Tag Archives: st john’s harbour

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.

0

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.

-1