Tag Archives: st johns

Monday 9th July 2018 – NOT ONLY DID I …

… make it to Canada today, I was actually in Newfoundland and Labrador too!

But more of that anon.

With something of a very disturbed sleep (and I’ve no idea why) I finally crawled out of bed at some time rather later than the alarm.

There was plenty of work to be done this morning but for some reason or other I wasn’t really in the mood enough to do it. I don’t know where my energy seems to have gone to at all.

Anyway, at 09:00 and the morning rush-hour gone, I went outside and hit the streets. First stop was to load up with food as the lunchtime stuff is getting low, but would you believe that I drove all of the 45 kilometres to Serre, all the way through the city of Arras and several other small towns, and didn’t even find a single supermarket?

Serre was one of the vital points on the Somme front line that needed to be taken, but the attack had bogged down long before the village had been reached. The “Accrington Pals” who had attacked the village had been decimated.

All around the area are several cemeteries that contain the bodies of the fallen that were recovered from the barbed wire when the battlefield was cleared after the German retreat in early 1917 and were still being recovered in the 1920s.

One piece of land that had been part of the front line had been given to the City of Sheffield and it’s known as Sheffield Park. Tile has worn away many of the features but you can still see the trenches and the shell holes quite clearly.

Narrowly avoiding being squidged by a French lorry driver who was speeding and not paying attention, I visited a few other cemeteries of note and then headed for the Hawthorn Redoubt.

This was a prominent hill overlooking the front line and the British Army dealt with it by the simple expedient of tunneling underneath it and packing the tunnel full of explosives. The explosion of the mine at 07:28 was the signal for the attack to begin.

The crater is certainly impressive – it has to be seen to be believed, but it’s by no means the largest that was exploded on that day. It is famous however as its detonation was actually captured on film.

Down the road from there I entered Newfoundland and Labrador. This is another corner of a foreign field that is forever Canada, although I can’t claim asylum there (I did ask).

It’s where the Newfoundland Regiment, all 800 of them, were ordered into attack but due to a misunderstanding, instead of going through the communication trench to the front line, they left their trenches in the rear and advanced in the open, in full view of a couple of German heavy machine guns.

It has to be said that there were a couple of hundred German machine gunners on the Somme front line, and they alone counted for a very large proportion of the 60,000 or so British casualties on the 1st July.

By the time the Newfoundlanders reached the front line, there were just 95 left. They probably hadn’t even wounded a single German.

I ended up having quite a chat with a nice Canadian girl from St Johns who told me that her great grandfather’s brother is still lying somewhere out there on the battlefield.

Here we were interrupted by a band of pseudo-Scottish pipers who insisted on attempting to play Scotland the Brave and Cock o’ the North and were most unimpressed when I suggested that they went to practise a Highland Fling on the field containing the unexploded ordnance.

Next stop was the Thiepval Ridge and its massive memorial to the missing. Over 75,000 soldiers who lost their lives on the Somme have no known grave and when you see the size of the shell holes that remain, it’s hardly surprising.

Their names are all recorded here,but you’ll see several gaps that are clearly where names have been filled with cement. Bodies are regularly discovered even today on the battlefield and if they are identified, their names are removed from the memorial.

And there are several cases of the “missing” subsequently coming to light, having gone to ground in rural France.

The leader of the pipe band and his acolyte came over to me here (they had been going from memorial to memorial trying to play the pipes) and demanded an explanation of my earlier comments. This led to quite a heated and animated discussion, particularly when I suggested how he could obtain a better sound from his pipes (a method which involves eating several plates of baked beans).

It seems that all of these Scots pipe bands who died for freedom only died so that Scots pipe bands can express their freedom and no-one else is allowed to have any freedom of expression if it disagrees with the opinions of the Scots pipe bands. But I put him right on that score and he slunk off with a flea in his ear.

A good pipe band is a magnificent thing, but a poor pipe band is one of the worst things in the world to have to suffer to hear. It’s even worse than a mouth organ, and regular readers of this rubbish willknow my opinion about that.

The sky had clouded over by now, but I carried on, visiting Sausage and Mash valleys, where a couple of machine guns on a spur of high land in between them decimated the attacking soldiers.

It’s here thuugh that we have the Lochnagar Crater. This was the largest mine exploded on the day and you can tell that by the size of the crater.

Cecil Lewis, an RFC pilot who was flying over it on the day, gives a vivid description of it in his autobiography Sagittarius Rising.

Back 40-odd years ago there were plans to fill in and redevelop the crater, as has happened with a couple of others, but a British person bought the land to preserve its integrity and he’s made quite a passable job of a tourist attraction of it.

But from the top of it, you can certainly see the futility of attacking up “Sausage” and “Mash” valleys.

It was already 19:00 by this time and so I shot off back to Lens. I’d had no food at all during the day, so I was well-pleased in stumbling across a LeClerc supermarket where I could grab some stuff to make a butty – just before they closed the doors too.

And back here in the heat I had a shower and washed my clothes before eating it too.

But 143% of my day’s activity on the fitbit told its own story. By 21:30 I was tucked up in bed and I’ll do the rest tomorrow.

Tuesday 10th October 2017 – JUST HOW SILLY …

… can you get?

There I was with an appointment to go out for an evening meal with Josée and we arranged that she would telephone me when she finished work and came outside.

And so she did. She telephoned me at 16:30 and 16:30, sent me a couple of texts, a message or two on my social media page, and then became fed up and went home.

And where was I when all of this was going on?

In case you haven’t guessed, I was flat out on my bed, well away with the fairies and totally inconscient of anything that was going on. And I must have been too, to have slept through the cacophony that was going on.

keolis orleans express montreal quebec canada Octobre october 2017I blame the bus myself.

I can’t sleep on buses (except whrnI’m driving them). At best, I just fitfully doze and let every bump shake me awake.

But that doesn’t apply to everyone. As we pulled into Montreal a girl suddenly stood bolt upright.
“Is this Montreal?” she asked, in a panic
“Yes it is” replied the driver.
“What happened to Sainte-Foy?”
“We stopped there and everyone there got off”
“But I should have got off” she wailed.
“Not much I can do about that” said the driver. “I can’t go around waking everyone up to see if it’s their stop”.

The bus was quite busy too. Everyone going back after Thanksgiving with the family.

We were 10 minutes late getting into the Bus Station. 06:10. Far too early to go to my hotel and so I sat around with a coffee and did some work.

And if you think that our family tree is complicated, you ain’t heard nuffink yet.

Apparently my mother any my aunt were daughters of their mother (my grandmother Ivy)’s SECOND marriage. That’s a new one on me. Ivy had apparently been married before to someone called Cyril Ralphrul Hogg who had been her singing tutor.

He was apparently quite famous and had studied at the Conservatory in Vienna.

They married in July 1918 but he was swept away in the Spanish Influenza outbreak of December 1918.

Now that took me by surprise.

At 09:00 I took my stuff round the corner to the hotel and left it there. Of course my room wasn’t ready so I went round the corner to Tim Hortons for breakfast.

gare viger montreal quebec canada Octobre october 2017From there I decided to go down to the docks to see what was happening.

My route took me close to the Gare Viger, which, asregular readers of this rubbish will recall, is my favourite building in the whole of the city.

We haven’t seen it from this angle before though. It looks quite eerie with the morning sun reflecting off the autumn leaves of the trees.

barnacle port montreal quebec canada Octobre october 2017Our walk continues round to the docks to see who is there.

The Winnipeg is still there of course, but we also have the Barnacle. She’s a bulk carrier of 30,000 tonnes and is on her way to Ghent in Belgium from Hamilton in Ontario.

her cargo is “Agricultural Products” – by which, presumably, they may well mean “wheat”. Montreal is one of the world’s biggest ports for the handling of wheat.

vieux port montreal quebec canada Octobre october 2017. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of activity around the rest of the commercial part do I wander off down to the old port.

Not too much going on around here either but at least there’s a good view of the city from here. It’s looking quite splendid in the early morning autumn sunlight.

And you can see the twin towers of the cathedral right in the centre of the image.

artania montreal quebec canada Octobre october 2017However, at the cruise terminal we have the Artania of 44,000 tonnes. Operatedby a German cruise company, she set out from Hamburg on 22nd September.

But don’t let appearances fool you.

Despite having just crossed the Atlantic with a load of passengers, had she been simply going back and forth across the English Channel she would have been scrapped long ago because she is actually 33 years old

She was built in 1984 and sailed for many years as the P&O liner Royal Princess.

woman taking dogs for a run montreal quebec canada Octobre october 2017I’d caught a glimpse of a container ship down in the Oceanex container terminal so, with nothing better to do, I headed that way.

However, my perambulations were interrupted by this most bizarre spectacle of a woman taking several dogs for a job.

You might think that it’s hilarious but the poor little dog being dragged behind, clearly unable to keep up wasn’t enjoying it one little bit every time their leader broke into a run.

oceanex avalon montreal quebec canada Octobre october 2017So here in the Oceanex terminal s the Oceanex Avalon.

She’s a small container ship of 14500 tonnes and seems to work a shuttle between St Johns in Newfoundland, Saint John in New Brunswick and here.

I imagine that rather than half-unload a huge container ship at Saint John and have her shuttling around, they will completely unload her for a faster turnaround and have the Oceanex Avalon doing the distribution.

I had a wander around the port to see if there was a better view, but not today.

montreal quebec canada Octobre october 2017On the way back I walked down alongside the Lachine Canal and today for some reason you could clearly see where the former dry docks used to be.

I can’t think why it was never so noticeable as this before.

But like most canal-side enterprises they have long-gone. Montreal has lost a lot of its importance since it started on this monolingual anti-English crusade.

workmen testing concrete flyover montreal quebec canada Octobre october 2017But this was interesting to stand and watch.

We’ve seen … “on several occasions” – ed … the shambolic nature of much of the city’s concrete infrastructure as it weathers and disintegrates.

These men were up on a sky jack tapping the concrete supports of the flyover with a hammer to see whether the concrete was still sound, or whether it was being eroded away from within.

site of ville marie montreal quebec canada Octobre october 2017One thing that I haven’t yet done – and I can’t think why- is to go to visit the site of “Ville-Marie”.

That was the original name of Montreal, but it’s more properly applied to the site where the first European colonists installed their settlement

As far as it’s possible to tell these things, that column just there marks the centre of the original settlement. We can’t go to visit it for a closer look unfortunately.

site of first parliament montreal quebec canada Octobre october 2017That’s because the Place d’Youville, site of St Anne’s Market, is currently undergoing archaeological excavation and everywhere is fenced off.

This is a historically important site because St Anne’s Market became home of the Canadian Parliament in 1844, moving here from Kingston in Ontario.

That was a controversial move and in 1849 during a debate to consider the losses that had been incurred by the population during the rebellion of 1837-38, a mob stormed the building and burnt it to the ground.

From here I went for a butty and then back to the hotel to sign in for my room, followed by all the nonsense that I mentioned earlier.

Later, I went for a walk and something to eat at the little Lebanese restaurant at Sherbrooke. And here, I watched a television debate that rather amused me. Should the captain of the “Montreal Impact” football team be a French-speaker?

You can tell what kind of society you are dealing with in Quebec when a person’s language ability is considered to be more important than his professional qualifications.

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.

fongs motel carbonear newfoundland canada septembre september 2017It 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.

carbonear newfoundland canada septembre september 2017First 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.

hospital carbonear newfoundland canada septembre september 2017But 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.

newfoundland railway station carbonear canada septembre september 2017Take 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

newfoundland railway locomotive 803 Carbonear canada septembre september 2017And 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.

carbonear newfoundland canada septembre september 2017Instead 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.

beach near Carbonear newfoundland canada septembre september 2017And 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

small village near carbonear newfoundland canada septembre september 2017And 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.

highest point highway 74 Victoria Hearts Content newfoundland canada septembre september 2017When 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.

hearts content newfoundland canada septembre september 2017I 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.

transatlantic telegraph cable hearts content newfoundland canada septembre september 2017They 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.

strider ford ranger telegraph office hearts content newfoundland canada septembre september 2017
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.

marina hearts delight newfoundland canada septembre september 2017There 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.

railway earthworks islington newfoundland canada septembre september 2017There 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.

rock or island islington newfoundland canada septembre september 2017Meanwhile, 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.

shag rock manor islington newfoundland canada septembre september 2017A 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.

dildo newfoundland canada septembre september 2017But 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?

articles on sale Dildo newfoundland canada septembre september 2017And 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.

Dildo newfoundland canada septembre september 2017Leaving 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!

valard high tension line newfoundland canada septembre september 2017another 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.

belle vue beach newfoundland canada septembre september 2017I’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.

belle vue bay newfoundland canada septembre september 2017But 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.

come by chance newfoundland canada septembre september 2017One 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!

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.

newfoundland canada aout august 2017So 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?

storm newfoundland canada aout august 2017And 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.

michael averill atlantic vision newfoundland canada aout august 2017So 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.

multi-lingual signs atlantic vision newfoundland canada aout august 2017I 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

atlantic vision jana argentia newfoundland canada aout august 2017Having 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.

argentia newfoundland canada aout august 2017The 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.

newfoundland canada aout august 2017And 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.

signal hill st john's newfoundland canada aout august 2017Driving 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.

signal hill st Johns newfoundland canada aout august 2017Having 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.

Saturday 23rd October 2010 – YOU WOULD THINK …

… that I would have learnt my lesson by now, but not a bit of it.

Does anyone still remember my voyage around Wyoming in 2002 and how I hardly had any sleep the first night due to having chosen, in the dark, a motel right next to a railway line?

travellers motel halifax nova scotia canadaSo here I am, on the outskirts of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and there’s the Canadian Pacific main line between the industrial centres of central Canada and the largest port on Canada’s eastern seaboard, and it passes right underneath my window.

My excuse, back in 2002, was that it was dark, so I’m going to have to think of a pretty good excuse for this one though as it was broad daylight when I arrived here.

But then again, at the first place (a cheap B&B), no-one answered (they had clearly heard all about me). The second place was full. The third place – I took one look at it, made my excuses and left. Yes, even I have principles and scruples even when travelling on a low budget.

And so a convenient motel with kitchen unit at $69, and that will have to do. At least I can cook some food and that will save me something.

bed and breakfast country harbour nova scotia canada october octobre 2010However, this is where I spent last night and I will say now that if I can ever find better value than this bed-and breakfast for just $45 per night all-in then I shall move in permanently.

Like everyone else that I have ever encountered on any of my voyages around the Maritimes (with the exception of those people in that museum – The Rooms in St John’s), the proprietors were extremely friendly, helpful and knowledgeable.

Furthermore, although they were Anglophones, the guy here had been a copper in Québec and so was perfectly bilingual and also had some kind of empathy with the Francophone communities around here.

They moved here about 30 years ago and in that time they reckon that not a week has gone by without someone leaving the area to move elsewhere, such has been the consequence of the collapse of the economy following the decline of the fishing industry. They recounted a long, almost endless list of local businesses that had gone – the loss of the local grocery stores being the most painful and now they have to travel miles for their food supplies.

It sounded every bit as depressing as the stories that I heard when I bought my house to the Auvergne in 1997

road sign sober island nova scotia canada october octobre 2010Now I have seen some strange place-names on my travels, that’s for sure, but the one just here is definitely the one that takes the biscuit to date.

It intrigued me, why they had singled this island out for special attention by giving it this particular name. The idea that there might be drunken islands lurching around in the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast here was rather a sobering thought.

But then again, maybe not. This coast is infamous for the amount of maritime accidents, collisions and sinkings of vessels and all that kind of thing, and that might explain it.

hawk sheet harbour nova scotia canadaI had another leisurely drive along the coast today and nothing remarkable stood out (well, not that I am admitting to anyway) but I did encounter a mystery.

At a wharf alongside a river in a small town there was a ship (well, I think that it was a ship) that looked like it had just been raised from Full Fathom 5 after 50 years in the deeps. A rusting old hulk would have been embarrassed to have moored alongside it

So, with the silliest question being the one that is never asked, I headed off to the library. After all, librarians know everything.
“Ohhhh – that thing” she said. “They sailed it into here about 4 years ago ….”
“4? Or 40?”
“Definitely 4 or so. And it sailed in from Newfoundland” She replied. “And when it docked the people aboard ‘scattered like rats’ and they were gone. The police searched the ship thinking that there might be drugs aboard but they found nothing at all”

hawk sheet harbour nova scotia canada“So what’s it doing moored up there?”
“No-one knows” she replied. “But it’s a private wharf and as long as the mooring is paid the owner of the wharf doesn’t care about it”
“So who’s paying the mooring fees?” – I mean, you have to ask the question.
“Now there’s a good question” she repled.
And good question as it might be, she didn’t give me any answer.

What has taken my by surprise just here is that I came this way in the winter of 2003 when I was quite ill, and I made no comment whatsoever about the railway museum at Musquodoboit. Was it not here then? I ask myself. How would I not notice a railway museum? I really must have been ill.

yard shunter musquodoboit railroad museum railway nova scotia canada october octobre 2010Another thing that has taken me by surprise here is that for once in a provincial Canadian railway museum there is actually a locomotive. I mean it’s not actually a locomotive in the same category as a Pacific 4-6-2 or a Garrett articulated 2-8-8-2, but it’s here and not being turned into a thousand baked bean tins and that’s something, I suppose.

I’m having to really think if I have seen another engine before at a wayside place like this, and I can’t say that I have. There was the steam locomotive that was a stationary exhibit on the waterfront at Windsor but that was about it I reckon – "it was as recently as Baie Comeau actually" …ed

And so here I am in Halifax. I’ve been here twice before, in 2001 and 2003 and on both occasions I was rather ill, and so this evening I’ve been out taking pics – after all the ones that I took on those occasions with cheap compact digitals just didn’t work out at all.

halifax by night angus macdonald bridge nova scotia canadaThis photo is much better.

It was taken from up on the Angus MacDonald Bridge, the bridge that goes across the Straits between Halifax and Dartmouth. That’s Halifax down there, with the Canadian Navy’s Eastern seaboard base in the foreground.

It really was quite eerie walking around here in the dark retracing the steps that I had taken in my previous visits when I was trying to take pictures like this armed with nothing more than a cheap basic compact digital.

Here, with a top-of-the-range DSLR and an optional-extra zoom lens that cost a lot of money at last I’ve been able to make some of the pics look like something useful.

And if you want to see more of the photos that I took, your wish is my command

Tuesday 19th October 2010 – THE BIG ISSUE …

… with fulfilling your lifetime’s ambition is “what do you do next?”

st john's harbour newfoundland canadaI reached St John’s today and had a good wander around. But I found hardly anything much to hold my interest,apart from a couple of things below.

The view of the harbour from up on the hill at the entrance to the harbour is impressive though and it showed you why this was such a key harbour during all of the events that took place on the north-eastern seaboard.

Last night I stayed in a little B&B that was excellent. The brother of the woman who ran it came round – he’s a teacher and we had a good chat about the aviation history of the area.

Now in a book that I once read, it stated that there was a little aviation museum that kept the bits of- the 5 attempts to cross the Atlantic in May 1919 – the undercarriage that fell off Hawker’s plane for example. But try as we might we could find nothing anywhere that looked like it might be anything.

But then this guy told me that a good while back a new museum had been built and all of the relics from a load of small museums were collected there, and there had also been a Transport Museum created.

And as my book was dated 1970 or something, long before the consolidation, he suggested I try those places.

transport museum newfoundland railway station st johns canadaAt the Transport Museum, one of my major assumptions was verified. Up in Central Newfoundland I’d seen traces of what looked like railway track bed – I would have staked my mortgage on it – and sure enough there had been a railway in Newfoundland and one of its tracks did go where I saw it.

So that was that. And a fascinating museum it was too – I spent ages there and learnt a lot but they had no trace of these aviation exhibits.

At the new museum, “unhelpful” is a word that I thought that I would never ever have to use in the English-speaking Maritimes, but unfortunately, here we are. The … errr …. young people on the reception desk knew nothing at all and wouldn’t be bothered to ring up to ask any elderly colleague to see what he or she might know.

But they did encourage me to visit the exhibition of a sculpture depicting the car-bombing of a street in Iraq – to see the “senseless destruction”.
“How appalling” I commented. “It’s a disgrace. It clearly made sense to the Freedom Fighter who detonated the bomb so I find your comments juvenile, offensive and patronising. When might there be an exhibition of some of the senseless American bombing of streets in Iraq?”

Yes, I was in a bad mood. I suppose these early aviation exhibits have been long swept into the obscurity of the distant past and probably won’t ever see the light of day again, which is a shame.

raynham morgan transatlantic flight attempt take off may 1919 pleasantville quidi vidi lake st johns newfoundland canadaI did however manage to track down what I reckon is the crash site of the “Raymor” – the aeroplane piloted by Raynham and Morgan. They took off from some land at Pleasantville, near Quidi Vidi Lake, and crashed at the end of the runway, heavily overloaded with fuel.

I once saw some photos of the aeroplane on the runway and I could identify the hills in the background, and I also saw a photo of the crash site, and I was also able to identify the hills in that location too – so I’m pretty sure that I’ve got it right.

It’s really the only place that it could be because everywhere else is either totally uneven terrain or the hills are too close.

But it was still a hell of a place to try to take off with a new and untried aeroplane with an enormous load of fuel. Alcock and Brown, who had drawn to take off next from that field, immediately went around to look for another field rather than to try from there and in the end they used a field that had been allocated to another competitor but who had withdrawn. That, unfortunately, is now a big housing estate.

There were still a few other sites that I needed to track down, Hawker’s being the most important, but the light went and I needed to leave. I’ll have to come back again to Newfoundland, but I won’t be sorry. it really is a beautiful place even if the east coast does average something like … errr … 216 rainy days per year

strawberry moose cape spear newfoundland canadaSo now I’ve turned back and sad as it is to say it, I’m on my way home. I’ve reached the apogee of my voyage.

But I did see at St John’s, a sign that said “3940 kms to Paris”. And when I fuelled up just outside the city I noticed that since leaving Toronto not quite 3 weeks ago, I’ve driven far enough to have gone to Paris and come back, and still had mileage to spare.

Monday 18th October 2010 – "KEEP OUT! I AM WORKING CAPE RACE!"

marconi radio station cape race lighthouse newfoundland canadaIf ever 7 words changed the fate of so many people, it was “Keep Out, I am Working Cape Race”.

At the turn of the 20th Century Marconi perfected his radio  transmission system and it had the potential to overwhelm the cable line that had been laid across the Atlantic many years before.

Although he had managed to transmit directly across the Atlantic from shore to shore, it wasn’t as yet a practical proposition to do it consistently and so he set up a station at Cape Race – the nearest to Europe – and another one at Valentia in Ireland – the nearest to North America.

He then put his operators, whose wages his company paid for, on board ships, with the promise to the shipping lines that they would receive and transmit important navigation information between ships with the aim of making the oceans a safer place. And it is a fact that losses and deaths in the important shipping lanes declined significantly.

However, the sinking of the Titanic stunned the world and at the subsequent public enquiry Marconi gave his evidence that seemed to confirm the instructions that had been issued to his employees concerning the priority that “navigational” messages were to receive

But as the enquiry unfolded, it became clear that Marconi had been … errrr… economical with the truth. What was really happening was that Marconi was using the ships to bounce messages across the Atlantic by radio. And when the Titanic came into the range of the radio station at Cape Race the radio operator started to transmit a battery of Marconi’s commercial messages that lasted for three hours.

During this period, the Californian had become embedded in the ice and as the radio operator of the Californian knew that the Titanic was on the same track as his ship but an hour or so behind, he tried to send an urgent message to the Titanic to give it a warning.

It was then that the operator on the Titanic cut him off with his curt message, and the ice warning never made it to the Titanic‘s captain. The fate of the Titanic was thereby sealed.

At the subsequent public enquiry the Chairman asked the radio operator of the Californian “I’m sure you didn’t mean to listen but could you say what character of messages the Titanic was transmitting?”
The operator replied “I’m sure that these messages were of a private nature”.

trepassey bay newfoundland canadaNow this is Trepassey Bay, with the town of Trepassey in the background. Trepassey Bay is only an hour or so from Cape Race and the town played an important part in the history of aviation.

If you ask most Americans who was the first to fly the Atlantic they would reply “Charles Lindbergh”. But in fact much to their surprise and to the surprise of many others, at least 91 people (maybe 92 if a mysterious stowaway is included, and maybe even 94 if the mysterious fate of a pair of Portuguese aviators is ever unravelled. They disappeared on a flight across the South Atlantic and were never found, but a raft made from parts of their aircraft was discovered washed up on a remote part of the coast of Brazil) crossed the Atlantic before the Flying Fool.

Most British people would reply “Alcock and Brown” – but to the surprise of many people, that’s not correct either. What Alcock and Brown actually achieved was the TOP flight across the Atlantic.

There was an earlier trans-Atlantic flight by a US Navy Pilot by the name of Albert Read. However his flight was a little different. It was in a seaplane along a route marked by a line of US Navy ships, he made several stops on the way, had a break in the Azores before starting again for Lisbon, and the two other seaplanes that accompanied him failed to make the journey.

Nevertheless it is the first trans-Atlantic crossing no matter by what standards you measure his flight, and it has never ever received the credit that it deserves. And of course he set off from Trepassey Bay in Newfoundland.

commander read memorial plaque trepassey bay newfoundland canadaIf you hunt around the town you might, if you are lucky, eventually find a little plaque to commemorate Read’s efforts.

As for Amelia Earhart, the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air and who set off from here (and she did not pilot the aeroplane, no matter who insists that she did. In her memoirs she states that “Schultz did all the flying … I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes”), and the Marquis of Pinedo, who was first to fly the Atlantic in both directions and who set off from here on the return trip, there’s nothing at all.

marconi radio station cape race lighthouse newfoundland canadaSo from Trepassey I went off to see Cape Race, seeing as I was here.

And I was lucky too. Although the place was closed up, someone had come by to collect the post and she allowed me to visit the museum. There are quite a few artefacts there from the time of the Titanic, and they were recovered on site.

When the Marconi station closed down, it was simply bulldozed into the earth with everything still inside. When the museum was proposed, the volunteers scavenged in the debris for the artefacts to exhibit.

seal bay bulls newfoundland canadaThis gentleman set the seal on my little trip, and gave me his seal of approval. Sitting there on his rock giving me a round of applause as I drove past him.

What with porcupines, moose and bear, and now seals coming along to mark my progezss, I’m having more than my fair share of wildlife. I’m disappointed that I haven’t seen Godzilla however.

merkur sierra xr4i tor cove bay bulls newfoundland canadaAnd despite what you might be thinking, this is NOT a Ford Sierra.

This is actually a Merkur Sierra – for the Sierra and the Scorpio were exported to North America under the Merkur trade name. The experiment didn’t last very long at all and you will be very lucky to be able to find one these days. I couldn’t believe my luck.

So now I’ve found a little Bed and Breakfast on the edge of St John’s, and I am immensely happy that I bought that cheap little GPS in Windsor a few weeks ago – it’s more-than paid for itself just with tracking down these obscure places.