Tag Archives: valard

Thursday 2nd February 2023 – I’VE BEEN TIDYING …

… out the freezer this morning.

Not that I’ve made any more room in it but I’ve managed to sort out everything and put it where I wanted it to be. I’ve not finished yet either though because I’m convinced that I can do even better than this and I might even have another go tomorrow to see what I can do.

I’m still convinced that a bigger freezer might have been a better idea, but then I would only have filled it even fuller of stuff and I wouldn’t have been any better off afterwards.

There had to be something to do to keep me busy today because the physiotherapist didn’t come this afternoon. He sent me a text message this morning to tell me that something had cropped up and he had to cancel all of his appointments for today. So If I remember, before I go to bed I’ll go for a walk up and down the stairs to see how I cope. I have to do some exercise.

Especially as I spent much of the afternoon curled up asleep on the chair in the bedroom. Coupled with the previous night or two where I didn’t have too much sleep I suppose that things have caught up with me. Last night was rather later than usual, what with one thing and another, and I suppose that that tipped me over the edge. And I’d been doing so well too. I hadn’t crashed out during the day for a while.

Going off on a few travels too during the night might have had something to do with it. I’m not sure what was going on with this particular dream but at one point there was a girl and a cat. The girl was sitting on the edge of something or other. I asked “how would it be if I were to jump over you and land down there in front of you?” to which she made some kind of non-committal comment. I had a look and the drop down wasn’t half as much as I thought it would be although it was still something considerable. I just took 2 or 3 steps, lauched myself and jumped over her and landed below at her feet. Someone said something about some other guy who had tried this somewhere else and had injured whoever it was who was sitting down. It had caused an awful lot of problems. I was lucky to get away with this without doing any damage

There was something else too about going off to see someone in Caliburn. I was told to fetch some chips back with me too, nice and hot. On the way out I noticed that they were putting the fish and chip caravan in place on Place Godal so I thought that I’d stop and pick some up. When I glanced at the time it was only 17:00 so I thought that I’d go to see this other person first and pick up the chips on the way back. I drove out of the car park that I’d just reversed into and carried on driving.

Later on, back in the dream about going to fetch the chips but it was too early as I said, and the chip van had only just arrived so I went off to do whatever else it was that I had to do, to see someone. I was early at his place too and the gates wouldn’t open. He had electric gates. On the way back I had to come straight home but I understood for some reason that I was to alight at Cammell Laird’s and walk through the town. When we arrived at Cammell Laird’s there was a group of people outside the ship company offices there. One of them was wearing a brown suit and a sheep jacket. She saw me knock. It was a quick knock today rather than a long usual one. She saw me knock and came after me to chase me away from the building.

Finally I’d been invited to a meeting on behalf of the employees to a management meeting of all the higher-ups. There had been another meeting a month or so ago that had been quite controversial because there had been a lot of anti-feminist sentiment and debate and discussion so no woman had gone to this particular one. I was there, and someone was using it as a vehicle to complain all about FIFA’s restrictive practice in broadcasting football matches etc. I asked the question “how does FIFA differ from UEFA and the national football associations?”. All I was met with was a pile of bluster so I burst out laughing. That embarrassed the person who was speaking. After the meeting I went back to the office. Someone was climbing up the stairs. He had one of these 3D masks on. He was taking his time trying to climb up so I tried go past him but he wouldn’t let me go past. All he did was to complain about other people trying to push him along. Then he cleared off. I had to go down to a storeroom to fetch something. There was some issue about some chocolate that was in there. Some woman had been let down over this chocolate and needed someone to go. I said that I would. It was a low concrete corridor with Christmas trees down it. I set off, very careful not to bang my head on the concrete beams.

That wasn’t everything either. While I was asleep during the afternoon I was at work in an office. In my desk drawer I had a barbie doll hidden and when I went to add a second I found that my drawer was open and that the doll was on clear view to everyone who cared to look. I grabbed some fruit to lunch and thought that I’d go and sit on a chair outside in the hallway to eat it. When I went outside I found that there was a girl whom I liked sitting at the reception, a girl who has featured in these pages before. I quite liked her but I didn’t want to give herthe impression that I was stalking her so I pretended to do something somewhere else that involved a trip down the corridor and then I went back to my desk inside the other room.

After the medication and checking my messages (and still no reply to my reminder to the solicitor about the documents that I need) I spend a pleasant hour or two with the freezer. Rinsing out the drawers to dispose of the build-up of ice made something of a difference and makes them look cleaner. I can actually see what’s in there now much better than I could before.

So apart from having a good sleep, I’ve also been writing up the notes for the next series of radio programmes. Not that I’ve done very much because there’s always something that crops up to distract me when I’m trying to work.

It’s true that I’m having a very hard time concentrating these days but news about what’s happening in Labrador about the controversial fall-out from the Muskrat Falls hydro-electric project is enough to distract anyone who has an interest in it. In fact, the whole issue of the development of Hydro-electric power going back to the 1950s in Labrador is so controversial that this is just one more raccoon skin on the wall.

But finally the First-Nation Innu of the region have had enough. In the words of Peter Penashue, the chief Innu negotiator, the next stage of the development, “the Gull Island hydroelectric project, is dead on arrival”. The project, that should have realised $5,000,000 per annum for the Innu community in Central Labrador for the loss of their traditional hunting grounds, has been reduced to just a small fraction of that “because of substantial cost overruns”. Had this been anywhere else in Canada, the compensation figures would have been ring-fenced

And it’s crazy cost overruns too. When I first went to Labrador the road was NOTHING MORE THAN A 1800-KILOMETRE FARM TRACK. Over the years that I’ve been travelling north the highway has been metalled, every last inch of it, and for no good purpose either. But that’s typical of what’s going on out there just to appease NALCOR, the contractors, and Valard, the builders of the project.

Tea tonight was veggie balls with pasta and veg in tomato sauce. And it was quite delicious too. But tomorrow I’m going off on the bus to the supermarket in town and amongst the stuff that I’ll buy will be some salad stuff. I’ve become quite accustomed now for salad with my potatoes and burgers.

A nice burger on a bap with salad and chips fried in the air fryer sounds like a nice tea for tomorrow night.

Friday 15th September 2017 – I’M BACK …

… on the road again today. My stay around the Coasts of Labrador has come to an end.

But I still remember a huge, mixed-up kind of ramble during the night where I was going around all of these little settlements and cabins out on the coast.

And that’s surprising because I had yet another bad night’s sleep. Like I say, they come in cycles … “ON cycles, you mean” – ed … and we’re in one right now.

So after breakfast and sorting myself out, I took my leave of my landlord and went to find the offices of “Them Days”. That’s a magazine that publishes traditional stories about the Labrador coast.

As you know, I’m still looking for the grave of the most famous man in Labrador. It’s here in the Happy Valley Cemetery, but that’s huge and I couldn’t find it the other day.

Much to my surprise they didn’t know where it was either. But a few ‘phone calls later and I was told “he’s in the United Church Cemetery” part”, which of course is the biggest part of the cemetery.

So after an hour, and with the help of a very vocal local yokel, we came up unsuccessful. But there was a phone number there so I called it. And much to my surprise, the woman there didn’t know where he was either.

But it did lead to an interesting conversation. She asked my name – which I duly gave.
“Eric Hall? Let me see – you were in church on Sunday weren’t you?”
Our Hero – “did you see a thunderbolt then?”.
Anyway she promised to phone me back (and Josée’s phone is a godsend on this trip).

While she was making “further enquiries” I continued to search, and all of a sudden I came across it.

I missed it because I was probably expecting something much grander, seeing how his name was on everyone’s lips as the most famous man in Labrador 100 years ago.

Here then lies Gilbert Blake, the man who rescued the remains of the disastrous Leonidas Hubbard party and who accompanied Mina Hubbard on her trip into the interior to complete her husband’s work.

Ha also led countless subsequent exploring parties into the interior of Labrador and was never given credit for much of what was “discovered”.

The lady from the Church phoned me back to say where it was, and to my dismay, I had to turn down the opportunity of a lifetime.
“I spoke to Gilbert Blake’s daughter. If you would like to see her to chat, she’s available”.

But it’s 550 kms to Labrador City and it has to be done before dark. I was obliged to turn down the opportunityand I doubt that I will ever have the possibility again.

Usually, this rubbish is littered with photos of old cars in people’s gardens. But we’ve never had a photo of a garden with an old aeroplane in it.

I’ve no idea what it is, but it’s small, an early jet-fighter type of plane, and it won’t ever fly again this side of a miracle.

Labrador is certainly a different place from that respect. Nothing ordinary here.

Having fuelled up, I hit the road. About an hour later than I was intending.

About 20 miles outside the town there’s a cleft in the hills where you can see down to the works that are taking place at Muskrat Falls.

As I’ve said before, I’m not going into the rights and wrongs of the project – enough has already been said – but anyone who saw the photos of my first trip to Labrador will seethings differently now.

So off we go down the Trans-Labrador Highway into the interior.

And you’ll notice that it’s not quite autumn yet. The leaves on the deciduous trees haven’t “turned”

And you’ll notice a few changes to the highway too since we first came here. You’ll remember what a struggle it was over some of the worst roads in the world.

Today, it’s an asphalted, paved highway all the way to Labrador City.

With all of the work going on for the Muskrat falls project, a lot of trees have been removed and rock blasted away.

This opens up a whole new vista – views like this one of the Churchill River would never have been possible 10 years ago had they not blasted away some rock to put in a pylon to carry the cables.

You can see where the evergreen trees have been pulled out, and the first growth of deciduous arctic willow that is growing back in its place.

It’s that time of year, isn’t it?

In a week or so’s time it will be the annual tribal meeting of the Innu people, and they are preparing the site ready for the gathering.

I would ordinarily tell you what it’s called, but the problem with Innu names that it’s quite something to read them, never mind remember them.

I talked about the road just now. The one that we are actually on is the third attempt.

It dates from about 2011 – 2012 and it follows pretty closely in most places the line of the second road that we took in 2010.

The earlier road is what they called the “Tote Road” and dates from the period after the occupation of the Goose Bay air base by the Canadian Air Force.

If you thought that we had a struggle in places back in 2010, you can barely imagine what it must have been like in the 1970s.

The road was 10 times worse, single track, and following the contours rather than being graded across the valleys and though cuttings.

But regardless of your opinions, you’ll have to admit that they have done an excellent job of the new highway.

You can see it (and the power transmission cables) disappearing away over the hill in the distance, and it goes on for ever in just this kind of condition.

On the old dirt road, with the 70kph speed limit, in some places it was more like 70 kilometres per week. Here today, it’s a mere 80 kph but with no obstructions to slow you down.

But you slow down every now and again to take a few photos.

You’ve seen the scenery before but I bet that you’ve seen nothing like this.

There are miles and miles of forest where it seems that we have had a major forest fire fairly recently. You cans ee that some of the trees are scorched and blackened, and others have been completely destroyed

The whole of the place is littered with miles and miles of scenery just like this.

About 80 or so kms (I can’t remember now) from Labrador City I pull into Emeril Station to see what’s happening.

This is on the line from Sept Iles to Schefferville and serves the iron mines and the Innu community out there.

We have a line of wagons waiting for a locomotive, and also this dismantled dumper lorry – one of the huge 50-tonne ones- waiting to make their way north.

But I don’t see any locomotives, although I can hear a whistle away in the distance on the line to Wabush and Labrador City.

50 kilometres or so outside Labrador City, we can see that autumn has finally arrived here.

We’re deep in the interior now, and on the north-facign slopes exposed to the arctic conditions, they will be the first to catch the cold air.

Not quite the brilliant colours we are used to, but we are a couple of weeks earlier than usual this year.

Before I had left Happy Valley, my landlord had given me an address for B&B in Labrador City. I phoned her (thanks again, Josée) and she did indeed have a room free.

It took some finding with the roadworks but it was worth the effort. Not only was it the best place where I’ve stayed, it was also, believe it or not, the cheapest. I’ll be coming back here again, that’s for sure.

And hats off to Strider. He struggles on fuel as you know, but since he’s had his overdrive fixed, he seems to be a little better.

So much so that instead of the maximum 420-km distance that he seemed in the past to be able to travel, we’ve just come a mammoth 542.7 kilometres and although he’s below a quarter of a tank, the orange light hasn’t come on.

It is a good road these days – 80kph with the cruise control on all the way – and it’s still not what I would like, but it’s a vast improvement all the same and Strider can be proud of himself.

Tuesday 12th September 2017 – I’M IN GOOSE …

… Bay right now, and this bed-and-breakfast is far too posh for me. Even the spare toilet rolls in the bathroom have little hats on.

But then I shouldn’t even be here. I should have been staying somewhere else but according to mine host here, the guy whom I’m looking for is “out of town” and that’s a huge disappointment.

It means that yet another one of my projects has tombé à l’eau, as they say back home in France.

Last night, I had another disturbed night’s sleep – maybe crashing out for an hour or two in the afternoon yesterday didn’t help. But it took ages to go off to sleep, and I was tossing and turning all night.

But I was on my travels too. Back running my business and it was a Saturday morning, really quiet, and so I wandered away. I ended up at a house ful of people who were visiting someone who was quite ill.People were being let in to see this person two at a time, and there was a lot of noise coming from that room. Eventually it was my turn, and found that the sick person was another former friend of mine. She had a puppy with her – apparently her cat had died. She wasn’t interested in talking much about anything serious – just chatting about nothing. I asked her why her house was surrounded by scaffolding and she gave me a weird look. The other person there said that the house was a wreck and falling down, and this was apparent, although the house wasn’t as bad as the one next door.
Somewhere along the line I was in my bedroom when I noticed a young rat in there. That filled me with dismay.

After breakfast, I set out to tidy up my living accommodation, and that took me longer than i intended too.

And then I had to take it all out and load it into Strider. Luckily I’d tidied him out the other dayso that didn’t take too long.

I could also take a photo of the caravan too. Expensive, but it was the only thing available and I was quite comfortable in there.

And so I went to cash up, and it wasn’t quite as painful as I was expecting. But then again, to do things like this you need to bite the bullet.

It also gave me an opportunity for Strawberry Moose and me to say goodbye to our crew.

Nothing had been too much trouble for them. I was made very welcome and I’ll be delighted to go back and carry out a further exploration.

The road into Cartwright the other day was beautiful and well-worth a photograph. But with it being late afternoon, I had the sun in my eyes to the west.

Not so this morning though. I have the sun at my back and the view is even better.

That’s Main Tickle over there again, I reckon.

Somewhere down there, I reckon, is Muddy Bay where the orphanage was.

It’s impossible, apparently, to go there by road and so we were obliged to go by boat the other day.

But the weather was nothing like as good as it is today and so the photography wasn’t as good as it might have been,
and that was disappointing.

At a certain point the Métis Trail goes over the brown of a hill and just for a brief moment there’s a view in the distance of what I reckon might be Paradise River.

You can see why Cartwright gave it its name, can’t you?

This new zoom lens that I have bought is doing really well and while it’s not as sharp as I like, it’s producing the goods fair enough.

Cartwright wasn’t clearly the only one who considered it to be Paradise.

It looks as if a native Canadian has chosen this spot for his homestead and, honestly, who can blame him?

It’s the kind of place where most of us would like to settle if we have the chance – and I’ll show you my preferred spot in due course.

This is one of the places where we always stop to take a photograph as we drive by – it’s where the Métis Trail rejoins the Labrador Coastal Drive.

It’s the first place where Labrador City appears on the signs – only 813 kilometres away – and it’s only another 500 or so kilometres from there to the North Shore of the St Lawrence and Highway 138.

And I’m not going to be there for a good while yet.

Although this is one of my favourite spots on the Labrador Coastal Drive, this isn’t my ideal place – at least, from a personal point of view.

But with a stretch of 414 kilometres without fuel and any kind of facilities whatsoever, this would be the ideal spot for a couple of fuel pumps, a small motel, a little food shop and coffee bar.

But of course they won’t let me in live permanently in Canada, will they?

Around here on the dirt road the speed limit is 70kph. And although I was doing … err … about 70 kph I was passed by a lorry as if I were standing still.

A few kilometres further on, there he was on the side of the road, receiving the care and attention of the local Highway Enforcement Office, a member of which was busily writing out a ticket.

It’s the first time EVER that I’ve seen Highway Enforcement out here, and if anything is a sign that times, they are a’changing, then this is it.

Somewhere hidden in those trees is another sign of the times – a Highway Labour Camp.

And they need it too because the road – bad when it was new in 2010 – was even worse in 2014, worse still in 2015 and absolutely disgraceful this year.

They can’t let it disintegrate much more than this, surely?

One of the main arguments put forward about the veracity of the Norse sagas of Vinland concerns the cattle.

The Norse are said to have brought cattle with them, and how they had them grazing in the meadows. This is dismissed as fantasy by the critics.

But there certainly are peri-Arctic meadows in this region – dozens of them in fact, and from what I have seen there are more and more of them developing as the forests are cleared, whether by fire or other means.

Another thing that there are plenty of are eskers. These are like sand ridges and stretch for miles.

But they aren’t brought by rivers but by glaciers. The stones caught up in the glaciers rub against each other and are slowly reduced to sand.

When the glaciers recede, the sand is dumped along where the edges of the glaciers would have been, and they are spectacular where roads have been cut through them.

I mentioned earlier where my ideal spot in Labrador would be.

If I could settle here, I would be extremely happy. But also extremely isolated too because it’s miles from anywhere.

Situated at N52° 52′ 30″ and W58° 19’52” in fact.

You can see what I mean about these peri-Arctic meadows. They are all over the place these days.

And assuming that the climate was kinder in the 11th Century – in the middle of the “Medieval Warm” period, there would have been many more too.

Bringing cattle here would not have been any problem whatever, especially if the cattle had been used to life in Greenland.

There’s another enormous work camp here at the side of the road.

We’re currently up on the Eagle Plateau and so it’s called, rather imaginatively, “Eagle Camp”.

I thought at first that it was something to do with Highway maintenance, but closer inspection revealed that it’s all “Valard” – the company that is constructing the electricity transmission cables across Labrador.

Mind you, the highway DOES need attention. It was resurfaced with loose gravel in 2015 and it’s already been ripped to pieces.

At one point I hit a hidden dip, the rear end of Strider lifted off the road and I was going sideways heading for the drop off the verge.

We had an exciting couple of seconds (which seemed like a couple of hours) as I wrestled for control of the vehicle. But we are still here.

I mean – you can see what the labrador Coastal Drive looks like simply by glancing in the rear-view mirror of Strider.

At this point we have loose gravel being thrown about everywhere and clouds – and I do mean clouds – of dust thrown up behind us.

No wonder that you spend so much time fighting for traction if you are thrown off course by the lumps and potholes.

But at least it’s not like the time in the Utah Desert where the trail was so rough that I was travelling slowly and the wind was so strong and in the wrong direction that I had the unnerving experience of being overtaken by my own dust-cloud.

But oh! Wait a minute! Look at this!

When we were here in 2015 we noticed that the asphalting of the highway had started – but had come to a sudden stop with patches of gravel road in between.

But now, the asphalting has extended far beyond where it was back then. There’s the sign telling you to prepare for the gravel road, and there’s the guy cleaning off the edges of the road.

Another 5 years and it will be asphalt all the way.

But despite how good the road might be, there are still challenges to face, such as the incessant climbs and descents.

We’re travelling from south-east to north-west and all of the river valleys around here are going from south-west to north-east.

You can see over there the line on the right – that’s the road back up the other side of this valley. On the left is the track of the Valard cable from Muskrat Falls.

But here is the final descent for now. That’s the valley of the Churchill River, and to the right are the towns of Happy Valley and Goose Bay.

That’s not quite my destination for tonight though – I’m driving on to North-West River where I have things to do.

But I’ll leave you here to admire the beautiful scenery.

But a little further on is the entrance to the controversial Muskrat Falls hydro-electric project.

And opposite is the camp of the protestors. Not quite as big as the Faslane camp, but it’s limited by law, and here all the same.

I’m not going into the rights and wrongs of the project, because everyone has his or her own opinion about it, but it’s one of these things where, from my own point of view, the environmental and cultural objections outweigh the profit considerations.

But then again, as I keep on saying, I don’t have to live here

But leaving aside Muskrat Falls for the moment, I clatter across the metal bridge over the Churchill River.

It’s been known by several other names, such as the Grand River (which it certainly is) and the Hamilton River, but it was renamed the “Churchill” upon the death of Sir Winston.

But whatever name it might have, it’s certainly the most famous river in the whole of Labrador,and probably the most important too.

As usual these days, arriving in Happy Valley, I find a different dirt road heading east and follow it all the way that I can.

And on this particular road, I can’t go any further. But it certainly brings me to a spectacular view over Goose bay and the head of the Hamilton Inlet.

It’s very easy to picture the scene as the first European explorers – maybe Louis Fornel the fur trader or maybe John Davis of the Davis Straits – or maybe even the Norse explorers – made landfall here.

But hats off to this guy here at Birch Lane Farm. It’s not everyone who would attempt commercial farming in a place like this.

But he seems to have plenty of crops and a good growth of hay, so it looks as if he can make a good go of it.

It totally undermines the opinions that people have about the “Frozen North” – just as it did when I saw the shipping container marked “Alaskan Agriculture”.

A quick call in to the port here at Terrington Basin in Goose Bay to see who’s about.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a “Ship of the Day” and we strike it lucky here. We have the heavy load carrier Fairlane who left Shanghai on 12th July and came here via the Suez Canal.

That’s a long way to come for any ship and it makes me wonder what it was that she was bringing in.

At North West River we hit a temporary setback. My contact isn’t answering his telephone so that rules out my accommodation and my project for tomorrow, which is a disaster.

Not only that, the B&B in the town is fully-booked up.

The motel has a room, but it requires me to drive all the way back to Goose Bay to pick up the key as the unit here is unstaffed. And the girl at reception is particularly unhelpful.

So badger that for a gale of soldiers. A quick telephone call (thanks, Josée for the ‘phone) conjures up a bed in a B&B in Happy Valley, at a price rather less than the motel. I can do that so I cancel the motel room.

But it’s frightfully posh in here – way out of my league. The spare toilet rolls in the bathroom have hats on.

I’m more used to the kind of place where you can “spit on the deck and call the cat a b@$t@rd” as you know, but beggars can’t be choosers, not by any stretch of the imagination

At least I can use the microwave here, so it’s beans, sausages and spuds for tea. And then an early night.

I’m whacked!

Friday 8th September 2017 – I HAD A …

…disturbed night last night – hardly surprising seeing as I knew that I needed to be up early.

But that didn’t stop me from going on my travels during the night, such as they were.

I was playing in a rock group and to be honest we weren’t much good – but what worked for us was that we were backing a Bruce Forsyth-kind of character who knew how to entertain the crowds and keep them in suspense as long as possible – hiding in the wings until the climax of the musical accompaniment and then sending on the cleaner or someone like that.

But by 05:30 I had made a conscious decision to rouse myself, pack, and eat my breakfast. Especially the last bit, seeing as it was included. Toast, cornflakes (with my own soya milk) orange juice and, eventually, once I had figured out the machine, coffee.

And much to my surprise I had a phone call. WhatsApp clearly works because Ingrid phoned me for a brief chat and it was nice to hear her voice.

It was only 15 minutes to the ferry terminal and I was second in the queue. So I was soon paid up and down on the quayside.

Apollo came in and, poor thing, she’s looking even sadder an older than she did last time that I was aboard.

47 years old she is now. Surely she can’t go on much longer. But there are no plans to replace her and with the Sir Robert Bond having been sold for scrap, she has to keep going regardless now.

There is, apparently, a type of fish called an “Arctic Char” but I’m imagining a kind of fish dressed in a fur coat that comes round to clean your cabin.

You can still see the signs on the ship written in Finnish and Estonian in the passenger compartment.

This shows you how long it is since Apollo has had a full refit. Even the power sockets are old European 230-volt.

The high winds meant that it was quite a rough crossing – the roughest that I have ever experienced on the Straits of Belle Isle – with the odd crash and bang as we collided with an iceberg or a walrus.

But that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. But there was one guy who was leaning over the rail.
“The trouble with you” I said “is that you have a weak stomach”.
“Rubbish” he retorted. “I’m throwing it as far as everyone else”.

And there’s a young girl on board who is the spitting image of an 11 year old Ginny Weasley starting Hogwarts. I had to look twice to make sure. She and her family were off to “Labby”, which is Labrador City apparently.

I was actually second off the boast when we arrived, which is something of a record.

I made a prominent note of that

But the weather was foul when we arrived. High gusting winds, a typical Labrador mist and it was doing its best to rain down upon us but somehow holding off for the moment.

Not as bad as 2014 but not far off.

As you know, I’ve been to Blanc Sablon on many occasions, but for some reason I’ve never taken any photos of the town.

Last year I’d made out a list of things to do next time I was here, and photographing the place was high on the list.

And so I parked up Strider and went for a little stroll around the town

The area was given its name by Jacques Cartier when he came here on one of his voyages of discovery in the 1530s.

No-one is certain though as to whether it refers to the “Blanc Sablon” which is near his home port of St Malo (just across the bay from where I live) or whether it really dos refer to the white sands that are found here.

And the bay here is another possible site for the elusive “Vinland” of the Norse voyagers.

Regular readersof this rubbis will recall that the area is quite controversial too.

It’s actually in the Province of Quebec but an isoltaed part that is cut off from the rest of the Province, and is known by locals as “the Forgotten Coast”.

They claim that because it’s English-speaking here and so isolated, they are (deliberately) starved of resources, and there is a movement afoot to secede from Quebec and join up with Labrador.

We have to have the obligatory photograph to say that we have arrived, don’t we?

I joined the queue, because it seems to be an obligatory thing these days to take your photograph here, rather like the place that we visited in Monument Valley in 2002.

Strider is of course very photogenic as you might expect. Strawberry Moose would have gone out too but the weather was atrocious and you wouldn’t put a dog out in this, never mind a moose.

Another thing on my “to do” list was to sort out the confusion over the churches in Forteau. And so I went in search of the aforementioned.

There were two that I discovered, and this is the Forteau United Church. I did not, however, discover the Forteau City Church. That must be somewhere else completely.

I must make further enquiries.

Before they started to build the coastal road network in the 1950s, access between the villages was by coastal path.

Nothing had changed here for 200 years since the early settlers and merchants had arrived in the 1740s.

This is the coastal path between Forteau and l’Anse au Clair – the next town to the south. It’s closed these days though because of erosion and landslips.

Way over there in the distance across Forteau Bay (thanks to the telephoto lens and a little digital enhancement) is the lighthouse at Point Amour.

We were there, as you may remember, on our travels in October 2010 when we went to inspect the shipwrecks.

There are the remains of two Royal Navy ships out there – the HMS Lily which ran aground in the 1870s and the HMS Raleigh which ran aground in the early 1920s.

Quite a lot of other ships have come to grief there two, including two in one day in 1941.

Forteau actualy consists today of two separate villages in the past.

Here is the site of Buckle’s Point. It’s on the South Side of the river and it’s where the Channel Islanders under de Quetteville settled.

Today though, the modern village has settled a little further round the bay to the south.

The English settled on the north side of the river andtheir settlement was rather imaginatively called “English Point”.

Today, though, it’s more like the suburbs of Forteau because all of the commercial activity takes place on the south side of the river

Very few people actually stop here and the area is quite often overlooked, just as I am doing right now.

We’ve talked … “at great length” – ed … about the Muskrat Falls and the distribution system that takes the generated current under the Strait of Belle Isle.

When I was looking into it, I noticed that Valard – the company that is doing all of the work – had applied for planning permission to build a quay at the site of their subterranean cable in order to offload their own materials.

And so I went in search of the aforementioned – and although I was locked out of the site, with a little judicious manipulation I was able tohave a butcher’s.

But it doesn’t look big enough to be an alternative landing stage for Apollo if Quebec bans the company from the port at Blanc Sablon.

The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador has a history of grand projects that somehow never seem to come to fruition even though a great deal of money is thrown at them

.Here at Capstan Island a great deal of noise was made about a farm and greenhouses that had been installed on the edge of townand it was even listed as a tourism site where people could come to visit.

Today though, it would be a waste of time to visit because it’s all closed down and abandoned. Part of it has collapsed and all of the roofs have gone.

And as a visitor venue – it’s “closed to visits”.

So much for that then;

When I came here in 2010 I told you that a section of the road that followed the Pinware River was one of the most beautiful that I had driven.

In 2014 however, I noticed that they had by-passed the road with a modern highway over the mountains and that this section had been abandoned.

And so I decided that I would do my best to follow the road round today and see how it was doing and to show you what you have missed.

“This Highway is no longer maintained by the Department of Transport. You drive this road at your own risk” said a notice.

And they were right too. Part of the road has been washed out and it was something of a struggle to findmy way around the obstructions.

But this is why I bought Strider, and quite right too. He made short work of this stretch of highway as long as we took it easy.

And it was well-worth it too.

After the recent rainstorms the Pinware River was in spate and the famous rapids were really impressive today.

The noise was deafening and so I took a little video of it from closer in. When I find a decent internet connection I’ll upload it.

I mentioned the new road just now.

Once I rejoined the main road I took a photo of the new route up over the top of the hills.

I remember watching a large artic struggle up there in first gear back in 2014 and remember wondering what was going through the minds of the planners when they re-routed heavy vehicles up there.

This mountain pass isquite significant because once we pass through it and out the other side, we are at the coast.

Red Bay and its famous 16th-Century Basque whaling station is just the other side.

But for some reason this path always reminds me of somewhere in Scotland and I can’t remember where it is.

First thing to do at Red Bay is of course to go and check to see how the MV Bernieris getting on.

She was delivering coal here one November in the 1930s when she broke free from her moorings during a storm and was driven across the bay onto the rocks of Saddle Island.

And here she sits today, looking sadder and sadder as more and more weather takes its toll.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Red Bay has an exciting claim to fame.

A student was researching the history of Basque whaling in North America when she came across a whole pile of legal documents from the 16th Century relating to a dispute between a whaling captain and his financial backer over the loss of a couple of whaling ships.

The losses were described in such detail that she reckoned that it would be possible to identify the site of the whaling station from aerial photography.

Accordingly, she pored over thousands of photographs and maps, until she came across one covering Red Bay – and then the light went on.

She came over here to do fieldwork and found, in the spot where she reckoned one of the buildings to be, some red roofing tiles of a type unknown in North America but quite common in 16th Century Northern Spain.

She even rediscovered the cemetery where several sailors and other workers had been buried.

But the best was yet to come;

The story told how one of the ships had been gripped by a sudden storm in November, driven across the bay and wrecked on Saddle Island;

This sounded so much like the story of the Bernier that she went and looked where the Bernierhad come to rest. And sure enough – the Bernier was sitting on top of a 16th Century Basque whaling vessel.

All in all, several Basque ships were lost in the Bay and most have been identified.

Furthermore, they even discovered a Basque rowing boat that had sunk at the shore and because of the cold peaty water that was still in a surprisingly good condition.

That has been recovered and is on display in the museum here.

The road north from Red Bay is in my opinion one of the worst sections of the Trans-Labrador Highway – and that’s saying something.

It wasn’t opened until 1992 – prior to that, access was only by ship – and it looked at one time as if the road had never ever been maintained since the day that it was built.

But it won’t be like that for much longer because they are making headway with the road improvements that they had started in 2014 are well advanced.

And so our drive north is punctuated by sights such as these.

Diggers and graders, and lorry-loads of gravel being brought to the site.

And compactors too. We mustn’t forget tham. When I was on the Trans-Labrador Highway in 2010 I saw a grand total of two. There were two compactors working on this little stretch of highway.

But it’s not all like that. There are sections of the Labrador Coastal Drive that bring back many happy memories. So much so that on two occasions I had Strider going sideways.

He’s rear-wheel drive and relatively lightly-loaded and so the rear end hops around everywhere. So hit a bump or a pothole at the wrong angle and off you go, and you have to struggle to regain control.

I bet that the driver of the car coming towards me on one occasion had to stop and change his underwear;

But just look at this!

This is why they are carrying out all of the groundwork here. The aim is to asphalt all of the highway from Red Bay to Goose Bay. Such are the “benefits” that the Muskrat Falls and the power of Valard Construction have brought to the Coasts of Labrador.

And before anyone says anything, I do realise that i’m a tourist looking at things from my own perspective. I don’t have to live here in the depths of winter.

After acouple of mileswe have the double-tracked asphalt and I can set the cruise control accordingly.

But we can also see that they are realigning the road. Where the road runs through a cutting, it’s often impassible in winter because the snow drifts in and packs tight. It becomes a real engineering job to move it.

Going over the top means that the snow will be loose and blowy, and thus easier to move with a snowplough.

We don’t stay on the asphalt for long though. We’re soon back in the gravel.

And I’m soon driving over Lodge Bay too. I’ve been past here several times as you know but for some reason or other i’ve never ever stopped to take a photograph of the place.

Not that there’s too much to see of course, because it’s only a small place. In fact, had it not been on the direct route of the Labrador Coastal Drive, it’s likely that it too would have fallen victim to the Province’s resettlement programme.

But this is what you are faced with around here. In severe weather they simply close the road and that’s that.

If you are a traveller and are confronted with the closed gate, you simply park up, build yourself an igloo and go off hunting seal until the Spring.

After all, if you are the kind of person who is in a hurry, you shouldn’t be out around here in Labrador anyway. It’s not for the type of person who has a timetable or an agenda.

Another place that was high on my list of places to visit was Mary’s Harbour.

I’d been here before in 2010 but had been sidetracked by the fact that I had forgotten the change of time zone just up the road so I had lost half an hour.

Not a good plan when you have a ferry to catch and plenty of other things to do, so I couldn’t hang around too much.

Mary’s Harbour is another one of these “resettlement points” but its history goes back much farther than Joey Smallwood.

Outside just off the coast is the island of Battle Harbour and at one time this was the most important place on the whole of the Labrador coast.

However, almost 90 years ago, like most places in Canada, Battle Harbour was the victim of fire, and almost everything on the island was destroyed.

Seeing which way the wind was likely to blow in the future (which comes as quite a surprise to most people) it was decided to abandon the island and settle somewhere else, but on the mainland close by.

Mary’s Harbour seemed like the ideal place to be, seeing as it was close by, had a deep natural harbour that stretched a good way inland and was thus sheltered from the bad weather.

And over the course of time, the inhabitants of many other coastal communities have been resettled here, often quite controversially.

But then, this is not the place to discuss the Resettlement Policy. We’ll be doing enough of that when we arrive in North West River.

Abandoning a good rant before we even start, I make tracks northwards. I’m heading for Port Hope Simpson where I hope to be able to find a bed for the night.

And sure enough, I do. Campbell’s Place is home to home-made bread, home made jams from local ingredients and,like everywhere else in the town, home to the slowest internet connection on the planet.

But there’s a single room at what passes these days for a resonable price, and the bed seems quite comfortable too. First thing is to plug in the slow cooker while I have a shower and wash my undies.

Tea is pasta, mushrooms and vegetable soup, and aren’t I glad that I spent this $14:00 on the slow cooker? Yes, i’ve just seen the prices of the takeaway food.

No internet worth talking about of course, and so I can crack on with the … good grief! … 127 photographs that I took today.

And then a lie down while I listen to the Navy Lark on the radio – and promptly fall asleep. It’s been a long day today.

and I’ve just written a new record of 3027 words too – so there!

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!

Monday 28th September 2015 – WHAT A GOOD NIGHT …

… that was last night in Wood Cottage. I had had a good shower and shave, done a machine-load of washing, had a nice tea (rice and vegetables seasoned with a packet of dried onion soup), spent some time on the internet, and then flat-out upstairs in a nice heated bedroom.

And you can tell how good a sleep I had had, for I was on my travels again. I’d been playing for a Welsh Premier League football team in a European competition and we were so unprepared that we had been playing for just 18 minutes and we were already 3-0 down. And then there was a call on the public address system for the stadium electrician, and so Terry had to leave the field to go to deal with the issue and so we were down to 10 men already.

But that did bring back memories of a match at Pionsat. We were in mid-game and the siren at the fire station sounded, so two of the players ran from the field (they were volunteer firemen) and went down to the station. And they came back later when the emergency was over and rejoined the game.

And while you admire the view of the Innu community’s settlement at Sheshatshiu across the river, let me tell you about the internet here at North West River.

North West River is a small settlement, the farthest north that it is possible to go by road in Labrador (and then only since about 1982), and across the river is a First Nation settlement. An outpost of civilisation it most certainly is, and yet the internet speed here is a good ten (and I do mean 10) times faster than the speed that I have at home.

I said that North West River has only been connected to the national highway system since about 1982 when the road bridge was built. Prior to that, we had the coastal boat that called here once a week.

But North West River is actually on the north side of the river, and civilisation (in the name of Goose Bay and Happy Valley) is on the south. To cross the river to civilisation, you had your canoe in the summer and your ice-skates in winter but in the very early 1960s a cable-car from the UK was installed here and this was luxury!

When the bridge was opened, the chair lift became redundant. The town bought it for the symbolic dollar and it’s here on display on the site from which it used to operate.

The site is next-door to the Labrador Heritage Museum, and that’s my next port of call.

The museum is situated in the old Hudsons Bay Trading Post and part of the exhibition is a fully-restored store inside, complete with many period products. The museum is officially closed as it’s now out of season but I’ve managed to blag my way in for a private tour. It wasn’t the Trading Post that interested me (although it did) but there was quite an exhibition about the boats that plied the coast here but also a big exhibition of artefacts from the Leonidas Hubbard and Mina Hubbard expeditions, including photos that Dillon Wallace had taken on his travels with Leonidas.

And I was right about the Labrador flag. The blue is the sea, the green is the forest and the white is the snow.

I spent a good couple of hours in the museum and then I went off for another wander around the town.

I’d noticed on an old map that I had seen that by the side of the dirt track out to the north, there was an airstrip indicated. It’s no longer used since the town has a road connection with the airport at Goose Bay, but I still thought it might be an interesting thing to try to find.

And here we are. This is the airstrip – now built-on in places and with some light industry in what I imagine would have been the airstrip building

That wasn’t all the excitement out here either.

I’d seen some people way out in the distance looking as if they were working in a field, and so I walked right over there to talk to them. They are indeed working in the field, pulling up their crop of potatoes, and here’s the evidence. They reckon that this is a bad year for their spuds but I’d be happy with a crop like this.

They told me that carrots, cabbages, lettuce and a few other crops are grown here but people keep them near to their houses as they need quite a lot of tending. Potatoes don’t need much tending at all and so they can grow them out in what passes around here for fields. I reckon that it’s just sand but at least that will warm up quickly once the sun comes out, as anyone who has sat on a beach will tell you.

From here, I went for a drive around the Innu settlement at Sheshatshiu but I won’t be posting any photos of it here. In fact, I didn’t take any at all.

There’s a reason for that. Sheshatshiu is an artificial settlement built under the extremely controversial Government plan of regrouping all of the outlying Innu settlements into larger centres of population with a concentration of services. But unfortunately it’s destroyed the lifestyle of the Innu and given them nothing to replace it. Just like the settlement out at the Davis Inlet, Sheshatshiu is a hotbed of despair, destitution, alcoholism and drug abuse, and you can see the hopelessness everywhere.

This is something that I’ve seen in other First Nation and Native American settlements – the hopelessness.I would have thought that Europeans would have learnt to leave the native communities alone and let their way of life evolve at their own pace.

By Europeans, by the way, I mean people of European origin, whether or not they are 10th Generation Canadians.

Talking of First Nation settlements, there is about half a dozen of them further up the northern Labrador coast (and that’s a lot less that there used to be before the Government’s controversial compulsory resettlement policy) and the only access that they have is by sea.

The Northern Ranger is the ship that carries out the service and calls at each of the settlements, making the tour once a week. And here she is, at the quayside in Goose Bay loading up for – I imagine – Cartwright and the enigmatically-named Black Tickle.

There was a great deal of activity at the Goose Bay airport too. A couple of helicopters were taking off and landing, there was a whole stream of light aircraft coming in to land, and there was a cargo plane over there at the terminal.

It’s all go since Valard began all of the work on the hydro plant at the Muskrat Falls – it’s brought piles of changes to the area, but it’s still a far cry from the days when this was an important port-of-call on the Atlantic Ferry in World War II and subsequently a major NATO base during the Cold War.

I came here in 2010 and the place really was derelict in those days but now it’s being tidied up a bit.

The hangars were in a desperate state in those days but now they seem to be in use for light industry. And talking of Valard and the construction works here, in one of the hangars is a company that specialises in buying, selling and repairing heavy plant and machinery. And I bet that there’s a great deal of that needing repair too, seeing the amount of work that they do and the conditions in which they are doing it.

I fuelled up Strider again (you need to fuel up at every opportunity out here) and set off for Labrador City after that.

And while you can no longer go to visit the Muskrat Falls due to all of the construction, the construction work has opened up some astonishing vistas that were no longer visible previously. This is one of them – you wouldn’t have seen this a few years ago. And it’s not the only one either. There are plenty of them and the whole scenery is changing.

It’s not only the Muskrat Falls that is undergoing major construction work. I’ve been noticing dozens and dozens of new cabins and homes springing up all along the Trans Labrador Highway that were certainly not there previously.

Some of them are quite banal as you might expect, but one or two of them have been built by people with a sense of the unusual and the eccentric. This home has quite fascinated me and I could quite happily live in a house like this – especially the tower bit. I love that.

One thing that I do like about Labrador at this time of the year is the beautiful autumn colours.

The northern side of the valley catches the sun and is quite sheltered from the wind and so there are plenty of deciduous trees that grow up there. And here, there’s a spectacular view of a deciduous forest and as the colours change for the autumn, they are magnificent. I could sit and look at these colours for ever.

When I came by up here in 2010 the road was thoroughly dreadful and it took hours to cover just 150 kilometres. Today though, it’s all different and we have a really modern and quick black-top highway so that we can cover the ground as fast as we like (subject to the 80 kph speed limit of course).

Just here, you can see a sample of the old road along which we used to have to travel and you won’t be surprised that it took so long to cover the ground. However, I am glad that I did the route when it was still a challenge and a struggle. It’s nothing like that now of course.

By economising on the performance of Strider, I’m managing to stretch out the fuel consumption a little. And so I didn’t call at Churchill Falls to fuel up. Strider won’t do the 550 kilometres to Labrador City of course, but I still have 40 litres in cans in the back. And so I’m heading to the sheltered little rest area by the Churchill Falls to spend the night

But talking of Valard and construction and the like, this is Churchill Falls airport and it never ever looked like this.

There’s been a considerable amount of rebuilding and expansion that’s gone on here this last year or so, and you can see who are the major customers here, judging by the amount of Valard vehicles parked in the car park.

And Valard vehicles are everywhere – at one point a stream of 5 Valard pick-ups passed me in the opposite direction and at almost every track off into the forest there are one or two parked up.

Now, I’m on the rest area. I’ve put my 20 litres of fuel in and I’ve settled down in the back of Strider, listening to the pouring rain beating down upon the insulation on the roof. I’m going to crawl into my sleeping bag in a minute and watch a film. And if I fall asleep during the film, then ask me if I care.

Tuesday 23rd September 2014 – I SPENT LAST NIGHT …

… sleeping in an esker.

I mean, I don’t mean sleeping IN an esker like that arctic explorer and fellow former Nantwich-dweller Jack Hornby and his companion James Critchell Bullock back 90-odd years ago.

They actually burrowed in like rabbits and built themselves a cave. I actually spent the night sleeping in an old quarry that has been formed where a load of sand had been removed from an esker.

And an esker? It’s like a sandbank but has been deposited by a glacier rather than a river or a sea and the whole of northern Labrador is covered in them. This one is about 10 miles north of Lodge Bay.

And I was up even as dawn was breaking, and on my way. It was quite cold and damp and so I needed to warm up the Dodge before I could do much. A good drive for half an hour would sort that out

A sign of the times is how the raffic is on the roads around here. Back in 2010 you could drive for hours and not see another vehicle. Here on Iceberg Alley at the moment, at just 07:20 it’s like the M6. There’s a car coming towards me and there’s a car coming behind me too

At the end of Iceberg Alley is a small town called St Lewis and as I have said before
it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth, and this is where I’ve come for breakfast.

But they were quite right about the storm worsening today. I’ve tried to open the door to go out and take a photo but I physically can’t open the door against the wind. I had to turn the Dodge around. And the coffee that I made went down well too. I needed that.

Fuel is also 152.9 cents per litre at Port Hope Simpson so I fuel up again. Not that I desperately need it but as I have said before, you should never pass up a reasonable opportunity to fill up your tank when you are out here

The reason is that it this sign that you are up against in areas like this. And if I’m going to look at Paradise River, something that I overlooked to do in 2010, then I’ll need an extra 100 kms of fuel at least for all of that

So this is Paradise River. It’s another place that could qualify for one of the most beautiful places on earth.

I can see how it got its name but as for the village itself, there’s no focal point or hint of any urban node – It’s a linear village and just stretches along the road on the shore of the river with a house here, a house there.

It was once a very much larger village but 1918 flu epidemic swept away a good proportion of the inhabitants and others have slowly drifted away. That’s quite evident by empty lots and abandoned property and state of one or two of the houses. Then again, people living in Paradise River would have an 80km round trip to the shops and to get fuel. How isolated is that for a village?

There’s an area right by the junction where the road to Cartwright leaves the Labrador Coastal Drive that I’ve had my eye on ever since 2010. It would make a perfect motel, shop, cafe and fuel station.

However, it’s been usurped by the Newfoundland and Labrador Tourist Board as the principal tourist rest area for the trail. It weems that people have indeed been reading my notes but lack the capital to invest in the plot.

Now I’m heading right into the mountains. And the weather is fluctuating like no-one’s business. We’re having bright sunlight, then clouds, then torrential rain, and then back in the sunlight and it’s changing faster than it ever does in the Auvergne.

And if you want to kno the meaning of “intrepid”, have a look at this photo. These are two motorcyclists and they’ve come all the way round from Goose Bay, and probably from further round too.

A motorcycle doesn’t have the range to do this leg of the trail and these motorcyclists are stopping to fuel up their bikes out of cans. This is certainly adventurous.

This is sample shot of the road where I stopped on one occasion and look how much this road has deteriorated compared to how it was in 2010. And this is far from being the worst part of it either.

It was never ever like this 4 years ago and I’ve no idea what might be in their heads letting the road deteriorate like this in just 4 years. It doesn’t say much for the long-term future of the road if it’s ended up like this.

This is my lunch stop for this afternoon and isn’t it beautiful? The river doesn’t seem to be carrying a nameplate so I don’t know what it is, but the bridge is dated 2008 if that’s of any use. I could quite happily settle down here in this spot.

And just look at the poor Dodge. It’s looking as if it could do with a really good wash but it isn’t going to have one for a while yet.

This is the Valard Construction camp and there are enough mobile homes here to house a thousand people.

It seems that the Muskrat Falls at Goose Bay are to have a hydro-electric dam. The power is going to come this way on pylons and there will be side roads built to service the pylons. The power is togo all the way through to Forteau and then under the sea to Newfoundland and then under the sea again to Cape Breton and then Maine.

Its primary purpose is to provide electricity to the Province, earn revenue by exporting the surplus to Nova Scotia and the USA, and freeing themselves from Quebec Hydro’s oppressive grip.

And there’s talk of asphalting the whole length of this highway – in fact an asphalt plant has already been built.

Standing in the middle of the road, acting as if he owned it, which he probably did, is our old friend Mr Moose.

He stood there as if challenging me to a contest but he was no match for Strawberry Moose and so he slowly lumbered out of the way to leave me with a clear path to drive all of the way down to Goose Bay. That was very good of him

I didn’t stop in Goose Bay but went right through to North West River, the farthest northern point of the Province that it is feasible to reach by road.

This is a beautiful place to visit, especially in the setting sun. And it really did look this good too.

So now that I’ve accomplished this task, another one that I didn’t do in 2010, I retraced my steps to the docks at Goose Bay and I’ll settle down here for the night. This will do me

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: valard

Thursday 2nd February 2023 – I’VE BEEN TIDYING …

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Tuesday 12th September 2017 – I’M IN GOOSE …

Friday 8th September 2017 – I HAD A …

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

Monday 28th September 2015 – WHAT A GOOD NIGHT …

Tuesday 23rd September 2014 – I SPENT LAST NIGHT …

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