

She was immediately seized by the local police, her crew arrested, and she was impressed into the British merchant fleet.

She didn’t last long though, being damaged beyond repair by a mine off Margate on 9th June 1940.

And so having “done” Botwood I drove back to Grand Falls for a look around. And there’s nothing that’s really any reminder of the importance of the town.

I did the final load of shopping (having to go into three shops before I could find a lettuce), fuelled up, and then hit the highway to drive non-stop to Deer Lake.

On my arrival I negotiated for myself another over-priced accommodation in a cabin – Lush’s cabins – in the mountains at Cormack, but not before I’d noticed another significant milestone.

Just down the road from my cabin, Strider passed over the 200,000 kilometres. So happy 200,000 kilometres, Strider.

The cabin that I’m in sleeps four and although it’s tired around the edges, it’s not too bad. Four people would have a really good time here I suppose.

All of the cooking gear is here and there’s a microwave too, so it’s potatoes, beans and bangers for tea tonight.

And then an early night because I’m whacked. In fact, I fell asleep speaking to someone on the internet.

At the start of tonight’s rubbish, I mentioned that I had had a disturbed night and that I would tell you why.

I went on a ramble last night – a ramble that lasted most of the night and I was out and about all over the place.

I started out in some kind of town – an old run-down type of place falling to pieces and I was looking for some documents for a driving test. Id been told where to go but I couldn’t remember so I accosted a local. He pointed out a few places but one was closed a few days ago and the other one had closed a few months ago. Everything was in such a derelict mess – just in fact rather like Calveley Airfield.
And then I came across a boy whom I knew who was trying to burn a load of papers – it was very important that all of these papers would be burnt. He’d put them in some kind of incinerator and closed the door but the conveyor belt wasn’t working. He was kicking a football against the door and all of a sudden there was a bang from inside the door – something like a paper bag bursting. We opened the door to see and saw the big box disappearing – the conveyor belt was now working – but there was still a load of paper, some bubble wrap and a few bits and pieces lying around. I told him that all of these needed to be removed as they had people’s addresses on them and they were visible, so he took some of the stuff and left the rest behind. The first thing that I noticed was a big file of mine about an insurance claim with my name and address clearly marked on it. I made him move it but he just took it out and dumped it on the side, which resulted in me having a huge “go” at him about this.
Round the corner was a public bar and I went in, and on the TV was England playing Norway at football. England conceded a goal after just 30 seconds. The goalkeeper for England was Viv Anderson – a full-back from the 1980s. Apparently the England goalkeeper had been injured in a previous match. This made me wonder why they didn’t have a reserve or anyone better than him because he was dreadful – running away from his goal after balls that he would never ever win. At the start of the second half Norway scored again straight away but for some reason it was disallowed. The Norway players were extremely unhappy about this. And by this time Anderson was playing like the full-back he was, rushing around over the pitch and leaving the goal empty and on a couple of occasions the other defenders had to dash back and kick balls off the line. Roy Hodgson was the England manager and he was giving vent to his feelings, but actually doing nothing about it.
By this time I was looking for somewhere to go for the toilet, but there was no toilet in this house where I was staying – just a bath and a sink. So I went out and about looking for one and couldn’t find one anywhere in the vicinity. I thought about nipping down a suitable dark alleyway but there people down there. There was a small park down the hill at the end of this football ground that might have done, but there were a couple of cars and people all around – so I just couldn’t get to go.
At this point, I awoke. and no surprises for guessing what I needed to do.

Back to bed – and who should appear in last night’s voyage but a girl whom I haven’t thought about in a long time and who is making her debut in my nocturnal rambles. Even when she was a young kid we all knew that she was going to be “something” and I can tell you a couple of stories about how we met up quite a few years later.

But going on from here, something came up that meant that I had to go to visit this house, and it was the home of her parents. I was rather embarrassed because it had been a good few years since I’d seen this girl and I was expecting her mother to make a few comments to me. But it seemed that she was suffering from dementia and was making quite a few comments to everyone. There were loads of people there, including her brother who was giving me the cold shoulder, and several people had bought their guitars with them. I was saying that it was a shame that I hadn’t come in my van because I would have had my bass with me. Then the girl appeared – blonde hair and thick-rimmed black glasses, nothing at all like she used to be and I had a hard time convincing myself that it was she (which it wasn’t of course).
From there I was back doing something with a guy I knew from Wandsworth who was now running a taxi company. He’d left a piece of paper on his desk about an old taxi run that he had done, giving the address of the street and which road to take to enter it – and “take a trailer”. A little later I was outside discussing this thing on the phone with someone else when he came on the tannoy that I was wasting my time as the job had been done last week (which I knew anyway and which wasn’t the point) and they had charged £54. I went off there to find out why the specific street to use had been mentioned, and found that the rest of the street was blocked off by a street party. I was in a bus and hordes of people climbed aboard just to chill out. When it was time o go I had to usher them all off – and do it two or three times too. And then we gathered up the waste into two large oil drums and started to burn it. They took off really well but one flared up and was in danger of setting alight some overhanging branches (we’d not been to careful) so we had to move it, flames and all. Another person tried to light a fire but was completely unsuccessful so we sent people off to look for more rubbish to add to his pile.

Tuesday 5th September 2017 – TIRED?

I’ll say!

I gave up at about 22:00 last night and fell straight asleep. And that was that until the alarm went off at 06:00 (or 06:30 in fact as Newfoundland is 30 minutes in advance). I remember nothing at all.

It’s not as if I had been doing anything either – there’s nothing that I can think of that had particularly worn me out.

Mind you, when I say that I remember nothing, that’s not entirely true. I do remember a couple of young girls who needed taking somewhere so I hd to organise them onto their bikes and make sure that they followed me closely. And anyone who knows anything about young girls will know that that is a pretty difficult task.
And later there I was on the top deck of a bus with a friend going up Middlewich Road past “the Rising Sun” and seeing an end-of-terrace house that I’d been hoping to buy but hadn’t, and thinking that it would make an ideal place from which to operate a taxi business. There were two other people on board the bus and we ended up talking about taxis. And as the bus took us down Coppice Road the guy I was with was explaining that there aren’t many taxis in the centre of town but each suburb and little village seemed to have its own little taxi business. One of the guys came over to us and in an intimate fashion started to speak to us about his friend who was rather simple and needed a great deal of guidance.

So having missed a good bit of the morning already, I started the porridge and had a shower. Put things in their proper order.

And when I came out of the shower the internet was down so that made me rather miserable.

Not only that, the place was deserted. No-one about, no-one in the car park, no-one in the restaurant etc. Just like the Marie Celeste in fact.

So I breakfasted off my own stocks of porridge (which as usual took ages to cook) and some coffee that I “liberated” from the public area (they had only given me one serving).

And pushed on with the blog entry anyway – that’ll teach me to have an early night.

By 10:30, all done and dusted, I hit the trail west.

First stop was on the Trans-Canada Highway on a stretch of road overlooking Clarenville.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we stayed there in 2010 where I arrived in the dark and then had a flat tyre to deal with, so we didn’t take much in the way of photos.

But you can see just how beautiful the place is, and there’s even a ship in port, although my fleet database insists that the port is empty.

I’ve been down this road before, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall and even wrote two pages about it – this one and this one – so I shan’t bore you with too many photos.

But there’s one here where I turned off the Trans-Canada Highway.

That’s Gander Lake down there and it is for the lake that the town of Gander is so named.

This was where I planned to have my lunch stop (it was that time already) but before I could stop and eat, I had important things to do.

You’ll notice up there on the crest the flags of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, the USA and the fourth one, representing the town of Gander.

Up there is the site of the worst ever air disaster to take place on Canadian soil, and dates from 12th December 1985.

A DC8 flying from Cairo to Kentucky stalled just after takeoff from the airport at Gander just across the main road and crashed to earth, killing all 256 people on board.

The 248 passengers were almost all members of the American 101st Airborne Division and were returning to base after having undergone a six-month tour of duty as part of the multi-national peacekeepers in Sinai.

They had stopped for fuel in Cologne and again in Gander, but despite the miserable weather and the time of year, the aeroplane was not de-iced on take-off.

Furthermore, its reported laden weight had been considerably under-declared.

Even today, the scar where the aeroplane came down is clearly visible and the intense heat of the fire (the plane was carrying a full load of fuel) means that little will grow in the area today.

And although the generally-accepted cause of the accident is the icing and overloading issue, there are as many controversial conspiracy theories as you like about the accident.

As for me, I left the site of the accident and went down to the lake in the gorgeous sunshine to read my book and eat my butties.

And to fight off a dog that had taken a fancy to my food – there was quite a crowd of people down here today.

But then again, why not? It really was pleasant and I found it difficult to heave myself out of my seat and hit the road.

And here’s a thing!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I came by here 2010 I had a fierce argument with the people here about their Lockheed Hudson.

Their labelling stated quite clearly that Donald Bennett flew it from Gander to Aldergrove in Northern ireland – the first aeroplane to complete the “Atlantic Ferry”.

In his autobiography Pathfinder Bennett makes it perfectly clear that he didn’t fly the aeroplane but was in fact the navigator.

And also that his aeroplane wasn’t the first to arrive either.

And while the Museum is still vacillating over the “first” bit – they have in fact amended the plaque to show that he “captained” the plane.

So some progress is being made.

But as for the Karrier Bantam that was here, that has, unfortunately, bitten the dust. “Too bad to keep”, so I was told.

And they had even been offered another one – in even worse condition apparently – and turned that down!

I despair.

Having seen what has been “preserved” in Canada, and just how they preserve it, the Bantam should have been child’s play.

Next stop was Lewisporte up on the coast, and I came to yet another shuddering halt as I arrived on the edge of town.

The Lewisporte branch of the Newfoundland Railway was probably the most profitable, with the town being on of the island’s most major ports, and here is a collection of artefacts too remind us of its history.

At least locomotive 902 – one of the GM NF110 locomotives, is in marginally better condition here

I mentioned that Lewisporte was one of the busiest coastal ports on the island. In the old days, almost every ship destined for Labrador sailed from here.

That slowed down as the road network improved and came to a shuddering halt when the Sir Robert Bond was laid up once the road over the Mealy Mountains was opened in 2010

Today, only the Astron, a small freighter, leaves Lewisporte for the north, calling at Black Tickle and ports north of the Hamilton Inlet, and she won’t take passengers.

But in something of a forlorn hope I presented myself at the port offices to enquire about anything that might be going out, but as I suspected, I was disappointed.

But I was asked if I wanted to buy a car ferry of my own.

She was the Capt Earl W Winsor, built in 1972 and sailed for over 20 years as Prince Edward from Pictou to Prince Edward Island until the Confederation Bridge was built.

Then she came here, acquired her current name from a local politician, and sailed for nearly 20 years on the service to Fogo Island.

And when you think that she cost a mere $300,000 when the Newfoundland and Labrador Government had budgeted $12,000,000, that has to be the deal of the Century.

We discussed Apollo too. Everyone agrees that she is well past her sell-by date, but they reckoned that the Government has no money to replace her.

“There’s plenty of money when it comes to St John’s or Muskrat Falls” I interjected, to which they all concurred wholeheartedly.

On my way out of the port, I was distracted by these.

It’s 30 years or so since the railway on Newfoundland was abandoned but here on the docks you can still see rails embedded in the surface of the tarmac.

You can tell that it’s a narrow-gauge line too – just 3″6″. And that was one of the reasons for the downfall of the railway.

While it’s cheaper to construct and better in tight curves that you find on the mountain sections, it means that everything has to be trans-shipped at North Sydney or Channel-Port-aux-Basques, and that was just too much.

So now I’m off to my motel for tonight, the Westwood Inn at Grand falls. And it took some finding too.

“Come off at Exit 17 and it’s there” they said. And so I did. And after driving around for about 20 minutes and getting back onto the Trans-Canada Highway, I saw it way across the other side and had to do a naughty “U” turn to arrive.

It’s the most expensive place where I’ve stayed, although you wouldn’t think so. Holes in the bath carpet, internet that only works when it feels like it and a kettle that took three hours and still hadn’t boiled

And if I ever have a child I shall call it “Happy” after the receptionist, because I have never yet met anyone who couldn’t care less about her job, her establishment and her customers.

If I had been in charge, she would have been long down the road because her bad attitude is the kind that discourages anyone from coming to stay here again once they’ve had the pleasure of her company.

Monday 4th September 2017 – I’M NOT QUITE SURE …

… what happened during the night but for some reason or other I was tossing and turning quite considerably.

In fact, I was so wide-awake at 01:00 that I was giving serious thought to actually getting up and doing some work. But I abandoned that idea and went back to sleep and off on my travels.

I was back chauffering again in the main office – my first day back for years and I wasn’t sure of how everything workec – the post needed to be sorted for distribution and I wasn’t sure of how to do that and where it was supposed to go. But then there were all kinds of changes taking place on the very day, and our office was one of the ones that had been selected for revision so no sooner ha I settled down when all of the workmen suddenly appeared. I ended up outside wanting to go downstairs but there were issues with the lifts and we had to wait hours – and when a lift did arrive it was going in the wrong direction. Some girl missed her lift and ran round to the back of it (I’ve no idea why) to see if she could catch it there.

I was still up and about by 05:30 though and that gave me a good opportunity to attack some work on the laptop. And I made a major mistake too – the slow cooker certainly lives up to its name and if I want to have porridge for breakfast at anything like a reasonable hour I need to start it off as soon as I awake.

It wasn’t until about 10:30 that I was ready to hit the road. And I remembered to stop and take a photograph of the motel this time too.

And the verdict about last night’s motel?

I refuse to be drawn into an argument about “Value for Money” because motel prices in Canada this last couple of years have for some reason or other gone through the roof.

A few years ago I was recoiling in horror at the thought of paying $75 per night for accommodation. Today, getting away with double figures is something of a miracle.

First stop wasdown into the town of Carbonear itself.

It’s another former port and fishing station that at one time was one of the busiest along the coast but became a victim of the incessant growth in size of merchant shipping.

120 years ago you couldn’t move in the bay for schooners but now no commercial traffic comes in because the ships are too big for the depth of the bay.

But the town has undergone some kind of growth spurt in modern times, and that is due to the concentration of services here.

One of the big things that the town has going for it today is the regional hospital and residential care for the elderly, of which there are more than enough left behind in Newfoundland and Labrador as the younger generations dash off to Alberta to seek their fortunes in the oilfields.

But then, they aren’t likely to be making their fortunes with what remains here.

Take the railways for example.

he building of Newfoundland’s railway network at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century brought a new wave of prosperity to many places, including Carbonear.

But the entire system was brutally axed overnight in the 1980s in favour of road transport, and the roads here are disgraceful. They must have been appalling 30 years ago. Many places just fell back into the slumber from which they had been awoken

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my opinion about what passes for “preservation” in North America. And it’s shameful to admit that Canada is as bad at this as their cousins across the border.

This is one of the surviving diesel-electric locomotives from the Newfoundland Railway – A GM EMD G8. Built in 1958, she’s just dumped here outside the station and is slowly rotting away without even a pretence of preservation.

But then this is not time for me to go off on one of my rants. I have things to do.

Instead of leaving Carbonear by going up the hill and along the new road, I followed the coast for a while.

You’ve seen a few beautiful views of Newfoundand to date but all around here can certainly equal whatever the rest of Newfoundland has to offer.

I was told on several occasions that this is the most beautiful part of the island.

And they are certainly not wrong, are they?

There are a few beaches around here but they are mainly shingle. You can’t build a sand castle on there.

And I wouldn’t like to go swimming off there either. Beautiful though the water may be, the cold Labrador current comes right in and I bet that it’s freezing in there

And all of the tiny villages and communities out here too that are really picturesque.

Many of them were cleared away in the controversial resettlement programmes of the 1950s and 1960s but a few still cling on, and here just by Freshwater Cove is one of the most beautiful examples that I have seen.

It’srather a shame that I’m in something of a hurry otherwise I could prowl around here for weeks.

When I arrive at Victoria, I turn off onto Highway 74 that takes me across to the western side of the peninsula.

It’s quite a climb up but when you arrive at the tip it’s well-worth it because the views from up here are stunning and it’s a shame that the camera can’t do them justice.

But with a good bit of peering you can make out the sea just beyond that range of hills in the distance.

I try to make these tours something of an educational trip as you know, and so this is another reason why we have come across here to the small town of Heart’s Content.

This is notable for being the landing site of the 1858 transatlantic telegraph cable from Ireland and although it only lasted a few weeks until it ruptured, it proved that cable transmission between Europe and North America was perfectly possible and the world was brought into a new technological era.

Once the American Civil War had ended, they had another go at laying a cable from Valentia in Ireland.

They were much-better prepared and much better-equipped this time round and using the massive “Great Eastern”, which had by then been transformed into a cable-laying ship, they could bring a tougher cable ashore.

And right where we are standing is the spot where the cable was pulled ashore, and started 100 years of cable communication between North American and Europe, lasting until radio transmission took over completely.

The cable was so successful that several other cables were laid across the Atlantic.

We’ve already visited a few sites in North America which were transatlantic cable stations, but several more followed in the wake of the 1866 cable and came ashore right here.

The redbuilding over there opposite where Strider is parked was formerly the cable company receiving station but today it’s a museum.

I was tempted to go in for a look around but it’s one of these places where they ambush you with the admission charges and I’m going to have to watch my spending very carefully given how prices have gone through the roof over here.

There are loads of “Heart’s” along here. Heart’s Content and Heart’s Desire, but here weare in Heart’s Delight having a look over the Marina and across the bay around which I have just driven.

Landing fees aren’t so expensive here I noticed – $10 for a night and $115 for the season if you turn up in a small boat.

And so the way that prices are going in Canada right now, next time that Icome, I’ll be coming by sea. It makes much more sense to me.

We run out of “Heart’s” shortly afterwards and end up in the community of Islington.

There was formerly a railway branch line that ran along this side of the peninsula. Built as late as 1915, it only lasted until 1940 when it was all torn up.

Very little, if anything, remains these days of the railway but having a look at that embankment across the bay there, and I’d seen plenty of others in similar situations, then if anything had “railway” written on it, then that does.

But I doubt if I’ll be able to find anything to confirm it.

Meanwhile, my attention was diveted a little further out into the bay by that geological formation just there.

I’m not certain whether you would call it a rock or an island, but the fact that it has grass growing on it woould seem to indicate that it may well be more appropriate to call it the latter.

At least the seabirds call it “home” and it’s probably their droppings that have fertilised it to enable the grass to grow.

A few miles down the road Strawberry Moose persuades me to come to a sudden halt.

He has seen sign on the side of the road that has caught his interest.

I have to explain to him that it’s referring to a kind of seabird similar to a cormorant or some such – hence the “rock” – and so we leave the area with something of an air of diappointment.

But not so this town in Newfoundland.

This place is well-known throughout the whole world as being the favourite holiday destination of the female inhabitants of the Isle of Lesbos in Greece – it’s certainly all Greek to me, that’s for sure.

Who says that 16th Century explorers didn’t have a sense of humour?

And what do people buy when they come to Dildo?

Here’s a notice at the side of the road advertising certain items for sale. and for a town with a name like “Dildo”, then somehow they seemed to be quite appropriate.

It all adds to the flavour of the place, I suppose.

Leaving childish schoolboy humour behind for a moment, we have to go down and investigate the town.

And it’s a small Newfoundland coastal town like any other with nothing to distinguish itself apart from its name.

But have you noticed a change in the weather? We are now all grey and overcast and a terrific wind has sprung up. Look at the sea!

another thing that regular readers of this rubbish will remember is the situation that many Labradorians feel about the exploitation of their region by St John’s.

We have the Muskrat Falls hydro project that might bring some money to the community over there, but where is the power all going?

Not on the Coasts of Labrador, that’s for certain. A company called Valard is building the high-tension lines out of Muskrat falls, and there they are, building a high-tension line not to far from St John’s.

Work it out.

Feeling a desperate urge for a pit-stop I find myself back at the Tourist Information site o the Trans-Canada Highway where I started when I arrived on Newfoundland.

It was also quite late too and I was hungry, so I took this as being the appropriate place for a lunch stop. And shame as it is to admit it, I went away with the fairies for a while too.

After a while I awoke and, searching in the toursit guide, came across a motel that had a room at a price that wasn’t quite out in the realms of fantasy.

I’d planned a little trip around rhe Belle Vue Beach area because that was another place that was quite beautiful, but it just wasn’t my lucky day.

An hour or two ago, I had said that the weather was changing – and I was right. By now we were in the middle of something of quite a rainstorm.

Leaving the comfort and safety of Strider to admire the view was not going to be all that muchof a good idea.

But nevertheless, abandoning my drive around the bay due to the miserable weather, there’s a good view across the bay from the climb back up to the Trans Canada Highway.

It’s a shame that the weather has turned like this. The view looks so good in these conditions, so imagine what it must be like in glorious sunshine.

It’s quite disappointing.

One final place to visit on this journey, and that’s the little town of Come By Chance.

It’s here that an early explorer by the name of John Guy found a portage across the island and encountered a group of friendly Beothuk natives with whome he engaged in trade.

The site of their meeting is quite famous in Newfoundland lore but if anyone thinks that I’m stepping out of Strider in this, they are mistaken. It’s absolutely dreadful out there.

And so I make my way through the driving rain as far as the Trailside Motel.

It’s not as cheap as I was expecting it to be, and it’s crowded with a bar and café where bikers and people like that hang out. Not exactly my ideal but then again it’s the cheapest place on offer right now.

The room is reasonable and I rustle myself up a meal of pasta, mushrooms, bulghour and tomato sauce. Having learnt my lesson from the other day I set it up as soon as I arrive – this slow cooker lives up to its name.

The internet is pretty lousy too – it won’t hold a connection for more than five minutes. I try to talk to a few people but give it up after half an hour of constant interruption.

Searching the internet (when it lets me) I find a thesis from 1965 about the displacement of settlements in Labrador so I download it (on one of the slowest connections I have ever seen) to read at my leisure.

But for some reason I can’t keep going and I end up calling it a day.

At 22:00 too! I really am slipping!

Sunday 3rd September 2017 – THE HOLY GRAIL …

… of ship spotters everywhere, and here she is, in all that remains of her sad glory.

This is the Kyle and she is probably the most famous ship in the whole of North America.

As Labrador and the coasts of Newfoundland opened up at the turn of the 20th Century, someone by the name of Reid started a regular shuttle service along the coasts serving most of the isolated habitations.

You need to remember that the network of roads in Newfoundland and Labrador is a comparatively recent phenomenon.

He had a series of ships built in Scotland and on the Tyne and named them after places there, in alphabetic order, and these ships became known as the “Alphabet Fleet”.

The most famous of all of these ships was the Kyle. Built in 1913, she was not the biggest, but she was certainly one of the fastest. And she was certainly the strongest, being specially reinforced for fighting her way through the ice up the Labrador coast.

She was the longest-lasting too.

With modern shipping regulations, the abandonment (voluntary or otherwise) of many isolated communities, the start of the modern road network and marine disasters in the treacherous waters, the Alphabet Fleet diminished quite quickly, although Kyle survived and passed on to the whaling trade

At the end of her working life in the late 1960s she was moored up as discussions were taking place as to her future.

But one night in 1967 she broke free of her moorings and ran aground here at the head of the bay at Harbour Grace.

And here she sadly remains, and will remain here until the end of time, I imagine. It’s impossible to refloat her, as she’ll break her back and attempts to sell her for scrap have been met with the most vehement opposition by the inhabitants of Harbour Grace who see her as the symbol of a bygone age.

But The Kyle is not the only famous symbol of Harbour Grace – it’s quite a famous little place.

And its main claim to fame is the role that it played in Transatlantic air history.

You are reminded about that by the presence here of a Douglas C47 Skytrain, the freight version of the DC3 Dakota.

This is CF-QBI “Spirit of Harbour Grace”, built in 1943 and had an eventful 50 year working life firstly with the US Air Force in North Africa and then with a variety of small businesses, spending many hours in the air around Newfoundland and Labrador.

When she was finally laid up in 1993 she was donated to the town as a static memorial to the aeroplane heritage of the town.

And this is the reason for the claim to fame of Harbour Grace’s footprint in the history of Transatlantic Air History.

There were a great many attempts to fly the Atlantic in the period 1919 to 1939 – some of which succeeded and many of which didn’t.

And many of those attempts took place from the improvised, hastily constructed air strip here.

The sad thing about it all is that, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we’ve visited many sites from where these early flights left, and there is nothing much left today

Here at harbour Grace though, it’s probably the best-preserved of all of the early Transatlantic airstrips and it was somehow very pleasant and satisfying to be walking in the footsteps of people like Amelia Earhart and Wiley Post.

But we were lucky though.

It’s clearly not an airfield up to modern standards, and a radio listening post was stuck on here during World War II.

After that, it was left to decay and would have been completely overwhelmed by nature had not a spirited campaign by local people not led to its recovery and restoration.

Last night I’d had a good night’s sleep at Donald’s – his sofa really is comfortable – and after breakfast we had another really length chat.

So comfortable had I been that I was even able to go off on another ramble, although it wasn’t a very pleasant one. I was in something of a panic. I’d arrived in Portsmouth (and Southampton) and I needed to be at the airport – presumably in London or somewhere like that. It was early morning and my flight wasn’t until about 13:30 but even though it seemed as if I had plenty of time, there just wasn’t the transport to take me there. For example, a train leaving at 06:45 didn’t arrive until 12:40 which was far too late. it was just totally bizarre for London (or Birmingham, or even Manchester) wasn’t anything like that far away.

While I was there I took advantage of Donald’s shower (which was beautiful) and he bunged my clothes in the washing machine which was really nice of him.

It goes without saying that I appreciated the hospitality.

Stocking up on fruit, veg and breadat the Dominion Superstore later, I noticed this handy device.

That’s the kind of thing that I need if ever I change Strider for a smaller car. It can sit in the rear of the car until I go off on my travels and everything can be dumped on there and chained down.

And so I made a mental note.

Having done the shopping, I left St John’s on the Trans-Canada Highway and headed off in the direction of Harbour Grace, the Kyle and the airfield, stopping to make myself a butty on the way

And having done what I needed to do, and booked a room at a motel in Carbonear, I set off through the town.

There’s a big port here – which used to be one of the bases for the Alphabet Fleet of course, but now it’s mainly fishing boats that tie up.

And that includes the massive 3600-tonne clam harvester Belle Carnell, based out of Halifax.

Built in 2004 she was previously the Norwegian Siddis Skipper.

he most famous of all of the Harbour Grace inhabitants must surely be the pirate Peter Easton.

That’s the Customs House from the 1870s there, but it’s said to be built on the site of Easton’t fortress.

he would think nothing of sailing out with his men to capture a Spanish treasure fleet, and his men became the richest pirates on the North American seaboard.

He himself retired in luxury to the south of France and ended up as Marquis of Savoy.

This however was not so pleasant.

It’s the Church of the Immaculate Conception and despite being a place of worship (and it’s a Sunday too) it was all closed up, the gates were chained and there was a “Private – No Trespassing” sign on the gate.

I shan’t go in to all of this because I’ve said it so many times before. You all know that it’s an attitude that totally dismays me.

Instead, we can admire the scenery.

The museum with the flight log of the airfield was, as you might expect, closed. But in the grounds was this sculpture to commemorate the Transatlantic flyers, particularly those who lost their lives in the attempt.

Europe, the destination of most of them, is right out there, 2000 miles away to Ireland with nothing in between.

But yesterday I mentioned just how beautiful Newfoundand was, and showed you a photo to prove it.

Today’s photo, looking right across Conception Bay here, merely underlines it.

I was lucky with the weather too because despite the wind it had turned out to be a beautiful day.

And so I shot off down the road to Carbonear and my motel for the night.

Tea was pasta, tinned vegetables and tinned soup all mixed up in the slow cooker – and delicious it was too. I’ll do that again.

And despite having so much to do, I’m so tired that I’m off for an early night.

See you in the morning.

Saturday 2nd September 2017 – I’VE HAD A COUPLE …

… of worse nights than I had last night I’m sure. But not many. Curled up on a reclining seat is not my idea of spending a night, and I ache in places that I didn’t even realise that I had places.

But that didn’t stop me going on a mega-ramble during the night. And I wasn’t on my own either. I started off with Alison but at some point I ended up with a young girl with very short ginger hair, and I’m not sure when the changeover took place. We were in a hotel somewhere in Italy and it had only taken us two and a half hours to get there too – the kind of thing that you can do on a nocturnal ramble even if the people out there were as surprised as they might have been in the real world. We went out for a walk and ended up along a sea coast but you couldn’t see thesea because of these rows of terraced single storey tenements all in a damp dark red brickwork. All very run-down and depressed. I explained to my partner that this was how Italian families lived – in a big room with a little add-on annex of toilet and cooking space. We walked through and found that all of these habitations were abandoned and there was domestic refuse and rubbish all over the place. By this point I had some kind of four-wheeled vehicle and I’d changed one of the front wheels for another that was of a better style. And in all of the rubbish lying around here – old cameras and all kinds of things – were piles of old motor bikes – the 50cc type of moped and a couple of them were worth recovering, including one in particular that would furnish the front wheel that I needed for my machine. Nevertheless, I wasn’t convinced that it was a good idea to liberate them even though they had the air of being long-abandoned.
A little later I was on my own with a few different people, one of whom was a girl and one of whom was a boy who was quite interested in her and, I suspected, she in him. He was asking all kinds of questions about things and I was replying in my usual cynical manner and it wasn’t until long afterwards that I realised that he was trying to ask specific questions about this girl and my replies would have been exactly the kind of replies that would have frightened him away and that wasn’t my intention at all.

So crawling off into the bathroom for the usual reasons, I then made my way onto the deck for my first glimpse of Newfoundland – and the huge storm that was just about to envelope all of us.

And here’s a weird thing.

Looking at the messages on my mobile phone there was one from my French network provider “Bienvenue au St Pierre et Miquelon” – the last French possession in North America.

Had we passed so close to there in the night?

And as we approached closer and closer to Newfoundland we could see that there was a major storm brewing along our way.

I’ve heard about these sudden Newfoundland storms before and I didn’t much like the look of this one.

I could picture all of the sailors dashing out to batten down the hatches and all of that, and casting all non-essential gear over the side.

So while the sailors were dashing outside, I went a-dashing inside out of the rain.

and here I collided with Mike Averill who was just setting up shop for another performance on his guitar. I stayed and listened to his performance and even bought a CD.

I must be mellowing in my old age – but I really did enjoy his music.

I told you that Atlantic Vision, in her previous existence as Superfast IX had been built to provide a ferry service in the Baltic on behalf of the Swedish Government

Here on the car deck are several signs that are clearly a relic of those days.

This one is written in English, German, Swedish and Estonian – a sad reminder of one of the shortest-lived ferry routes in the whole of history

Having been decanted out of Atlantic Vision onto the mainland I drove off round the headland to find a suitable spot to take a photograph.

Also sitting at the quayside is the extremely controversial freighter called Jana.

She limped into Halifax three years ago with a load of rails from Poland and a misfiring engine, and has been stranded in Canada ever since as no-one knows quite what to do with her.

The last time that I had been here was in a driving rainstorm and none of my photos had really worked.

But today, with the squall that we had had offshore having passed by so rapidly, I was able to catch up on what I had missed of the bay here.

It really does have an extraordinary beauty.

And so does the rest of Newfoundland really. Not quite as rugged or as grand as Labrador but beautiful all the same.

I could have taken 100 photographs to show you what I mean, but one will have to suffice.

It should give you a really good idea of just what I mean

So braving the Newfoundland roads, because they really are unbelievably shocking, I found the Trans-Canada Highway and headed for St John’s.

On the outskirts of town I found a Tim Hortons where I could have a coffee and use the internet, and also a Sobey’s where I could stock up with a few more bits and pieces of food. After all, in a week’s time we’ll be in Labrador.

Driving all the way through St John’s I headed for Signal Hill and the absolutely beautiful view of the town and its harbour.

It’s the ideal place for me to eat my lunchtime butty, for it’s one of the most stunning views in the world.

You can understand just why the early English and Portuguese seafarers of the 16th Century chose this spot as their favourite harbour in North America.

Having had a good look around and eaten my butty I headed back into town for Donald’s house.

He’d very kindly invited me round for the afternoon and seeing as how we had never actually met in person I reckoned that it might be a good idea to go and catch up.

So braving the potholes, the trenches and the other pitfalls in the road I headed off back through the city.

Donald lives on the edge of town in an upside-down house that backs onto the former Newfoundland Railway tracks, although he wasn’t there when the Newfie Bullet used to go puffing by.

We spent hour chatting about all kinds of things to do with Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador and North America in general, and then I invited him out for a meal.

We ended up in a Chinese restaurant where I had a stir fry of vegetables with rice. And trying to remember my chopstick-eating habits from 40 years ago, I ended up with more on the table than I did down inside my stomach.

They also gave me a fortune cookie. Apparently I am “very sociable and welcome the company of others”. It got my age wrong too.

Donald asked me if I would like to stay the night. And to be honest, his sofa did look rather large and comfortable. I didn’t even have to nip out to Strider for my sleeping bag as Donald rustled up some blankets and the like.

So here I am, in all luxury like a King and I shall be sleeping the Sleep of the Dead.

Good night.

Thursday 31st August 2017 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that Tuesday night’s sleep was bad, you ain’t seen nuffink yet.

Because last night’s sleep beat just about everything. Wide awake at 01:30, tossing and turning and all of that. I really was having it all.

Nevertheless I did still manage to go off on my travels, but you won’t be interested in them, because such was the nature of my bad night that it will put you off your supper.

The torrential rainstorm that we had didn’t help matters much either. And it was so humid that the washing that I had hung up under the verandah seemed to be wetter than when I hung it out.

I wasn’t in the mood for breakfast, having had a good meal before going to bed (and don’t large packets of crisps go off with an enormous bang when you kneel on them by mistake in the dark?) and so I did some stuff on the internet;

Despite the pouring rain, I emptied out Strider and tried to sort out everything – but that was quite a maul and wasn’t the work of 5 minutes either, so I was quite exhausted afterwards.

Pausing only to take a shot of my cabin and the lake (which, due to the weather I was not able to enjoy) I went up to the office to hand in the key.

Free coffee was on offer there and seeing the expense that I had had to incur, I took full advantage. And quite rightly so.

And then I headed off into the doom and gloom.

The drive to North Sydney, beautiful though it is, is one that we have taken on many previous occasions so I didn’t stop to take any photographs.

And at the ferry terminal, my luck was in. There were still spaces free on Friday’s overnight long-distance sailing to Argentia. And so we are now booked aboard.

It might sound expensive to some (and it certainly did to me) but you need to look at it in perspective.

I would have to pay a ferry fee for the short (ie 9 hour) crossing anyway, and that’s not cheap
I would then have a drive 900 kms instead of 130 kms – and imagine how much extra fuel I would have to buy for a rather thirsty Strider.
I’d be looking for at least one, if not two nights in motels and you’ve seen what motel rates are right now.
I’d be whittling into the victuals along the way
I’d be quite worn out at the end of it all
And not least – this is a ferry crossing that i’ve been wanting to make for quite a while

All in all, it makes good financial and personal sense to travel this way.

Next thing to do was to organise accommodation for tonight.

I like the privacy of motels, but not at the price that they want to charge right now. So I phoned up the cheapest B&B in the book that I had picked up yesterday.
“Sorry, we’re full”
“That’s a shame. Do you know anyone else with a spare room?”
“No I don’t … ohh – wait a minute – if you just want a basic room with just a bed in it I can fix you up. Is $55 for cash with breakfast okay?”
Do bears have picnics in the woods?

Off I went to the shops.

As you all may remember from previous excursions, food in northern Newfoundland and Labrador is shockingly expensive, and if I’m going to be spending a week or two out there, I need to stock up.

The Atlantic Superstore, the Dollar Store and Walmart all did the business and for about $100 Strider is now full of tinned and packet goods to last a couple of weeks.

Bread will be an issue of course, but we have packets of crisps if we can’t find anything on the road.

But I made a startling discovery at the Atlantic Superstore. Their “own brand” od wine gums don’t have gelatine in them. There’s a few packets missing from their stocks right now.

I had a very late lunch on the car park by the ferry terminal, and then went for a coffee at Tim Hortons where, shame as it is to admit it, I fell asleep.

Rousing myself from a dangerous slumber I decided to head out for my digs. The address wasn’t on the SatNav but Josee’s mobile phone picked it up (that was a good move on her part to lend me that).

The street signs were confusing though and I ended up going three times round a roundabout before I fathomed it out.

The cheapest digs so far, and seem to be the nicest too. It seems that I have the room of a student who isn’t due back until tomorrow. So I’m not complaining.

I settled myself in and promptly crashed out again, only to be awoken by the aforementioned student who has returned unannounced a day early.

I would gladly have shared half my bed with her, but the landlady rather unfortunately rose to the situation by ushering her off to a spare bed put up hastily in the office, which rather disappointed me – but you can’t win a coconut every time.

So I’m going to have an early night and try to sleep the Sleep Of The Dead.

Heaven knows I need it.

Thursday 12th January 2017 – I’M STILL STRUGGLING …

… with these perishing sleep issues.

An early night, a film on the laptop and there I was, gone. Only to wake up a short while later and take an absolute age to go back to sleep again.

But I was on my travels too during the night. My niece Rachel was in Canada trying to work out some connections with associated companies and was phoning around. She asked me to help out too, and one of them that I called was a taxi company in … errr … Detroit, about 1,000 miles away. And when I did phone them up, the girl who answered the ‘phone had the air of being totally gormless, and I couldn’t understand why Rachel would – firstly – want to associate her business with a business so far away and – secondly – why she would want her business to be associated with a firm that was so clueless.

Alone again at breakfast, and then back down here to carry on with my research. I’ve been wading through this report from these Finnish geologists and found some more exciting stuff that might change a few of my – and other peoples’ – perceptions.

And that is that the Moravian missionaries in the north of Labrador kept very detailed records of day-to-day life in their mission stations for a period of more than 150 years. And you’ll see where this is leading.

In my writings, I’ve commented on several occasions about how certain places, such as the Norse landing sites, don’t look like the kind of places that I would choose for landing. But my opinions might have to change.

Labrador and Newfoundland were, in the Ice Age, covered with ice to a depth of at least 4,000 feet and that has an enormous weight. Since the end of the Ice Age and the melting of a lot of the ice, the land has slowly been rising. Obviously the weight of the ice had compressed the earth, the soil and the rock, and now the pressure is off the land, it’s springing slowly back into shape.

The Moravians kept records for this at some of their stations, and a change of level of a rise of 15 feet was recorded at one station “in one generation”. Extrapolate that out over 1,000 years and you are going to have a totally different shape of coastline, and the raised beaches that you see all along the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland give ample testimony for that.

Looking at the coastline today may give you a totally different idea of what the land might have been like in recent history.

At lunchtime I went out for my baguette and then at some point in the proceedings I crashed out for half an hour or so. A brief exchange of pleasantries with my djervushka and then the second half of my mega-meal which was just as delicious as last night.

I’ll try again to have a decent sleep and tomorrow I have work to do. I need to go to Caliburn for the washing soap, and then to the launderette to wash my clothes. I’m running out.

But winter is on its way. Snow is forecast for the next few days and the temperature is threatening to drop.

Minus 9°C might not be cold in Canadian, or even Auvergnat terms, but it’s cold enough for here.

Wednesday 11th January 2017 – WHAT A BAD NIGHT!

Just as I said, I was in bed early last night, and was soon asleep. But then I awoke at about 00:45 when a noise on the radio awoke me, so I switched off the laptop and went back to sleep.

And then it all happened.

All I can say is that I must have had a nightmare, because I had one of those dreams that was extremely disturbing and which made me sit bolt upright. and it wasn’t just the fact of the dream either but the person who was the central character and all of the people who surrounded her. It was such a graphic, disturbing dream that I couldn’t go back to sleep and ended up typing it up on the laptop to make sure that I didn’t forget it.

But I must have gone back to sleep because the alarm awoke me at 07:00, and for some reason we had a most astonishing cacophony from the church bells and I’m not quite sure why. But never mind anyone else in the building, it probably would have awoken the dead too.

At breakfast I was on my own, and then I came back down here to carry on with my research. I started to read the report of that Finnish expedition to Labrador. And it’s come up with a couple of interesting facts.

There’s a lengthy discussion of the Churchill Falls and the Bowdoin Canyon into which the Falls descends. A huge pile of statistics that will be of great interest when I start to write about my trip out in the Wilderness of Labrador to visit the Falls
Even more interestingly, you need to remember that this is the period 1937-1939, long before the discovery of the Norse remains at L’Anse aux Meadows on Newfoundland. And yet there’s a map in the preface of this expedition’s report where they discuss the Norse settlement of Newfoundland, and as far as the small scale of the map can isolate, the expedition places Vinland in round about the same area that Helge Ingstad discovered the Norse remains (although Ingstad hesitates to identify them as “Vinland” and as you already know, I don’t think that it corresponds at all with the description given in the Norse Sagas). It’s a little-known fact that L’Anse aux Meadows was identified in 1914 as the location of “Vinland” by an insurance agent and amateur historian called William A Munn in his book “Wineland voyages;: Location of Helluland, Markland, and Vinland”, but Munn isn’t listed as a source by the Expedition, and so I’m now more intrigued than ever before about the source of this Expedition’s information about the location

Just before lunch I went out to the supermarket on the corner for a baguette and came back with a black plastic box as well – another one in the waste bin and I now have a dozen of them ready for packing, whenever that might be.
And I also had a major crash-out this afternoon too, but that’s hardly a surprise.

Tea was delicious – potatoes, carrots, broccoli, gravy and a vegan Linda McCartney pie. That was the best meal that I’ve had for quite a while. And my djervushka from the Ukraine was there too. I have to make the most of my time with her because she’s leaving on Friday, having found a studio for herself. I wonder if she needs a flatmate?

And there are more new people here too – but I’ve not had the pleasure of their company as yet.

Tonight I’m looking forward to my bed. As well as having a shower and a shave, I have a clean bedroom and fresh bedding. I’m all set up for a good night’s sleep but whether or not I’ll have one is another thing.

Who – or what – is going to interrupt me tonight then?

Friday 25th November 2016 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

… and about this afternoon. But only for a short while because CS Sedan-Ardennes are playing away tonight at Boulogne. And if I had thought on a little earlier, I ought to have enquired to see if there might have been a supporters’ bus going out for the match, and blagged my way on board. It would have been a good day out too.

I’ll have to look into this idea whenever I get back to Leuven, if I ever do.

Despite being tired last night, I found it really difficult to go off to sleep. I just couldn’t make myself comfortable and I’ve no idea why.

But once I was asleep, I was well away and remember nothing – not even anything about a nocturnal ramble of any type – during the night. And I didn’t feel too bad either once I awoke, which makes a change.

Second downstairs for breakfast (before the staff yet again) and first away from the table, and then I attacked my website and the pages on the Coasts of Labrador. And they are all taking shape now.

They have had some serious editing too in places because they were starting to become rather untidy. I must have them being not only interesting, but in logical order too and not have them wandering around too much.

Once I’d organised that, I came down here and carried on with researching some more stuff. I ended up back on the ferries and found, to my surprise, that the MV Apollo, all 46 years of her, isn’t the oldest ferry in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. There’s a ferry, the MV Sound of Islay is even older, being launched in 1968. And she’s been sailing since the earliest 80s on some of the roughest crossings in the world, despite never having been built for ice conditions.

After lunch and a little relax, I nipped out for an hour or so.

The aim was to go across into France and the small town of St Menges for some bread. But I didn’t get very far.

I drove through the mountains and the woods to St Menges and just a couple of hundred metres across the frontier into France I came across this building – badly-damaged and fenced off.

Where I am is right in the path of the Ist Panzer Division just after they crossed the River Semois at Vresse sur Semois and rushed to outflank the French positions near Sedan by crossing over the River Meuse at Glaire.

You can see how much this building – a border post with pillbox in the basement – has been knocked about by shell fire.

And not just by shell fire either. The building is thoroughly riddled with rifle and machine gun bullets too.

It was defended heroically by its staff of five soldiers, with whatever arms they had at their disposal, and held up the advance for several hours. But in the end they became the first fatal casualties of the German attack to fall on French soil.

They aren’t the only fatal casualties in the vicinity either.

The Royal Air Force had several hundred Fairey Battle light bombers – totally under-powered and totally overloaded and they were sent in to try to destroy the river bridges in the face of the German advance in order to slow them down.

Of course, they didn’t stand a chance. They were sitting ducks to the German fighters and anti-aircraft guns and of all of the hundreds of Battles sent in to the attack, only a few survived.

All over Western Belgium and North-Eastern France, there are graveyards with a little corner transformed into a Commonwealth War Cemetery with three graves in it – pilot, navigator, rear gunner.

And in the forest just a couple of hundred metres from where I’m standing, Fairey Battle L-5581 from 88 Squadron RAF crashed into the trees and Sergeant FE Beames (observer), Sergeant WG Ross (pilot) and LAC JHK Gegg (wireless operator/air gunner) were killed.

I shall try tomorrow to find their graves.

I continued on over the brow of the hill and had a good look at Sedan down in the valley of the Meuse. Somewhere on that plateau in front of us, the Battle of Sedan was fought in 1870.

This was when a badly-led French Army was overwhelmed by the Prussian forces, a defeat that led to the collapse of the French Empire and the formation of the German Empire, with fatal consequences for Europe on a couple of subsequent occasions.

There’s a new boulangerie opened in St Menges and that had caught my attention. I went in there and bought some bread – they had a beautiful brown whole-grain bread and it was so delicious (I was given a sample) that I bought two (the loaves weren’t all that big), having been assured that it will keep for four or five days.

They also had some small fruit buns, €2:00 for 5 and so I bought a batch of those too for a treat this weekend.

We had some confusion about the price, but that was quickly resolved, and then I came back here. No point going on to Sedan.

Now, I’m off to try the bread and then have an early night yet again.

And hope that I can sleep properly tonight.

Sunday 13th November 2016 – I DIDN’T GO …

… very far at all today. I made it down to the boulangerie on the corner this morning for my baguette. That was a stroll of almost 150 yards there and back I suppose.

And at tea-time I went an extra 50 yards there and back to the take-away pizza place for a mushroom and onion pizza for tea.

And that was my lot, I’m afraid.

Nevertheless I did have some good luck while I was out this morning. There was another black plastic storage crate in the bin outside the supermarket – a big one this time – and so seeing as it was quite early and there was no-one about, I made sure that I liberated that. These are really nice and useful, these storage crates. Nice and lightweight and easy to carry.

And I didn’t go far during the night either. Dunno if I went on a ramble because I don’t remember anything at all. I do know that I had to leave my bed several times though, especially round about 01:00 when someone came back and made quite a racket.

I was there for breakfast at the usual time, and after the boulangerie, I had something of a repose. In fact I had something of a repose on and off throughout the day. I must really have had a bad night last night.

But I did crack on with the website somewhat, and made another good find on the internet. A kind of database that has been created to record events, happenings and documents about Labrador. And there were the sailing schedules for the “Alphabet ships” – the ships of the Newfoundland Railway that worked the coastal settlements once Labrador had been attached to Newfoundland in 1876.

And it makes poignant reading too. Never mind abandoned communities such as Battle Harbour, the “capital” of Labrador back in those days. That settlement has been abandoned as a permanent habitation for over 50 years under the Canadian Government’s controversial resettlement plans, and is now merely a summer fishing station. What is even more sad is that many of the mailboat ports haven’t simply been abandoned, they have long-since disappeared from the map and their names are no longer recorded.

Another surprise was that the owner came round to check up on the premises and we had a really good chat for a while. Who knows where our conversation will lead us,

But now, an early night again. I hope that I can have a good night’s sleep and an exciting travel.

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

Thursday 24th September 2015 – I MUST BE GETTING OLD

It used to be the case that I could sleep anywhere at any time. At one time I was even found asleep leaning up against a wall in a garage. But just recently, as you know, I’ve been having some sleeping issues, but none such as I had last night on the ship out to Newfoundland.

With some of the nicest reclining seats that I’ve ever sat on, I just couldn’t drop off to sleep. And when I did, I was awake 10 minutes later with aches and pains everywhere. And this went on throughout the night until we docked at Channel Port Aux Basques.

We had a very long wait there too before we could unload. I did mention that we were parked right in the bowels of the ship, and so we had to wait until everyone else was out and gone before we could be liberated.

I went for a coffee and some biscuits at Tim Horton’s so that I could use their internet without any pangs of conscience, and then went over the road to Canadian Tire for a big roll of waterproof duck tape, the reason for which I shall mention in a moment.

You’ve seen plenty of photos of the ship and of the town – Channel Port aux Basques – in the past, but I bet that you have never seen it from this angle before.

I’m a mile or two outside the town here at the Newfoundland and Labrador Tourist Information Office where I stopped to search Strider for the charger for the mobile phone, and there’s a good view of the town across the bay from here. I couldn’t resist taking a photo to add to the archives.

. In the past, whenever I’ve driven out of – or into – Channel Port Aux Basques, I’ve always followed the coast. But today, I’ve driven due north along the Trans Canada Highway and seen parts of the island that I haven’t seen before.

The eastern part of the island has all of the accessible coastline, but the western part has the mountains and the lakes and here, only a handful of miles outside the town, we start entering some really beautiful country. This photo is just typical of the scenery on the southwestern side of the island.

Newfoundland once had a very important railway network – one of the longest narrow-gauge systems in the world. But it struggled along, suffering from chronic under-investment and lack of modernisation despite having one of the most beautiful routes of any railway network ever.

However, as I’ve told you before, it was yet another victim of the ruthless decimation of Canada’s railway network and while very little of the equipment remains, the railway line itself is almost complete and you will see loads of bridges such as this one on your travels.

It’s not long before we start to climb into the mountains of Newfoundland, and the Trans-Canada Highway makes some stunning ascents and descents as we continue northwards.

Here’s one of the most exciting climbs as you can see, a few miles south of the turning for Stephenville. The flattest route is indeed via Stephenville but that puts dozens of miles onto the route and so we take the short cut.

At Deer Lake I stop for fuel again. I fuelled up at Channel Port aux Basques but that’s not enough to reach the Labrador ferry at St Barbe (the short range of Strider is depressing me) and so the Big Irvings at Deer Lake comes up with more fuel and also enables me to fill up one of my big containers. There’s 20 litres in that and once I’m across in Labrador I’ll put 20 litres into the other container. I hope that that will be enough to enable me to do this 418 kms between Port Hope Simpson and Goose Bay.

Deer Lake is the entrance to the Gros Morne National Park and if you think that the road has been beautiful to here, then you ain’t seen nuffink yet. Gros Morne really is spectacular.

This is one of the lakes here, nestling into the foot of what looks like a glaciated valley, and once more, this is just one of a thousand photos that I could have taken of the area. I’ve been here a few times now and I never tire of it. One day I’ll come here and stay for a week, and maybe I will, seeing as I now have transport of my own.

As I was walking by St Pauls, I was seized by this beautiful view. I had to turn off the highway to see it and found myself on a little dockside.

There’s a big inlet here and the harbour is on the inside of the inlet, sheltered from the wind by the embankment for the beautiful metal girder bridge that spans the inlet. This is a typical Newfoundand photograph, isn’t it? The water, the fishing boats, the little harbour and the mountains away in the background.

18:00 is my usual time to start to look for a suitable place to stay (unless something astonishing presents itself beforehand) and tonight, at about 18:30, I’ve found an abandoned cut-off that leads down to a dismantled bridge. The house here seems to be abandoned so the hedges are all overgrown and as it’s a downhill slope to the bridge I’m pretty sheltered. Of the six sheets of insulation, I’ve put two each into a huge bin liner, fitted another bin liner over the open end and sealed them up with the duck tape.

The three packets that I’ve made, I’ve put them on the roof weighted down with the wood.

We’ll see what that is like through the night as far as the condensation issue goes, but the roof does feel much warmer than the sides of the truck cap already.

-3

Wednesday 23rd September 2015 – I HAVE MADE A STARTLING DISCOVERY!

I woke up this morning to find no condensation on the roof of the truck cap. There was quite a bit down the sides, so clearly there was plenty about, but none on the roof.

What had happened was that in the confined and cramped circumstances yesterday, I’d put the pack of insulation outside on the roof of the truck cap instead of by the side of Strider as I would normally do. This seems to have had the effect of insulating the roof but from the outside.

And so what I’ve done is to go to a supermarket and bought a pile of giant-sized plastic bin bags. I’ll wrap the insulation up in those and stick them on the roof of the truck cap at night – I’ll be interested to see if this might solve the problem.

But apart from that, I’d had a reasonable night’s sleep last night even though I was on a truck stop and some of the trucks were idling away all night. even a train on the railway line across the Canso Strait didn’t disturb me all that much.

But next morning, I was surprised to find that the Tim Horton’s at Aulds Cove didn’t have a wifi connection. It’s the first that I’ve found that hasn’t had one. I had to decamp off onto Cape Breton Island and the Nova Scotia Tourist Board offices there

And I’m glad that I did, because when was the last time that we have had a “ship of the day”? Back in Montreal I reckon, and that was by default too.

This ship is the Rt Hon Paul E Martin, whoever he was when he was at home, if he ever was, anchored up at the huge quarry at Auld’s Cove. She’s a CSL (Canadian Shipping Lines) ship and has come here from Brayton Point, which is the site of a coal-fired power station on the coast of Massachusetts, USA, although she was seen in the Panama Canal a couple of weeks earlier.

It’s been years since I’ve travelled up the southern shore of Cape Breton Isle – 2003 in fact – and so I reckoned that I would go up to Sydney that way, even though it’s the least interesting route.

I’d had a brief glimpse of the canal here when I passed by back then and so I reckoned that, seeing as how it was a nice day, I’d go and have a closer look.

That’s the Atlantic Ocean just there and just a couple of hundred yards away to my right is the Bras d’Or Lake which almost cuts Cape Breton Island in two. This little strip of land is all that prevents Cape Breton Island being split in two.

This area has always been a favourite portage site and the French had a fort around here – Fort Toulouse – that guarded the crossing

At one time there was a rolling plank road that enabled sailors to drag their boats from one water to the other but in the 1850s the canal was built and this is what we have today, one of only two canals east of the St Lawrence that are still working.

You’ll notice that there are two lock gates at each end of the lock, and the gates are pointing in opposite directions. That’s because with the tides, the Atlantic Ocean can be either higher or lower than the Bras d’Or Lake and so the water flow needs to be controlled in either sense.

There’s nothing at all now left of Fort Toulouse but the British had a fort up here on a dominant eminence for a short while.

This was called Fort Dorchester and you can still see quite a few of the remains of earthworks up on the top. This appears to be part of an earthen bank that might have been part of the walls of the fort at one time.

Another place that I had passed by back in 2003 was Louisbourg, the principal town and seaport of the French on Ile Royale – Cape Breton Island – in the 18th Century.

It’s quite an astonishing place, being effectively a fortified city in the middle of nowhere, and was a city over which the French and British fought on many occasions.

The French engages in a triangular trade route between Nouvelle France, the French West Indies and France itself, and they needed a seaport somewhere in between to be a naval base, ship repair centre and trans-shipment port for the interior.

They chose Louisbourg to be the place, in view of the magnificent bay here, and so they build a fortified city.

And it needed to be fortified too. Its central position meant that it was miles away from anywhere else, and so miles away from where reinforcements might be obtained.

And with it straddling the British trade routes from British North America and Newfoundland, it was quite likely that in the event of war between Britain and France – a regular occurrence in the 18th Century, the British would want the fort neutralised.

It was captured on several occasions by the British and returned at the end of conflict, but finally the British captured it for keeps and it was abandoned, falling into ruin.

It’s been slowly rebuilt over the years and the result is quite spectacular. It’s just as it was back in its heyday and there are all kinds of 18th-century trades being undertaken here. I ended up having a lengthy chat with a couple of 18th-century boatbuilders who were building a caravel.

Louisbourg is alwo well-known as the terminus of the Sydney-Louisbourg railway, and there’s a kind-of railway museum here.

I say “kind-of”, because no-one in their right minds would call it a real museum. While most “museums” in North America “preserve” their artefacts by slapping layer after layer of thick black paint over their exhibits, they can’t even be bothered to do that here.

The “exhibits” here are just rotting away and in a few more years there won’t be anything at all left.

This is beyond embarrassing and beyond shameful – it’s a total disgrace and how the administrators of the museum have the nerve to exhibit artefacts like this is totally beyond me. There’s nothing left for these artefacts except the scrapyard because they are way beyond any kind of preservation.

The administrators should be ashamed of themselves.

So having dealt with that rant, I went up to North Sydney, the Marine Atlantic terminal where I booked my passage on tonight’s sailing to Newfoundland. $155 too – it’s becoming more and more expensive. But then again they have a new ship and, this year, a new ferry terminal to pay for.

It’s the new “Highlander” upon which we are sailing, and it’s not sailing until 23:45 so that gives me plenty of time to organise some food. And in the terminal I have a very lengthy chat with an old guy who is also retired and is also off on his travels.

On board, we are stuck in the bowels of the ship, and I mean that too. There’s a hatch in the middle of the deck with a ramp that goes down another level with room for about 100 cars, and that’s where we end up – well below the water line. It’s a good job we don’t stay with our cars during the crossing. I’ll be a nervous wreck down here.

Sunday 16th August 2015 – PLEASANT COMPANY EXPECTED

If you thought that last night’s two drivers were unusually friendly and helpful, then the encounters today have topped all of that off in spades, I’ll tell you that.

I was up at the crack of dawn this morning (lucky dawn!) and after a good shower I set to work. First thing to do was to try to remember my nocturnal ramblings. I was in van somewhere in England (yes, England, not the UK) and I was on a photography expedition going somewhere but every time that I tried to take a photograph my camera fell apart and thos kept on happening with monotonous regularity. There was one place that I particularly remembered – a tiny village in a low valley where the road took a sharp right-hand bend right by the village green where there was a telephone box.

But anyway, enough of that for now.

The breakfast room at the hotel was crowded and we ran out of coffee and jam – and I remembered to make something of a little note about this – but while I was looking for the breakfast attendant I came across a second breakfast room which had apparently been missed by everyone else because it was quite empty.

With it being Sunday, the buses didn’t start running until late so it gave me an opportunity to have a good session on the computer and catch up on a few things. I had a good look out of the window too, and I do have to say that the view from here is one of the best that I can hope to have.

It’s not as noisy as you might think with the new generation of jets, and it’s a shame that the big KLM jumbo jet takes off in the dark.

And then it was off to the town.

First stop was to buy some water where the girl at the cash desk gave a big sigh as I was counting out the cash. What a way to start the day, so I gave her a little “piece of advice”, as they say in the Police Farce.

I went onwards to the Tourist Information office for a map (I’d left mine behind) and there I fell in with a woman who was on her was from Vancouver to Newfoundland. She was travelling via the Trans-Canada Highway and so we had a spritied discussion about going via the Trans-Labrador Highway and across from Blanc Sablon.

In the Place Jacques Cartier just around the corner we were treated to some street musicians.

In fact every Saturday and Sunday during July and August various little groups of musicians entertain the crowds, and these five people are from one of the many music academies around the city. I do have to say that while their selection of music was not my type, I quite enjoyed the atmosphere – which is one of the best reasons to be here.

I had a wander off down to the Quai de l’Horloge to sit in the sun, lap up the atmosphere, watch the river and (most importantly) to eat my butties as it was now my kind of lunchtime.

There was plenty going on on the river – lots of marine traffic and the like, but nothing over about 15 tonnes which for me, at any rate, was something of a disappointment. Where’s the 150,000 tonne tanker when you need it?

And, if the truth was known, I had a little doze in the sunshine too. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that, and I find that the water is quite relaxing.

With nothing here worth photographing, I wandered off down to the Point by the clock tower to see what was in the docks and I was lucky in that the Algonova was there. She had been there for a while too, having come from Corner Brook in Newfoundland.

She might not look it, but she’s quite a modern ship, dating from as recently as 2007, and cost about $43,000,000, which is a lot of money to have sitting idle, tied up at the quayside.

So having mused on that for quite a while, I was all ready to move off when a couple of teenage girls squeezed in next to me. One of them was discreetly trying to look at my map so I let her have it.

We started off a conversation – ohhh yes, I can still chat up the females, even though, at my age, I can’t remember why- and of course, my plans to leave were completely abandoned.

Their parents joined in the chat too. They are from Winnipeg and visiting Montreal for a holiday. The chat quickly led to a much wider field and of course, Labrador came up in the chat. The Labrador Tourist Board ought to be paying me a commission.

Once everyone had cleared off, I went to have a look at my favourite building – the Gare Viger. They’ve knocked down a few more internal walls but that’s about all. Nothing much else is being done.

But here I had another one of those legendary encounters. Some woman van driver needed to do to an address in a street behind me, but it had all been cut off by roadworks and she wondered how she was going to get there. As soon asI openedmy mouth, she said “sorry, I didn’t realise that you weren’t local” – but as it happened, I did know the area where we were and I knew how to get to the address concerned.

And then she drove off with my rucksack and I had to run after her.

On the underground, I went to the Cartier metro station at Laval, to see the riviere des Praries. From the Pont Viau there were some lovely views with all kinds of things to see, including a car trying to drive up the cycle path.

There was a lot of maritime activity here too, including some water-skiing. And that I found quite astonishing. If the river has that much of a slope on it, how come Quebec Hydro hasn’t put a dam across it and fitted a few hydro turbos?

The end of the orange line at Montmorency is actually the big University campus at the back of Laval. Leaving the station, I went for a wander around but I didn’t stay too long. There wasn’t anything interesting (from my point of view) to see.

But there was a guy of my age pacing up and down outside.
"You look as if you are waiting for someone" I said
"Yes, my daughter" he replied
"Well, I’d forget about her and take someone else. I’ve seen a few girls that I wouldn’t mind taking home instead of my daughter."

Parking featured quite a lot on these pages at one time, and here’s a good example of street parking in North America.

Not so much of how the cars are parked but the size of the parking places. Anyone from Europe could park a lorry in spaces as big as this, never mind a compact car. It did remind me of the time that I reversed into a car parking space somewhere in the USA, watched by quite a crowd.

And someone asked me why I’d reversed in, to which I replied “because I can. I’m from Europe”.

There was an incident on the metro and traffic was “perturbed”. But eventually I arrived at Cote-des-Neiges and my plate of falafel, salad and chips. There was a football match on the TV, a Major League Soccer match. And I have to say that I wasn’t impressed. A couple of stars of European football having one last pay-day and a few local players, and it was all about Third or Fourth Division standard

In the Metro supermarket was a note – “due to Quebec Employment legislation, we are only allowed to employ a maximim of four people after 21:00, on Sundays and Public Holidays”. No-one in the supermarket thought that strange. But I can’t imagine any other Government, anywhere else in the western world, putting maximum limits on how many people are allowed to be employed in an enterprise in the middle of an employment crisis.

Another friendly, chatty bus driver on the way back and even though it was only 21.45 I crashed out yet again.

And what a nice day too. I’ve met loads of helpful, friendly people and had a few interesting chats with some very pleasant company.

Thursday 23rd July 2015 – I DIDN’T GET …

… anything like done what I was hoping to do today.

For a start, I failed to beat the alarm clock this morning. I was all set to go to bed nice and early when someone with whom I needed to speak came on line. So I went for a little chat. And I would probably still be there chatting now had the battery not gone flat at 02:05.

So it was rather a bemused and befuddled Yours Truly who struggled out of his stinking pit this morning.

Of the computing jobs that I’ve been trying to catch up, I’ve finished one of them, which is a big sigh of relief. But another – tidying up the blog entries for my 2010 journey to Canada, I’ve hit the part where I was writing in shorthand with no photos, due to being out in the depths of Newfoundland somewhere. So with all of that, it’s taking much longer than anticipated. But to see where I’ve reached, just go to this link and work backwards. If you want to comment on any of the posts, do so on here.

And that reminds me – when I started editing this blog to correct the errors from when it was transferred here, I was having 10 and 12 comments a day regularly. Today, even though readership has tripled, the comments are now at about 10 or 12 per year.

Don’t be shy – if you have something to ask or something to say, then make a comment. If you are new, it won’t appear immediately until I’ve approved it, but that’s no reason to stop you.

After lunch I started to mask off in the shower room, and I’m nowhere near finishing that – that’s the problem with buying doors with small glass panels. And in any case, Rosemary rang up for a natter for a good half an hour.

And I had to fill in a few gaps in the woodwork – I did that by filling the gaps with wood glue and forcing clean sawdust in with a stiff spatula.

One thing that I had forgotten was to drill the holes in the bottom of the door so that cold air will enter the bathroom and prevent condensation when I’m taking a shower (whenever that might be) – anyway I did that today and that took me up to 19:25 when I knocked off.

And this shower room is never going to be finished – I have a car to dismantle on Monday now.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: newfoundland

Wednesday 6th September 2017 – THAT WAS SOMETHING …

Tuesday 5th September 2017 – TIRED?

Monday 4th September 2017 – I’M NOT QUITE SURE …

Sunday 3rd September 2017 – THE HOLY GRAIL …

Thursday 31st August 2017 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

Thursday 12th January 2017 – I’M STILL STRUGGLING …

Wednesday 11th January 2017 – WHAT A BAD NIGHT!

Friday 25th November 2016 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

Sunday 13th November 2016 – I DIDN’T GO …

Tuesday 29th September 2015 – THAT WAS A NICE …

Thursday 24th September 2015 – I MUST BE GETTING OLD

Wednesday 23rd September 2015 – I HAVE MADE A STARTLING DISCOVERY!

Sunday 16th August 2015 – PLEASANT COMPANY EXPECTED

Thursday 23rd July 2015 – I DIDN’T GET …

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