A new blog

Posted on September 8, 2010 by admin

I am in the process of mov­ing the older blog post here and re-publishing them.  It may take some time to get all up and run­ning with pho­tos inte­grated, etc.  Once the rest of the site is set up I will be re-hosting the cur­rent blog here.

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The fire at the petrol depot

Posted on September 9, 2006 by admin

One Sun­day soon after we arrived we were awoken from a mid-afternoon nap by the shouts of chil­dren out­side, and imme­di­ately real­ized from the low rum­ble, almost pres­sure waves rather than audi­ble sound, that per­me­ated the air, that some­thing was badly wrong. Leap­ing up, we could see from the win­dow a huge col­umn of black smoke ris­ing from the Light Indus­trial Area. We jumped into the car and drove out to the Chin­gola Road, from where we could soon see that one of the large tanks at the Petrol Depot, the only one in town, was ablaze. We drove down the Lon­don Road and joined a small knot of spec­ta­tors watch­ing work­men rolling 44-gallon drums of petrol away from the blaz­ing tank, through thick smoke and enor­mous heat. The men were show­ing incred­i­ble courage, and man­aged to get most of the 44-gallon drums away from the fire.

How­ever, we heard later and read in the morn­ing papers that, on the other side of the fire, the side that adjoined an African town­ship, UNIP Youth agi­ta­tors had incited a small riot against whites. This had spilled over onto the main road, where rocks were thrown at the cars com­ing into town from Chin­gola. A lady was killed by a rock that came through her windscreen.

This inci­dent caused a drop in the petrol ration from 10 impe­r­ial gal­lons per month to 8 gal­lons, which was a real hard­ship for any­body who did not live close to work.

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The windows of the house falling out, and Artie Nel

Posted on September 9, 2006 by admin

On arrival in Kitwe in July 1966, Arlene and I spent the first 10 days in the brand-new Edin­burgh Hotel, while the com­pany made a house ready for us. What lux­ury – Cray­fish Meu­niere at 15/- (about $US$2.00), and a good Tournedo for even less! Never had either of us had it so good.

But all good things must come to an end, and after 10 days we moved into a house in “The Gulch” – a cres­cent of semi-detached bun­ga­lows near the Con­vent in which Anglo Amer­i­can Corp put all of its new employ­ees. The evening that we moved in, we real­ized that the place was lit­er­ally seething with cock­roaches, and so, after killing as many as we could and unpack­ing our suit­cases (it would be a cou­ple of months before any trunks arrived: they had been shipped to “Char­tered Explo­ration – Lusaka. In bond via Beira”) we fell into an exhausted sleep.

The next morn­ing I went to see Mr. Nel, over in the AAC offices oppo­site Coro­na­tion Square — the rumor was that the big­wigs over there refused to have the explo­ration offices in their build­ing, because we geol­o­gists left big muddy boot­prints all over their nice clean car­pets. Mr. Nel obvi­ously DID NOT like it that I was com­plain­ing, and imme­di­ately launched into an emphatic speech: “Look, Mr. Berry, we are not in Lon­don and we are not in New York, we are in the mid­dle of Effrika, and there is noth­ing I can dew about a few cock­roaches. You will just have to learn to live with them!” So I went over to Diamond’s Super­mar­ket and bought a Com­mu­nist Chi­nese stir­rup pump and some really nasty bil­ious yel­low poi­son to go in it.

That evening we sprayed in all the nooks and cran­nies in the kitchen, and at every­thing that moved. I was really angry at Artie Nel, so I gath­ered a cou­ple of hun­dred dead or dying cock­roaches into the pages of the day’s “Times of Zam­bia”, and went to bed.

The next morn­ing I went over to his office again, news­pa­per in hand, to be greeted by the same tirade: “Look Mr. Berry, I have told you once and I will tell you again, you are not in Lon­don and you are not in New York….” I inter­rupted his speech by dump­ing the dead and sticky cock­roaches all over his desk, and walked out. The next day the exter­mi­na­tors came around to the house.

About a week later, as I shut the door of the liv­ing room on the way to bed, the entire out­side wall of the room fell out, with a mighty crash of break­ing glass. The wall con­sisted of a wooden frame hold­ing a row of lou­vered win­dows which ran the length of the room: the frame had been com­pletely con­sumed by ter­mites. Again, I went over to Artie Nel’s office, to be greeted by, “Gott, Mr. Berry, I hev told you before and I’ll tell you again, we are not in New …” This time, how­ever, he was obvi­ously fed up with my com­plaints and was not going to do any­thing about it, even if the sky had fallen in. I had no evi­dence to dump on him, so I had to get my boss, Pete Free­man, involved, and we got the main­te­nance crew out within a cou­ple of days.

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Texas to Labrador (7)

Posted on October 1, 2004 by admin

STATISTICAL SUMMARY:

Dates: April 30 – Oct. 1st

Total Elapsed time: 155 days (5 months and 2 days)(includes a break of 14 days)

Total time in Sad­dle: 101 days

Total Dis­tance: 6,332 miles ( 10,131 km)

Aver­age dis­tance per day: 62.7 miles (100.3 km)

South­ern­most Point: Sabal Palm Bird Sanc­tu­ary, Texas (South­ern­most point in TX)

North­ern­most Point: Red Bay, Labrador (North­most black­top road E. of Manitoba)

East­ern­most Point: Cape Spear, Nfld (the east­ern­most point of N. America)

West­ern­most Point: Kingsville, TX

Lat­i­tude Range: 25.90 – 51.82 N = 25.9 degrees

Lon­gi­tude Range: 52.65 – 97.87 W = 45.2 degrees

Red Bay, the north­ern­most point, is at the lat­i­tude of Clac­ton or Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, Eng­land, sea­side resorts 25 miles from where I grew up in Ipswich, and fre­quent des­ti­na­tions of cycle rides in my teen years.

Nights Camped out: 46 (33%)

Nights in Motel: 46 (33%)

B&B, Hos­tel, Ferry: 49 (34%)

Weight Loss: 45 lbs, from 230 lbs to 185 lbs.

NARRATIVE OF LAST SECTION OF RIDE:

My last report was from L’Anse-au-Clair, Labrador. On my last night at the Bed and Break­fast there the cod fish­ing sea­son opened for a day, and the son of the owner brought back two huge crates of cod, which had to be gut­ted and packed away that night. The next morn­ing the Moose sea­son opened, and it seemed that every­one in south­ern Labrador was off to “Get their Moose”. This is not a mat­ter of sport: the peo­ple of the area buy no pro­tein – they live on the fish they catch and their one annual moose and cari­bou. This is true of a large part of New­found­land and Labrador, and gives rise to some humor­ous songs by local musi­cians such as “Buddy, Wha’s ‘s Name, and the Other Fel­low” . It also means that there is lit­tle need for super­mar­kets, and between that and the low pop­u­la­tion den­sity, this means that there are no super­mar­kets over an area about 500 miles across.

From Blanc Sablon, which is just over the Labrador line in Que­bec, I took the ferry to Rimouski, Que­bec. This ferry, the Nordik Express, con­nects many of the lit­tle set­tle­ments on the North Shore of Que­bec, includ­ing Har­ring­ton Har­bor, the scene of the movie La Grande Seduc­tion (The Seduc­tion of Doc­tor ___? in Eng­lish, I believe). Almost all of these set­tle­ments are Anglo­phone, and there is no road that con­nects any of them east of Natashquan. The ride takes 3 days and nights, and at each stop we spent an hour or two off-loading con­tain­ers and on-loading oth­ers, since this is the only con­nec­tion with the out­side world.

The east­ern part of the coast is beau­ti­ful, with high hills and bare rocky out­crops: the set­tle­ments are few and far between, their brightly-painted wooden houses perch­ing on the bare rock or, in some cases, nes­tled in lit­tle lush coves. On the first morn­ing we woke up at St.-Augustin, and then pro­ceeded west through a straight, nar­row chan­nel like those in the Stock­holm skar­gard. At La Tabatiere most of the pas­sen­gers got off and walked into the vil­lage, or in the cases of three of us, rode our bikes in, and explored: we did this at each oppor­tu­nity. This area is out­side the area of really rich cod fish­eries, and so is infa­mous as the locale of the baby seal hunts – seal­ing was a means of sus­te­nance and pro­vided the only cash income. On the ferry we were shown an old doc­u­men­tary (in French) about seal hunt­ing – in this case hunt­ing of adult seals, their trans­port across the ice by sled dog team, and their rendering.

At Tete-a-la-Baleine we hitch-hiked the few miles from the har­bor to the vil­lage with the sis­ter of one of the crew mem­bers. This lady had lived in Mon­treal and as a con­se­quence was very bored with the vil­lage, and felt trapped in the sum­mer because you can’t go any­where with­out a boat. Win­ters are bet­ter, because then peo­ple can go all over the coun­try­side on their snow­mo­biles, and across the ice to neigh­bor­ing set­tle­ments as well.

We reached Har­ring­ton Har­bor in the late evening – it was a large set­tle­ment and very beau­ti­ful indeed, but when we woke up the next morn­ing the moun­tains had receded from the coast, and soon after­ward we stopped at Natashquan, a small Fran­coph­one vil­lage, and most of the pas­sen­gers got off to drive home to Quebec.

There is no way to con­vey the stark iso­la­tion and beauty of this rocky shore: the bare grey gran­ite scant­ily clad in patches of moss and low shrubs, the iso­lated brightly painted houses (used mostly in sum­mer) scat­tered far from any set­tle­ment, and the tight lit­tle coves run­ning between rocky cliffs. The light (when the sun is shin­ing) is bright and clean, and in the val­leys the low shrubby veg­e­ta­tion is lux­u­ri­ant with a dozen kinds of berries.

After Natashquan we stayed fur­ther out in the estu­ary, and by evening could see the north coast of Anti­costi Island, a place I had very much wanted to visit. How­ever, we stopped at Port-Menier on Anti­costi after mid­night, and the dock was so far from the vil­lage that I didn’t man­age to walk all the way in. It is

impos­si­ble to visit Anti­costi for less than 4 days, or a full week if you want to con­tinue in the same direc­tion, since this ferry is the only con­nec­tion. The whole island, which is about as big as Con­necti­cut, was owned in the late nine­teenth cen­tury by Henri Menier, a Swiss choco­late mag­nate who used it as a pri­vate hunt­ing pre­serve. He intro­duced White-tailed Deer and a vari­ety of other ani­mals, and the unique flora of the island is now under extreme stress, pri­mar­ily from the huge pop­u­laion of deer. The island is now a national park, and peo­ple pay dearly to hunt. The scenery, accord­ing to another of the ship’s doc­u­men­taries, is appar­ently spec­tac­u­lar. The island has a rel­a­tively mild cli­mate, and I still can’t fig­ure out why it was never set­tled and farmed.

On our last morn­ing we awoke on the approach to Sept-Iles, where we had a long stop, since it is the largest town on the north shore. I rode my bike into town and found a bike shop where my spoke was quickly repaired. The port for the Labrador Iron Mines was quiet because of a long-lasting min­ers’ strike. We spent the rest of the day steam­ing obliquely across the estu­ary towards Rimouski, watch­ing the coast of the Gaspe Penin­sula grow higher and closer. I was sort of glad that I had not attempted the ride around the penin­sula, although cyclists that I met later all gave it rave reviews: this was the ONLY thing on my orig­i­nal loose agenda that I did not do – it would have taken eight days, and I knew already on the 27th June when I had to make the deci­sion that I was run­ning out of time.

We arrived late in Rimouski and I spent the night there, and then set off south-westward along the south shore of the St. Lawrence. At Trois Pis­toles (lovely name!) I had lunch and did a load of laun­dry in a Buan­derie (Laun­dro­mat) that, like most of those in small towns in Que­bec, was hard to find. Every­one knew where it was, under­neath the Cin­ema, but nei­ther that nor the Buan­derie had any signs indi­cat­ing their pres­ence. From Trois Pis­toles I crossed the St. Lawrence again by ferry to Les Escoumins, an Innu vil­lage. I never did get clear the dif­fer­ence between Innuit (Eskimo) and Innu (Mon­tag­nais in French). The lat­ter are appar­ently con­sid­ered Indi­ans, in spite of the sim­i­lar­ity of their name to that of the Eski­mos, and the fact that this coast used to be called the Cote des Esquimaux. This vil­lage appeared well-cared for and prosperous.

I had crossed to the North Shore again with some trep­i­da­tion, but to con­tinue along the south shore would have meant retrac­ing my steps from Riviere-du-Loup to Que­bec City. Also, Tadous­sac, which I reached the first night out from Rimouski, is the whale-watching cap­i­tal of the area. But I was fore­warned that the rid­ing on the North Shore wa rough in terms both of topog­ra­phy and heavy traffic.

Tadous­sac is at the mouth of the Sague­nay fjord, in a truly spec­tac­u­lar set­ting. One day I would like to take a boat up the fjord. At Tadous­sac I went on a whale-watching cruise, and saw plenty of Bel­uga and one large fin whale, and then pro­ceeded to St. Simeon, a dis­tance of only 30 miles but a ride that tested my sta­mina with huge long hills and lots of log­ging trucks, with no shoul­ders to ride on.

The next day was more of the same – gor­geous coun­try, but huge hills, but I got as far as St. Tite, which is just before the descent into the low­lands around Que­bec City.

From St. Tite I rode down a long hill to the Canyon St. Anne, which is a tourist trap but well worth a visit. The St. Anne river has eroded a steep gorge, with many water­falls, along the fault sep­a­rat­ing the Cana­dian shield from Pale­o­zoic lime­stones. In St. Anne-de-Beaupre, about 25 miles from Que­bec, I was stopped by a musi­cian as I left a drug­store and offered a lift through the city. I accepted, with some mis­giv­ings, as it would save me at least half a day and a lot of rid­ing in heavy traf­fic: St. Anne is already vir­tu­ally in the sub­urbs. This musi­cian, Jean, was small and round and bald and quite weird. He had been born in the Roman­ian part of the Banat of Temes­var. He was dri­ving a very beat up van in which he clearly slept most of the time. He pres­sured me to buy a CD by his wife, and whgen I did so imme­di­ately stopped to buy gas. I think he offered me the lift because he needed the money to get home. The CD turned out to be quite good: mostly sung in Yid­dish, with a lit­tle French and Eng­lish. Oy vay!

That night I got as far as St. Georges, where I had my sec­ond punc­ture of the day out­side a camp­ground. Very con­ve­nient! The rear tire that I had put on new at Whit­bourne, New­found­land, had worn out in only a thou­sand miles (what do you expect for$8?), so the next morn­ing I went to a bike shop and bought and installed a new one. The road (Que­bec 173) fol­lows Fleuve Chaudiere and one does not realise that one is climb­ing steadily all the way. From St. Georges to the bor­der was only about 25 miles, and an easy ride, but once in Maine is was down­hill for a long way. I stopped for lunch and to get on the inter­net in Jack­man, Maine, and then had a tremen­dous climb for about 6 miles to recover all the alti­tude lost since cross­ing the bor­der. At these alti­tudes the Fall col­ors were already quite advanced – they had begun to appear on the North Shore of Que­bec a cou­ple of days earlier.

I stopped at The Forks, Maine, for my first night back in the USA, and was made quite a fuss of by the peo­ple in the hotel bar/restaurant. This is a cen­ter for white­wa­ter raft­ing on the Dead and Ken­nebec Rivers, and I was per­suaded to spend the next day raft­ing on the Ken­nebec. This was a load of fun, more espe­cially so because four of the peo­ple on the raft were vis­i­tors from the Sud­bury, Suf­folk, area of Eng­land, about 20 miles from where I had grown up. They were on a two week hol­i­day in new Eng­land, and were hav­ing a great time, which was catching.

From The Forks I rode down to Augusta, Maine, through grad­u­ally more and more farm­land and lots of pic­turesque vil­lages and a few rather decayed old mill towns. And then on into Freeport, Maine, where I stopped at LL Bean to buy a cycling jer­sey before cycling the last few miles to Yarmouth, Maine, and the offices of DeLorme Map­ping, where my old remote sens­ing friend Jonathan Per­shouse works. Jonathan gave me a great wel­come, and I spent two nights with him before tak­ing the train from Port­land to Boston, MA, where I stayed with an old col­lege friend, Julius Levin, for three days, and boxed the bike up for ship­ping to Texas.

I had intended to take the bus from Boston to Brownsville, TX, but when I got to the bus sta­tion with Julius we found that all buses down the East Coast were can­celed from Fayet­teville, NC, because of Hur­ri­cane Jeanne. The alter­na­tive was to go through Albany, NY, and this would take a day longer. By this time I had com­mit­ted myself to be in Church in Hous­ton, and the added tran­sit time would not allow for that. I also real­ized at the bus sta­tion that I suf­fer some degree of ago­ra­pho­bia: the noise and crowds really upset me.

Julius helped me find cheap tick­ets on SW Air­lines from Hart­ford, Conn., to Har­lin­gen, Texas, and the fol­low­ing morn­ing drove me out to the air­port. Good old Julius!

On arrival at Har­lin­gen I found that the ride to the Motel I had reserved in Brownsville would be expen­sive and involve quite a wait, so I booked myself into the Motel 6 in Har­lin­gen and took a taxi. That evening I put the bike back together again and re-packed.

The fol­low­ing morn­ing I rode down to Brownsville, got some immi­gra­tion offi­cers to pho­to­graph me at the Inter­na­tional Bridge – it is for­bid­den to do it your­self, and then rode on South­most Road to the Sabal Audubon Bird Sanc­tu­ary at the south­ern­most point of Texas. From there I rode another 25 miles to Boca Chica, where Texas High­way $ runs into the Gulf of Mex­ico, the south­west­ern­most access to the sea in the east­ern USA.

On the way back to Har­lin­gen I got very dehy­drated – the warmth of south Texas caught me with­out enough water on the bicy­cle. I left Har­lin­gen early the next morn­ing and made the easy run up to Hous­ton in 3 days, aver­ag­ing 110 miles a day, and tak­ing care to carry enough water, espe­cially for the empty 62-mile cross­ing of the King Ranch. The wind was with me, the sun was pleas­ant, there was a nice shoul­der, although it got a bit rough around Vic­to­ria. There were no inci­dents, except for a punc­ture near Rosen­berg, and two occa­sions, both on Dairy Ash­ford Road in Hous­ton, when dri­vers rolled down their win­dows and yelled at me to get off the road and ride on the sidewalk.

In Hous­ton I stopped briefly at the Arendts’ for water and pho­tographs, and at Shell Wood­creek, where I had really begun the trip 4 months and 2 days ear­lier, to say hello to Allen Scar­dina and Mike Cooper. I arrived at the Dolds’ house, the offi­cial point of begin­ning, almost exactly 4 months, 2 days and 2 hours after I had left it.

SUMMARY

All in all, it was a won­der­ful trip, and along the way I met some won­der­ful peo­ple. The scenery in East­ern Canada, espe­cially in New­found­land, was spec­tac­u­lar, but there was also great scenery in Maine and in the Midwest.

I found much to admire in the Cana­dian way of life, which seems to be delib­er­ately less stress­ful than our own. I was able to watch the final run-up to their elec­tions, and also a Federal-Province Con­fer­ence of Pre­miers (Prime Min­is­ters) on the sub­ject of how to pay for the health care sys­tem, and was struck by the col­le­gial, non-adversarial approach taken in their pol­i­tics. Cana­di­ans seem, to a per­son, to value their health care sys­tem highly, and to want to see it con­tinue to succeed.

I was struck by the loy­alty of Cana­di­ans in gen­eral to the “way things were”, an innate con­ser­vatism. You still see the Union Jack every­where, and even some­times the old New­found­land flag (a tri­color) from the days when it was an inde­pen­dent domin­ion, before it went bank­rupt in 1925 and reverted to being a colony. Every­where there are delib­er­ate attempts to pre­serve her­itage build­ings and her­itage skills. The preser­va­tion and repeated updat­ing of old build­ings means that in many houses and hotels there are doors and floors out-of-kilter due to poor foun­da­tion work in the orig­i­nal con­struc­tion. There is less hurry to adopt new forms ways of doing things just because they seem bet­ter at the moment. How­ever, there is an empha­sis on effi­ciency, and groups of towns are gath­ered into new, larger munic­i­pal­i­ties in a way that is incon­ceiv­able in the US: Miramichi in Nova Sco­tia, for exam­ple, was cre­ated by amal­ga­ma­tion of the old towns of Napan, Chatham, and New­cas­tle, where Max Aitken (Lord Beaver­brook) was born. Inter­est­ingly, a Prime Min­is­ter of the UK, Bonar Law (Con­ser­v­a­tive, 1922–23), was also a New Brunswicker, from Rex­ton, near Richibucto.

There is accep­tance of dif­fer­ent groups within soci­ety, so that there is much less empha­sis on the idea of a “melt­ing pot”. Unfor­tu­nately, though, there is lit­tle attempt on the part of the vast major­ity of either Fran­coph­o­nes or Anglo­phones to be flu­ent in each oth­ers’ lan­guages. Since Anglo­phones are the major­ity, this still results in the main bur­den of learn­ing the other lan­guage being placed on the Fran­coph­one pop­u­la­tion, espe­cially if they work in the tourism indus­try. Fran­coph­o­nes were con­tin­u­ally amazed that I speak French as well as I do, which is not per­fectly by any means. I kept hav­ing to explain that I grew up in Eng­land and learned it there. Unfor­tu­nately, it was quite a way into the trip before I was able to under­stand Que­be­cois as well as I spoke French. The break­through came when some­one explained to me that the “t” and “d” sounds of French are dis­ap­pear­ing, and being replaced by Ger­man– sound­ing “ts” and “dz”. The “oi” sound of French approx­i­mates Eng­lish “oy”, and the “ere” (car­riere, der­riere) sound is replaced uni­ver­sally with “are”, as in the Swedish a-umlaut-r. This is anal­o­gous to the Eng­lish sound shift from Derby and clerk to “Darby” and “clark”. Even­tu­ally I was able to rec­og­nize var­i­ous dialects: in the Mar­itimes a dol­lar is gen­er­ally a “piece” and a penny is a “sou”, which in old France was ten cents.

In the USA, in Ohio in par­tic­u­lar, I was amazed to see the pros­per­ity and pride shown in the cen­ters of small towns that were not on the free­way sys­tem – Nor­man Rockwell’s Amer­ica still sur­vives there. Also, in Ohio, Indi­ana, and Ontario, the neat­ness and clean­li­ness of the Amish/Mennonite farms stood in strong con­trast to those sur­round­ing them: an obser­va­tion that has often been made.

I also found out that I have no prob­lem being alone with myself for sev­eral days at a time, but that I do enjoy the encour­age­ment of oth­ers in my efforts. In addi­tion, on the way back I found that large build­ings full of peo­ple and noise dis­turb me greatly, whereas crowds in the open air do not. I found that no hill is so steep it can­not be climbed, and no rain and wind are so cold and wet that they can­not be endured. That bicy­cles are gen­er­ally more robust than the hor­ror sto­ries of other cyclists would have us believe – after all, a story would not be a good one were it not for the bad things it relates! Again, that once a Geol­o­gist always a geol­o­gist – some­how I always seemed to end up stop­ping to look at, even sketch, inter­est­ing rocks, or mak­ing a diver­sion to see some famous locality.

The End

Posted in 2004 Texas To Labrador | Comments Off

Texas to Labrador Gallery

Posted on October 1, 2004 by admin
Posted in 2004 Texas To Labrador | Comments Off

Texas to Labrador (6)

Posted on September 30, 2004 by admin

Well, every­one, it’s been a long, excit­ing, and won­der­ful time since I have been able to write up my expe­ri­ences. Yes­ter­day I achieved the last of my major goals, and I am now on the way home. I am in L’Anse-au-Clair, south­ern Labrador, with a cou­ple of days to spare before the ferry leaves for Rimouski, Que­bec, at mid­night on Fri­day. Out­side the weather is as you would want Labrador to be: there is a strong wind and a low over­cast, and it is, as Pyth­eas said 2500 years ago of Ultima Thule, impos­si­ble to tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. On Sun­day (Sept. 5th), I was at the Viking site at L’Anse-aux– Mead­ows, on the north­ern tip of New­found­land, and there was a frost warn­ing for the night – it’s a lit­tle warmer now, but not much.

The goals I have achieved are: I have rid­den from the south­ern­most point of Canada to the north­ern­most bit of tar road on the East Coast. I have vis­ited the east­ern­most point of North Amer­ica, Cape Spear near St. John’s, New­found­land, and every provin­cial cap­i­tal in Que­bec and the Mar­itimes. I have seen the Viking site at L’Anse-aux-Meadows, and have tra­versed the south coast of New­found­land, which is impos­si­ble except by bicy­cle, since the fer­ries are not cat fer­ries, and I have vis­ited St. Pierre et Miquelon, the last piece of France on the con­ti­nent. And, most of all, I have seen the most won­der­ful scenery and met the most won­der­ful peo­ple all the way along the road. I will break up the fol­low­ing into chap­ters, for ease of ref­er­ence for those of you who want to use an atlas to fol­low the goings on.

NEW BRUNSWICK:

I crossed over into Edmund­ston from Que­bec on Canada Day, July 1st., and made a brief visit to Madawaska, Maine, to mail home the bumph that had accu­mu­lated since Iro­quois, ONT. Then I cycled down the St. John’s River val­ley to Fred­er­ic­ton, the Cap­i­tal, and Mon­ck­ton. In Mon­ck­ton the weather was awful, so I rented a car for a day and toured the geo­log­i­cal sites in the vicin­ity – the var­i­ous tidal bores and the fos­sil cliffs at Scog­gins. Then on into Prince Edward Island.

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND:

I crossed the Con­fed­er­a­tion Bridge from New Brunswick in a van pro­vided by the bridge author­ity, since bicy­cles are not allowed on the bridge, and then pro­ceeded to the Provin­cial Park near Sum­mer­side. Sum­mer­side is a delight­ful town on a broad bay, and their Lob­ster Fes­ti­val was in full swing. The first night there I bought fresh mus­sels from the har­bor side and steamed them, shar­ing some with the young Que­be­cois at the next camp site, Benoit. Benoit, who had seen me buy­ing my ticket, drove me to the evening per­for­mance at the Col­lege of Pip­ing. This was a show of Scot­tish danc­ing and pip­ing by the stu­dents, and was excellent.

The fol­low­ing day I toured the west end of PEI and returned to Sum­mer­side in the evening. On this day trip I heard the older gen­er­a­tion in one town hold­ing a con­ver­sa­tion in mixed French and Eng­lish, saw a young lady rid­ing a scooter pulled by a pair of Huskies on the bik­ing trail (she was prac­tic­ing for the win­ter dog-sled races), vis­ited the cer­e­mo­nial cen­ter of the Mar­itime Mic­Mac Indi­ans, which was very inter­est­ing, and also toured a house in which Lucy Maud Mont­gomery had lived. These local muse­ums of ninen­teenth cen­tury life, which are all over the Mar­itimes, always make me feel a bit spooky, because many of the objects are the same as those that existed in the Vic­to­rian house in which I grew up! This is true because, almost until World War I, the trade and cul­tural con­nec­tions between the Mar­itimes and Eng­land (or, some­times, Scot­land) were closer than the con­nec­tions between the Mar­itimes and Danada or the USA. For exam­ple, all the win­dows in this par­tic­u­lar house were made in England.

On my return to Sum­mer­side I made friends with sev­eral other cyclists who had arrived dur­ing the day, and then went off to the Har­bor for a Lob­ster din­ner, cour­tesy of the local Lions Club. The fol­low­ing morn­ing, Daniel and Richard, two Que­be­cois, and myself left for Cavendish, the cen­ter of Ann of Green Gables coun­try. On our way through Sum­mer­side we caught a per­for­mance of Gaelic music in the muid­dle of Main Street, which was closed off for the Fes­ti­val, by two extra­or­di­nar­ily taleb­nted teenage sis­ters. Unfor­tu­nately, the Prince Edward Islanders have mad quite an indus­try of L.M. Mont­gomery, and her part of the island is some­what spoiled by touris­tic devel­op­ments. How­ever, the way there was through some charm­ing coun­try­side. We all camped on one site in the National Park, and then went off to din­ner: on ouir retun we encoun­tered Benoit being told that there was no room left in the park for him,

so we invited him to share outr site, and had q uite a party that evening with the peo­ple from Que­bec in the next site.

The next morn­ing it was rain­ing, and Daniel and friends decided to ride back to where their car was parked and cut short their hol­i­day. I ped­aled on alone towards Char­lot­te­town on a road that turned out to be extra­or­di­nar­ily hilly for a gen­er­ally flat island. About half way along, a man came out to empty his garbage as I cyclewd labo­ri­ously uphill past his house, and casu­ally remarked that I had “cho­sen the hilli­est road on the island”!

In Char­lot­te­town I stayed at the Uni­ver­sity dor­mi­tory, where the peace of the first evening was some­what dis­turbed by the pres­ence of dozens of Rugby teams from all over Mar­itime Canada, there for a tour­na­ment. I walked down to the cen­ter of town and did the usual touris­tic things, includ­ing tour­ing the Province House (Capi­tol). Here I dis­cov­ered that New­found­land had been an inde­pen­dent domin­ion until it went bank­rupt in 1923 and returned to being a British colony, a sta­tus it retained in my child­hood and until it joined Canada in 1949. I also spent the evening at a pub lis­ten­ing to, and occa­sion­ally join­ing in with, the band, which included some­one I had heard per­form at the Park Ser­vice camp­fire at Cavendish.

The next morn­ing I set off against a head­wind to go to Souris, from where the ferry leaves for Les Iles de la Madeleine, which are a part of Que­bec lying in the Gulf of St. Lawrence north of PEI. About 10 mioles out I real­ized that, if I really hur­ried, I could catch the ferry that day, instead of hav­ing to spend the night in Souris. So I piled on all speed, and, totally exhausted, reached the ferry ter­mi­nal about 15 mnin­utes after depar­ture time. How­ever, the boat, which I had been warch­ing anx­iously for the last ten miles, had not left,and I got on board. I imme­di­ately realised that I had rid­den her before, I think from Soder­talje in Swe­den to Visby in Gotland.

LES ILES DE LA MADELEINE:

Woder­ful place – each islabd is the cap on a salt dome thou­sands of feet high, and salt is mined under­neath the sea from the north­ern­most island. How­ever, the weather was ter­ri­ble, and I aban­doned the attempt to see the north­ern­most islands. The islands are hilly and the vil­lages some­times resem­ble those in the foothills of the Swiss Alps.

NOVA SCOTIA:

Pic­tou is where the High­land Scots landed, and also where the ferry from PEI comes in. The Scots arrived in the Hec­tor, a ves­sel which seems to have been a very old con­verted Dutch barge, never intended for an Atlantic crossing.

At Truro I went White Wwa­ter Raft­ing on the stand­ing waves gen­er­ated by the tidal bore in the Shube­nacadie River: this was quite a thrill.

In Hal­i­fax I caught the Tall Ships, and then cycled up to Cape Bre­ton along the east shore.

There I met a young French Cana­dian cou­ple with whom I cycled for 3 days, cross­ing into Cape Bre­ton. I did the Cabot Trail in the rain and cold, and then wrote my last very sketchy report while held up by rain on the east coast of Cap Bre­ton, hav­ing com­pleted the Cabot Trail the day before. The rain con­tin­ued for two days, dur­ing which I was under can­vas, and the sec­ond day was the only entirely “wasted” day of the whole trip. How­ever, that morn­ing two other very bedrag­gled cyclists rode into camp: a Scot­tish girl, Lucy McNee, and a young French Cana­dian who was cross­ing Canada from east to west, an unusual ride because it is against the pre­vail­ing winds. Both he and Lucy were wear­ing open san­dals to ride in the rain: their claim was that this was bet­ter because one’s feet dried once the rain stopped, whereas sneak­ers like mine remained wet for the entire day or longer. I later bought a pair of open san­dals and found this to be true, but I had left the pur­chase too late in the year, and the tem­per­a­tures had become uncom­fort­ably low to be rid­ing with exposed feet. The young French Cana­dian left early in the morn­ing with the rain still pour­ing down: Lucy and I waited until the next day, Sun­day, and left together. We vis­ited the Gaelic Col­lege at St. Anne’s together, and then parted, Lucy rid­ing towards Hal­i­fax and me towards North Syd­ney and the boat for New­found­land. The Gaelic Col­lege was sad in that it only func­tioned as a museum and a cen­ter for short lan­guage courses dur­ing the sum­mer: it did not have the funds to remain opren as an insti­tu­tion of learn­ing all year round.

After leav­ing Lucy I strug­gled across Kelley’s Mtn (240 m/760 feet) and then cruised on into North Syd­ney, casu­ally stop­ping in at the ferry ter­mi­nal to enquire about sail­ing times. On find­ing that a boat was due to leave within the half hour, I made a quick deci­sion to get on it — that blew any oppor­tu­nity to visit Louis­bourg (Ah, well, there’s next time.…).

NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR:

The ferry arrived lan hour late, at half past mid­night, in Port-aux-Basques. I have no good lights on the bike and it was moon­less and driz­zling. I man­aged to make it 3 miles to the local all-night Tim Horton’s (a Cana­dian chain of cof­fee shops), and on enquiry there it appeared that there was nowhere to stay that was both afford­able and acces­si­ble, so the lady on night shift at the Tim’s offered me the back seat of her car till 6.00 a.m. I spent a cramped and uncom­fort­able night, but slept OK.

When awoken at 6.00 a.m. in “the cold grey light” of a driz­zling dawn I looked around and thought, “God, what have I got myself into here?” Dark rock, black rock, and then some more rock, with not a blade of grass or any other liv­ing thing in sight. So I cruised on into town and looked around: the “town” was a series of lit­tle penin­su­las jut­ting out into an angry sea, with huge break­ers crash­ing in from all sides to almost meet each other, sep­a­rated only it seemed by frag­ile wooden houses. Even­tu­ally a gro­cery store opened and I bought some food, got some cash from an ATM, and headed out to Rose Blanche into a big head­wind. Hills, rocks, moor­land. :In the mid­dle of nowhere a friendly fel­low with what seemed to be a speech imped­i­ment who came out from dig­ging in a pre­car­i­ously perched grave­yard to inquire of me my busi­ness. Threat­en­ing rain. A head wind. Not look­ing good. But I finally got to the iso­lated ferry dock at Rose Blanche, with a 3-hour wait for the boat to leave. Since there were no houses there, I 0set off on the steep foot­path over the hill to see the actual vil­lage. Half-way up was another pre­car­i­ously perched grave­yard, with all the stones lean­ing down­hill due to soil creep, and I walked through this only to see an old lady cov­ered from head to toe in clothes and a mesh veil pick­ing some­thing out of the sphag­num bog on the other side.

Before I was half-way over to ask her what she was har­vest­ing, I knew: cloud­ber­ries, although she called them “bakeap­ples” when I asked. Ah, New­found­land had taken a sud­den turn for the bet­ter! Although the lady didn’t seem pleased that I had encroached on “her” cloud­berry bog, and she also had this curi­ous speech imped­i­ment. No con­so­nants at all, and sud­den bursts of a few words sep­a­rated by preg­nant pauses. Where had I heard this before? Oh, yes, on the Iles de la Madeleine! I found out grad­u­ally that every­one on the South Coast speaks like this — it also comes out as a growl, so that they often sound like Cap­tain Hook in “Peter Pan”. I think orig­i­nally it was a Devon­shire accent of some kind.

The boat, a 41-year old con­verted coast­guard cut­ter, got as far as Grand Bruit, popn. 32, that night. The name comes from a water­fall in the mid­dle of town, whose sound can be heard all over town. An older cou­ple return­ing home from shop­ping in Port aux Basques offered me a room in their home for the night — there was nowhere else to stay. There was, how­ever, an old fish­ing shack labeled the Cram­malot Inn, where the entire pop­u­la­tion of the vil­lage gath­ered that night for a birth­day party, drink­ing New­fie Rum and beer and lis­ten­ing to New­fie songs. I got enmeshed with the Ancient Mariner, a grey-bearded fel­low from “out away” who was younger than I, and nailed me with “and after this trip, what is the mean­ing of it all?” And wouldn’t let me go: no mat­ter how banal I tried to make it all seem, he kept say­ing “Finally I con­nect with some­one, some­one who knows what the impor­tant ques­tions are”. In some peo­ple, rum talks that way!

The next day an Ital­ian cou­ple, who had spent the night under can­vas behind the church, mate­ri­al­ized on the quay, and off we all set on the “Sound of Islay”, a ves­sel that I think I had rid­den on across the Kyle of Lochalsh back in 1962. She was going out of ser­vice for a refit in St. John’s, so she missed sev­eral ports but did the whole trip to Her­mitage in one day, nor­mally a 2–3 day excur­sion. Quite a group of peo­ple rid­ing on her were going back to reunions in or near the com­mu­ni­ties they had been born in: the whole coast is lit­tered with aban­doned places — the gov­ern­ment car­ried out a series of reset­tle­ments into larger com­mu­ni­ties in the 1960s and 70s.

This coast is glo­ri­ous: a series of cliffs up to 1400 feet high form a wall which is bro­ken by the mouths of fjords, some wide, some so nar­row you can only see them from a cer­tain angle. Noth­ing grows near the sea and the swell was break­ing 70 feet in the air. Every so often the boat steers into a nar­row open­ing and there is a small com­mu­nity of brightly-colored houses built on the bare rock, some­times on rock faces so steep you’d think it impos­si­ble. Each is a gem, but the best were Grand Bruit and Fran­cois, nei­ther acces­si­ble by road. Nei­ther has streets, just board­walks wide enough for an ATV wind­ing between the houses.

The Ital­ians, Mariella and Per­luigi, and I rode across the next penin­sula to Pool’s Cove, where we spent the night in the aban­doned school’s play­ground and then boarded a ferry con­verted from the Sir Wil­fred Gren­fell Foundation’s hos­pi­tal ship. This was handy, because at our first stop we picked up a lady who was well into labour, and the ves­sel still had a sick bay offer­ing her some pri­vacy. We then piled on all steam (all 9 knots of it) to Bay l’Argent, where the ambu­lance was wait­ing and whisked her off to hos­pi­tal. Never did find out what hap­pened, but I hope that she and the baby were all right.

We three set off down the Burin Penin­sula, another wild and tree­less expanse of incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful moor­land. Just before Marys­town we passed a drill-ship under con­struc­tion in Moor­ing Cove – the only sign of heavy indus­try that I saw in Newfoundland.

We spent a night in the only hay field I had seen to date, near Win­ter­land, and then sep­a­rated, since I was going to St. Pierre, and they were not. I went round the Burin Penin­sula in a clock­wise direc­tion, stop­ping at the min­ing museum in the town of St. Lawrence. There had been fluorspar mines here in the 1920s-1960s: these had, for the most part, been under­cap­i­tal­ized and there­fore ill-ventilated. A very large num­ber of the min­ers had devel­oped sil­i­co­sis, and then there had been a large num­ber of lung-cancer cases, which were even­tu­ally traced to a high radon con­tent in the mine air. Whole fam­i­lies had died early from the dis­ease. A sad tale.

I camped in For­tune, and the next morn­ing took the Ferry to St. Pierre, a nice lit­tle boat, but they stashed my bike where it got soaked with salt water for the first time. St. Pierre was inter­est­ing: a real town — row houses, not indi­vid­ual homes. The result, of course, has been a series of dis­as­trous fires through the years. It also was taken and retaken by the Brits and French 9 times between 1696 and 1814, and the town burned and peo­ple carted away each time. How­ever, it is beau­ti­ful, and the French Gov­ern­ment is pour­ing money in, and I had a great French meal.

On the boat back I met an older Ger­man chap from Ontario and his New Zealand-born wife. He spe­cial­izes in pho­tograph­ing geo­log­i­cal mate­r­ial, espe­cially fos­sils, so we vis­ited the world type site of the Cambrian-preCambrian bound­ary at For­tune Head. We didn’t have a guide and didn’t know exactly what we were look­ing for, so it was a bit of a bust, but very inter­est­ing anyway.

Then up to St. John’s, which I think is one of the three most beau­ti­ful cities in North Amer­ica. It sur­rounds a gem of a har­bor whose fjord-like entrance is only a cou­ple of hun­dred feet wide. From the top of Sig­nal Hill at the entrance the view is spec­tac­u­lar, and the walk up is an entrance­ment. Cape Spear to the south is the east­ern­most point in North Amer­ica, and is formed very appro­pri­ately of a late Pre­cam­brian con­glom­er­ate with the appear­ance and hard­ness of a “super-concrete”. Again, a thing of incred­i­ble beauty, look­ing from it or towards it from St. John’s. St. John’s, like St. Pierre, is built of abut­ting rows of brightly-painted wooden row houses, and has sim­i­larly suf­fered a num­ber a dis­as­trous fires through the years. A walk through it is a con­tin­u­ally chang­ing kalei­do­scope of col­ored frag­ments of streetscape, espe­cially after a late-night visit to George Street, which has 20-odd bars in a few blocks, like Austin’s Sixth Street. The John­son Geo­Cen­ter in St. John’s is the best Geo­log­i­cal Museum I have ever seen, and I spent sev­eral hours there in the com­pany of one of their enthu­si­as­tic assis­tants mak­ing dis­cov­er­ies on the bare rock face along one side of their main hall.

I rented a car in St. John’s and drove the perime­ter of part of the Avalon Penin­sula: an expe­ri­ence not to be missed, from Petty Har­bor, which is rem­i­nis­cent of a Manx fish­ing vil­lage, to the Puf­fin Islands off Bauline East, to the exquis­itely beau­ti­ful Bri­gus, where I heard a con­cert of New­fie music, and the ancient set­tle­ments of Cupids (1611 — got to be the old­est con­tin­u­ally inhab­ited Euro­pean set­tle­ment in N. Am.) and Avalon (at Fer­ry­land, founded by Lord Bal­ti­more in 1621 and appar­ently extremely wealthy in the late 1600s — the archae­ol­o­gists have found more than a mil­lion arti­facts there includ­ing gold and imported fine pot­tery, etc.). How­ever, because of the dri­ving rain and thick fog I was unable to see much of the coun­try­side, and unable to visit the Pre­cam­brian soft-bodied fos­sil site at Mis­taken Point.

After a week of sight-seeing, regroup­ing and reor­ga­niz­ing based at the quaint Down­town Hos­tel in St. John’s I set out for Gros Morne and L’Anse aux Mead­ows, reluc­tantly hav­ing to retrace my inbound route for 120 miles to the quaintly-named com­mu­nity of Goo­bies because there is only one road across New­found­land, the Tran­sCanada Highway.

On the way into St. John’s I had stayed at Whit­bourne, where I had noticed that my rear tire, the Kevlar one, had com­pletely worn through. I replaced it, and bought a new spare in St. John’s. As luck would have it, I stayed in Whit­bourne on the way back, and again noticed a prob­lem with my rear tire. Inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that the cas­ing had split and it was bal­loon­ing, and so had to be replaced. Also on the way in, my Odome­ter had failed, appar­ently due to an elec­tri­cal prob­lem caused by the heavy rain that I was cycling through. The same on the way back. So, on the way west I stopped at a sports shop in Gan­der to buy a new tyre and check the odome­ter. I took the bat­tery out of the odome­ter to test it, and lost all my data. The bat­tery was good, how­ever. I was crushed, but for­tu­nately had writ­ten down my mileage that morn­ing, so really noth­ing was lost. The odome­ter worked spo­rad­i­cally until I got to Shep­pardville, near Dear Lake, so I stopped at Dear Lake, where there was a brand-new bike shop, and we checked every­thing and found that the odome­ter sen­sor on the front forks was loose. We fixed that and there has been nop trou­ble since.

In Dear Lake I was again stuck for a day due to con­tin­u­ous heavy rain and very low tem­per­a­tures (2 deg. C), so I caught on my e-mail, and did some sou­venir shop­ping, and sent off some mail. Then on to Gros Morne, again in the rain. Just before the entrance to Gros Morne National Park I was run off the road by a log­ging truck over­tak­ing another one on a steep uphill grade on the two-lane road. I was forced to dis­mount and get off onto the shoulder.

I arrived at Woody Point, in the Gros Morne park, com­pletely sat­u­rated, and stayed in the hos­tel there, which was a gigan­tic ex-Community Cen­ter, of which I was the only occu­pant. Since it was now cold enough for the heat to be on, I had no trou­ble dsry­ing every­thing out but my tent, which I had left packed on the bike and could not reach with­out get­ting soak­ing wet again myself. The next day dawned sullen and foggy, but I had to see the Table­lands, a large area of peri­dotitic oceanic upper man­tle which had been pushed up and over the edge of North Amer­ica dur­ing the clo­sure of the Iape­tus Ocean 240 mil­lion years ago. Here noth­ing much grows, due to the pres­ence of toxic ele­ments and lack of nutri­ent ele­ments in the Peri­dotite, and there are exten­sive boul­der fields. I took a bus up to the begin­ning of the trail, and spend an enjoy­able two hours there pho­tograph­ing geo­logic fea­tures and botan­i­cal won­ders such as group of car­niv­o­rous pitcher plants.

Then I came down and took a boat tour of Bonne Bay – this had been highly rec­om­mended to me, and indeed we saw a whale, cor­morants, bald eagles, and mag­nif­i­cent fjord scenery.

Woody Point was set­tled by peo­ple sent out by a fish­ing com­pany based in Stur­min­ster New­ton, Dorset, and the peo­ple there still have a Dorset accent. It is amaz­ing to me that such tiny com­mu­ni­ties in Eng­land had such far-ranging trad­ing activ­i­ties, and I am sure that today they have been mainly for­got­ten in that part of England.

I stayed the next night in the hos­tel at Rocky Har­bor, and went out in the evening with the Japan­ese post– doc with whom I shared a room to here a band, “Anchors Aweigh!” per­form at the local hotel. Two of the four band mem­bers turned out to be the cap­tain and mate of the boat on which I had toured Bonne Bay, and they were a very good band. A good time was had by all!

The next morn­ing I set out up the west coast of the North­ern Penin­sula toward L’Anse aux Mead­ows, into a strong head­wind. How­ever, I made 85 miles and was again rained on heav­ily. The next day another 80 miles to Flow­ers Point, where I stayed at a won­der­ful B&B, again wet through, and was thor­oughly dried out by the host­ess. Then on for the last leg to L’Anse aux Mead­ows. How­ever, in the mid­dle of a very heavy rain about 40 miles short of my final goal, dis­as­ter occurred: I felt a slight jar on the bike and almost imme­di­ately real­ized that a spole had bro­ken. I twisted the spoke, on the cog side of the rear wheel of course, around a neigh­bor­ing one, and kept rid­ing. A cou­ple of kilo­me­ters fur­ther along a pickup stopped and offered me a lift into St. Anthony’s, and I agreed. These won­der­ful peo­ple took me all around St. Anthony’s look­ing for a place to repair the spoke, but all were closed, since it was the Sat­ur­day of labor Day week­end. So they dropped me off at another nice B&B, where I thawed and dried out and pon­dered what to do. I decided to keep going: the near­est bike shop in New­found­land was in Deer lake, 300 miles away, but I only had about 200 miles of rid­ing to fin­ish my trip. So early next morn­ing I was up in the near-freezing tem­per­a­tures tru­ing the wheel, remov­ing the bro­ken spoke, and lubri­cat­ing the chain, and then off towards L’Anse aux Mead­ows. I intended to go to church in St.Lunaire-Griguet, but I had not left enough time to get there, and the head winds ensured that I would not bem able to make it up. So I hid the bike in some road­side bushes and hitrch-hiked back to the Angli­can church in St. Anthony, and enjoyed a very nice ser­vice and a fine ser­mon. Then the Minister’s hus­band drove me back to the bike, and off I went to L’Anse aux Mead­ows, arriv­ing at journey’s end (noo.1) at about 2.30 p.m.

The Viking set­tle­ment was well worth the strug­gle through rain and cold and bro­ken spoke to get there: the inter­pre­ta­tion cen­ter is very well done, and the guides very knowl­edge­able. The site has been reburied but the out­lines of the Viking build­ings are clear, and the recon­struc­tions are well done. A few things strike one: the unspo­ken fact under­ly­ing the saga accouynts that it took about 80 days to reach this area from the Green­land colony (at least, that is what it took a replica knarr a few years ago, and I am sure that the Vikings would have taken the same amount of time. There­fore they HAD to win­ter over, and

when the natives proved hos­tile it would have been clear that only could sur­vive. Then there is the absolute paucity of the mate­r­ial remains: they amount to a lot of wood chips from boat repair, a few nails made in Europe (based pre­sum­ably on trace-element analy­sis of the iron, a few pieces of carved wood, includ­ing one that is def­i­nitely of Euro­pean pine, a few nee­dles of bone and spin­dle whorls, and a soli­tary bronze pin of Viking type. There are no bones of domes­tic ani­mals, even though the sagas say that the Vikings brought cat­tle with them. On the other hand there is a but­ter­nut shell which must have come from near the mouth of the St. Lawrence, since that is the fur­thest north they have ever grown, even in bet­ter cli­matic times. The present think­ing is that this was a base camp, used for win­ter­ing over, for ship repair, and for expe­di­tions fur­ther south. But even so, the lack of mate­r­ial remains to me is aston­ish­ing, and sug­gests that Snorri Sturla­son was not quite the rich mer­chant that the sagas say he was. Inci­den­tally, a forge was one of the main things found and a small smelter for smelt­ing bog iron, which is abun­dant locally: this iron was again used for ship’s nails.

After spend­ing the night (for which there was a frost warn­ing, appro­pri­ately enough) at another delight­ful B&B, at Hay Cove, adja­cent to L’Anse aux Mead­ows, I started back towards Flow­ers Cove and the ferry to Labrador. I man­aged to ride all of the road that I had missed due to the lift I had been given, with a head wind that gusted up to per­haps 40 miles an hour, and occa­sion­ally brought me to a com­plete stop. Even­tu­ally, with heavy rain threat­en­ing and falling tem­per­a­tures, I flagged a lift the rest of the way into Flow­ers Cove. After check­ing into the same B&B I set off on foot to see the local geo­log­i­cal sight – an occur­rence of large Cam­brian throm­bo­lites or stro­ma­to­lites. Wrong deci­sion: the rain came down in wind– dri­ven sheets and sat­u­rated me in sec­onds – once again Mag­gie at the B&B had to dry out all my clothes and my shoes!

The next morn­ing, Tues­day, I was on the 8.00 a.m. ferry for Labrador, and by 4.00 p.m. was in Red Bay pho­tograph­ing the bike at the end of the road. I had rid­den up gin­gerly, because the road was rough in places and very hilly, but no more spokes broke, and I spend the night there. The weather was very appro­pri­ate – 2 degrees C, rain and fog. But the scenery up here is spec­tac­u­lar, and today the weta­her is sunny and I can enjoy it.

Tomor­row night I will board the ferry from Blanc Sablon to Rimouski, a three-day trip. In Rimouski I will have the spoke fixed and the the derailleur adjusted and every­thing cleaned up, and then head for the USA. I will go to the near­est town with a bike dshop and a bus sta­tion, box up the bike, and head back to Texas. See y’all!

Posted in 2004 Texas To Labrador | Comments Off

Texas to Labrador (5)

Posted on July 5, 2004 by admin

The Cana­dian Maritimes

It’s dif­fi­cult to know where to start this report – I have let too much tar pass under my wheels since the last one!

SUMMARY OF ITINERARY:

Edmund­ston, NB– Grand Falls, NB.

Two-day inter­lude for bad weather, dur­ing which I rented a car in order to see part of the Gaspe and the Aca­dian Shore of New Brunswick. High­light of this trip was get­ting a flat as I entered the Gaspe dur­ing a spec­tac­u­lar thun­der­storm, and there­fore hav­ing to change the wheel of an unfa­mil­iar car while get­ting more than soaked!

Grand Falls, NB, to Mon­ck­ton, NB.

Bad weather caused another day trip by car, dur­ing which I vis­ited some of the famous Bay of Fundy geo­log­i­cal sites (Jog­gins, Parrs­bor­ough: as well as Fort Beause­jour, at which the British depor­ta­tion of the Aca­di­ans started in 1755).

Mon­ck­ton, NB, to Prince Edward Island, to Les Iles de la Madeleine, back to Prince Edward Island, then on to Hal­i­fax, Nova Scotia.

Bad weather caused another 3-day car trip, dur­ing which I made the cir­cuit of the south­ern part of the Nova Sco­tia penin­sula. I vis­ited Peggy’s Cove, Mahone Bay, Shel­burne, Liv­er­pool, Cape Sable Island, Yarmouth, Digby, and Annapo­lis Royal. Returned and spent one day in Hal­i­fax enjoy­ing the Tall Ships Rendezvous.

Hal­i­fax – Antigo­nish – Cape Bre­ton Island, Nova Sco­tia. An aver­age of 70 miles of short steep ups and downs each day.

Sta­tis­ti­cally, in the month that I have been in the Mar­itimes, I have rid­den 1250 miles, a slower rate than pre­vi­ously, but this has been the “Tourist Heart” of the trip. I have now rid­den a total of 4,130 miles.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE TRIP:

Edmund­ston: stayed at a B&B con­verted from an old Catholic Boys’ Board­ing school, run by a truly won­der­ful cou­ple, in a beau­ti­ful set­ting. (Mont l’Assomption)

Grand Falls, NB: The water­falls here are truly spec­tac­u­lar, and the geol­ogy even more so. The vis­i­tor cen­ter sits on the crest of a thrust-faulted anti­cline, the rest I will not bother you with.

Across the river from the vis­i­tor cen­tre is an incon­spic­u­ous mon­u­ment to the “Sons of Martha”, the work­ers and engi­neers who built the hydro-power plant at the site. This has engraved on its four sides a poignant poem con­trast­ing the “Sons of Martha”, who strive for con­trol of nature and orga­ni­za­tion and phys­i­cal bet­ter­ment of mankind, with the “Sons of Mary”, who are con­tent with wor­ship­ping the won­ders of God’s world. The lat­ter are assured of Heaven, whereas the fate of the “Sons of Martha” is much less cer­tain, as they risk not only their mor­tal lives but their souls in their striv­ings for control.

All down the St. John River, Union Jacks fly­ing from build­ings and flag­poles in yards. When one old chap who was fly­ing one stopped in front of me to check his mail, I took the oppor­tu­nity to ask him why he was fly­ing it. “Because, young man, that was the flag I served under, and nobody ever defeated it. So that is the flag that I will always fly.” (Appar­ently, the “old” Cana­dian flag that I remem­ber from my youth, was never “offi­cial”). Loy­alty seems to be a Cana­dian characteristic.

Perth-Andover, NB: Com­ing across a lit­tle take-out restau­rant in the mid­dle of nowhere just as it was begin­ning to rain hard. Being offered a lift by the owner up to the Tran­sCanada High­way so that I could get to the near­est Motel before the rain came back again. (The only time I have “cheated” – saved me a steep 1-mile climb).

King’s Land­ing Vil­lage, NB: A won­der­ful col­lec­tion of old build­ings rep­re­sent­ing pio­neer days in the area. Some of the build­ings were from the 1890s, which means that the house I grew up in is now a Museum piece. They have orchards of tra­di­tional apple vari­eties, and they grow buck­wheat, goose­ber­ries, and rhubarb. There are sev­eral sim­i­lar vil­lages in the mar­itimes rep­re­sent­ing the pio­neer cul­tures of the dif­fer­ent eth­nic groups: the British Vil­lage at new Rich­mond on the Gaspe, and the Aca­dian Vil­lage at Cara­quet in NB. Also an Aca­dian vil­lage at East Pub­nico in NS, and a Loy­al­ist Vil­lage at Shel­burne, NS. At each one I vis­ited I spent a lot more time than I meant to. The mosaic of cul­tures and set­tle­ment his­to­ries that make up this area is fas­ci­nat­ing: imag­ine, for exam­ple, after the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, sev­eral thou­sand United Empire Loy­al­ists arriv­ing with their slaves in tow, at the same time that sev­eral thou­sand free Black Loy­al­ists were arriv­ing. The ten­sion was so great, and the land the Black Loy­al­ists were given was so poor, that many of them even­tu­ally left to help found Sierra Leone.

Monc­ton, NB: Arriv­ing in town just in time to see the tidal bore go past the vis­i­tor cen­ter, and then find­ing a won­der­ful B&B for the night. Jog­gins: find­ing a fos­sil palm stem in the cliffs, then see­ing the tidal bore on the River Hebert, and then catch­ing the same tidal bore on the Mac­can River a few miles fur­ther on. And at Mac­can – a strange col­lec­tion of life-size painted fig­ures in someone’s yard.

Prince Edward Island: meet­ing up with, and trav­el­ing for a day with, some cyclists from Mon­treal. All 3 of us get­ting into the camp­ground at Cavendish (“Anne of Green Gables”) for the price of one. Then our car-borne friend Benoit, arriv­ing after the park was full, being smug­gled onto the same site for free. Singing Aca­dian songs at a camp­fire in the park; meet­ing the musi­cians and get­ting invited to hear them in Cahrlot­te­town. Being in Sum­mer­side for the annual lob­ster fes­ti­val and street party, and hear­ing some incred­i­ble young musi­cal tal­ent play­ing and singing Celtic and Aca­dian music. More musi­cal tal­ent in Char­lot­te­town and Cavendish.

Pass­ing a girl on a scooter being towed by two huskies. Vis­it­ing the site of the annual Mic­Mac Pow-wow at St. Ann’s on the north shore. Rac­ing to Souris to catch the Ferry to the Madeleine Islands. Get­ting there 10 min­utes late but get­ting on the Ferry anyway.

The Madeleine ferry being almost com­pletely full of bus par­ties of Madelinots return­ing to the islands from vaca­tion, and them keep­ing the band going long after the offi­cial gig, and then sev­eral accom­plished islander musi­cians jam­ming with the band mem­bers all the way into the har­bor. Feirce mozzies and beau­ti­ful island scenery in the Madeleines. Instant thick fog at Ship­pa­gan in NB and in the Madeleines. The spec­tac­u­lar geol­ogy of the Madeleines – each one is a “hat” of Mis­sis­sip­pian sand­stone, gyp­sum and vol­canics sit­ting on top of a salt dome.

White-water raft­ing (really “red water raft­ing”) on the Shube­nacadie River. Here the tide comes in so fast after the bore passes that it sets up huge stand­ing waves, and the Zodiac dri­vers drive through them over and over. I am sure that the effect is increased by the soupy con­sis­tency of the water, which is really a sus­pen­sion of red Mis­sis­sip­pian mud. After the stand­ing waves we all went mud-sliding.

Hal­i­fax: All the Tall Ships in Port, but I didn’t stay for the parade.

Mur­phy Cove, East of Hal­i­fax: the camp­ground offers free steamed mus­sels, as much as you can eat (as long as you let oth­ers have their fair share), har­vested from their own rocks. We all sat around the camp­fire eat­ing and watch­ing fire­works. And in the morn­ing, free coffee.

Antigo­nish: the Ceilidh in the pub, and the very odd local out­side with his accent that sounded Irish and his greet­ing: “the fid­dle now, that’s the Devil’s instru­ment; but I like it, I do”.

Hal­i­fax to Cape Bre­ton: rode in com­pany with a French Cana­dian cou­ple for three days. The Cabot Trail was as spec­tac­u­lar as the advance pub­lic­ity: two 1600-foot climbs with views out over the ocean all the way, and on top views across the high plateaux.

My apolo­gies to every­body for the unpol­ished and episodic style of this mis­sive – it’s the best that I can do at the moment. I’ll try to do bet­ter next time.

Good luck to you all.

Posted in 2004 Texas To Labrador | Comments Off

Texas to Labrador (4)

Posted on July 1, 2004 by admin

Dear Every­one:

I am at the new Brunswick Wel­come Cen­ter, just north of Edmund­ston, NB, close to where Maine, New Brunswick and Que­bec come together. There­fore, I have achieved the first goal of the ride: reach­ing the Mar­itime Provinces. I am about 2800 miles or 4500 km from the point of begin­ning in Hous­ton. I have had a very inter­est­ing and easy, but unevent­ful, trip down the St. Lawrence from Thou­sand Islands to Riv­iere du Loup, Que­bec. Along the way I expe­ri­enced Le Jour de St.Jean-Baptiste (St. John the Baptist’s Day) in Mon­treal. This is the most impor­tant hol­i­day of the year for the more Nation­al­ist among the Que­be­cois. Also spent more than a day in Que­bec City, and vis­ited the Bic National Park, near Rimouski on the St. Lawrence. Here I couldn’t help revert­ing to being a geol­o­gist again because of the clas­sic expo­sures of anchimeta­mor­phic sapro­pelic shales, show­ing an axial plane cleav­age and very strong defor­ma­tion on the limbs of major folds. The bed­ding could be recog­nised from spo­radic occur­rences of con­glom­er­atic and sandy chan­nel fills at var­i­ous scales. There were also clas­sic evi­dences of fluid expul­sion along and across the bedding.

I don’t have the time today to write up a full report, because it is Canada Day, and then Mon­day is July 4th, so any shop­ping and mail­ing that I have to do, I have to do today by cross­ing the river into Maine. The same with tele­phone calls. How­ever, as soon as I can, I will.

Happy 4th of July to every­one in the US, Canada Day to every­one in Cnada. July 5th will be Tyn­wald Day in the Isle of Man, but I don’t think I have a Manx per­son on this list!

Posted in 2004 Texas To Labrador | Comments Off

Texas to Labrador (3)

Posted on June 17, 2004 by admin

Dear Every­one:

I am now in Colling­wood, on the south­ern shore of Geor­gian Bay, a cou­ple of hours north of Toronto. This town suf­fered a fate worse than death in 1963: a 17-year-old boy burned down the library, a Carnegie Library no less, in order to con­ceal his break-in and theft of $10. I have had an inter­est­ing first week in Canada.

The ferry ride from San­dusky, OH, to Pelee Island is quite beau­ti­ful. As the sun sets one leaves the dock­side in down­town San­dusky, whose aging fac­to­ries show hope­ful signs of a rebirth as classy con­dos, and glides by the world’s largest col­lec­tion of giant roller­coast­ers — skele­tal con­struc­tions which cast, to me, the same kind of spell as a museum hall full of recon­struc­tions of mas­sive dinosaurs — groups of gar­gan­tuan arches and cate­nar­ies gath­ered in silent com­mu­nity. In the gath­er­ing dusk one passes the islands of Lake Erie, one of which is dom­i­nated by the thrid of America’s giant “con­structed obelisks” — the memo­r­ial to Com­modore Perry and Mon­u­ment to Inter­na­tional Peace (or some­thing like that). An hour later one arrives in Canada, where one is greeted by two very young female cus­toms offi­cers who are some­what non-plussed by the idea that one might be stay­ing for sev­eral months.

Pelee Island is one of those com­mu­ni­ties that attracts plants, ani­mals and peo­ple who are odd and far out of place. The woods on Fish Point, the south­er­nost point of Canada, are dom­i­nated by hack­berry, a tree that I asso­ciate with Texas. There are giant and very black box tur­tles, and a Blue racer snake that is unique to Pelee. Then there are at least two organic farm­ing endeav­ours on the island, at one of which there is also a large solar gen­er­a­tor and a small wind farm. The swim­ming is delight­ful at Pelee.

I met a young lady there who was half Irish and half Ital­ian from Ronda in the Mugello, a place well– known to Ingrid and I, and who had grown up in Bermuda. She was there for the organic farm­ing. Then there was the crew of Edu­ca­tors from Wind­sor Uni­ver­sity who were there for a retreat: two Welsh­men, a Dorset­man, a Niger­ian and two West Indi­ans, a Nova Sco­tia­man and a cou­ple of good aver­age Cana­di­ans. And the group of truck­drivers, reg­u­lars to the island, with their fright­en­ing tales of dri­ving from the lower Rio Grande Val­ley through to Toronto in 30 hours straight, so as to have fresh veg­gies at the mar­ket at open­ing time on Sun­day. Three sets of log­books. Some­one asked the truck­drivers “How was the fish­ing?” The answer was “Oh, we were hav­ing such a good time we for­got to launch the boat, eh!” They’d only been there for 4 days.

After a day (Mon­day, June 7th) of R&R on Pelee, I found that a spoke in my rear wheel had gone — a pre­dicted occur­rence. Also, I had a flat in the front tire as a result of the island’s gravel roads. So on Tues­day morn­ing I fixed the flat and cycled off to the other end of the island to get the fast boat to main­land canada. This turned out to be a Volkhov hydro­foil built for high-speed travel on Russ­ian rivers. Long and nar­row, with the inside very bus-like.

It was beau­ti­ful weather, but I soon found that the wind was against me, which gave me time to admire all the per­fectly groomed unimag­in­ably green and var­ied in their shades of green-ness yards along the road between Kingsville, where I landed, and Leam­ing­ton, site of the near­est bike shop. There were also dozens of stalls where local peo­ple were sell­ing straw­ber­ries and asparagus.

I got the spoke fixed in Leam­ing­ton, and also a link taken out of the chain, which had grown too long with use. Then set off along the north shore of Lake Erie into the teeth of a rather hard nor’easter. Just as in the US, there is lit­tle access to the lake in Canada: although no-one can own the fore­shore, they CAN own all the land behind it, and there seems to be lit­tle idea of the right of pub­lic access. In any case, the north shore of this part of Lake Erie is mainly cliffs devel­oped in soft and shaly lacus­trine sed­i­ments which are, where vis­i­ble from the road, eroded into weird and won­der­ful pil­lars and spires. These cliffs are obvi­ously quite dangerous.

As the sun set I was a long way from any­where to stay, and so turned off the main road to go into the town of Erieau (pron. Eeree-oh) which, being on a spit, seemed likely to be a tourist place. On the way in, the road was lined by hun­dreds of sum­mer cot­tages, whole blocks of which would have Ger­man names on their mail­boxes, then Dutch, then French, etc. Behind the road were reclaimed marshes, whose drainage ditches were lined on both sides by masses of bloom­ing phlox — solid walls of pur­ple. I finally got into Eriau, to find that the own­ers of the first two motels had closed the office and gone out of town So I ended up both eat­ing and dstay­ing at “Molly & OJ’s” — a lit­tle expen­sive but a great meal of fish and chips and a nice room. Went for a swim in the morn­ing (Wednes­day, June 7), but the onshore wind had made the water murky and blown in paper cups and other human flot­sam and jetsam.

After my swim, and after hav­ing been given a Cana­dian frlag from his gar­den by OJ, the owner, I set off to cross the penin­sula to the shores of Lake Huron. I really wanted to see the huge Greta Lakes freighters steam­ing up and down the St. Clair River, but the adverse wind ruled that out, thank­fully, because Moorestown, ONT, on the river, was hit by a tor­nado at about the time I would have been there. I was actu­ally about 20 miles east of where the tor­nado hit, and the storm there was inter­est­ing enough: the day turned from muggy and Hous­tonly hot to dark and sullen, and then the wind got up from the west in vio­lent gusts which lifted tons of yel­low soil from the fields and turned the whole sky yel­low. At this point I found shel­ter under the eaves of the near­est house, just south of the lit­tle vilage of Shet­land. The trees around me were being bent over hor­i­zon­tally, and dust was every­where. The fam­ily at the house turned out to be Men­non­ites or Amish, and the adult women were obvi­ously ill-at– ease speak­ing to me, though the kids were all excited to see a stranger. They invited me in, but I elected to remain out­side, and placed a tarp over the bike.

After the storm was over I cycled off into the rain: on the south side of Shet­land a whole line of huge ?cot­ton­woods had been blown over and lay par­al­lel on the ground. The Library was open, whereas those in all the larger towns of the are were cloed. As I went in to enquire about get­ting on the inter­net, the lady said “Oh, it’s no use, I was just leav­ing, the Hydro’s out, eh!” i.e the power was gone. As I rode north for the next 40 miles, get­ting wet­ter and wet­ter, I real­ized that the only elec­tric devices work­ing were the traf­fic lights. I stopped to eat in one lit­tle town, but none of the restau­rants were open because they had no power. There were no Motels in sight, and I was begin­ning to get wor­ried about where I would stay, and then real­ized that I was bet­ter off than the natives, because I didn’t need elec­tric­ity. There­fore, I stopped at a Super­mar­ket that was open because it had an emer­gency gen­er­a­tor, and bought some food. So, even­tu­ally, I came to Ket­tle Point on the shores of Lake Huron, pitched my tent, and had quite a decent meal of Ramen noo­dles, sar­dines, and bread. Even man­aged a shower. When I fell asleep at about 10.00 p.m. the power was still off.

On Thurs­day morn­ing the rain started in earnest just as I got all my stuff packed — I man­aged this by cart­ing it into the Campground’s Laun­dry build­ing. Stu­pidly I decided to cycle up to see Lake Huron at the end of the street — this was into a strong head­wind and resulted in every­thing in my pan­niers get­ting wet again. I dried myself out by eat­ing break­fast at the local restau­rant, which was appar­ently owned and run by the local band of Ojib­ways, with a bilin­gual menu, English-Ojibway. Had an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion with an Indian about my age who had spent 20 years in the US army. I asked him “Why not the Cana­dian army?” “I thought I’d see more of the world with the US forces.”

Posted in 2004 Texas To Labrador | Comments Off

Texas to Labrador (2)

Posted on June 10, 2004 by admin

Dear Friends:

Now in the library at Grand Bend, ONT, on the storm-tossed shores of Lake Huron: yes­ter­day all libraries in Kent County were closed, except for the one at Shet­land, which had no power. As it turned out, there was no power for the next 50 miles, but more of that later.

Restarted in Huntsville (Madi­son) AL, at 4.00 p.m. on Thurs­day, May 27, and did 50 miles due North into TN before dark and exhaus­tion caught me miles from any­where. An old cou­ple were sit­ting on their porch just North of Fayet­teville, TN, and when I enquired allowed me to use the field in front of their barn for a camp site. It rained dur­ing the night, the begin­ning of the Memo­r­ial Day week­end that brought 270 tor­na­dos to the Ohio Valley.

The fol­low­ing day I rode com­pletely across Ten­nessee (Shelbyville-Murfreesboro-Lebanon-Westmorland– Scottsville, KY), hop­ing to get north of the pre­dicted severe thun­der­storms before they hit. The day was extremely hot, and there were no motels or camp-grounds for the last 40 miles. The ter­rain was quite hilly,but I achieved 121 miles.

On Sat­ur­day I con­tin­ued North across Ken­tucky, to Glas­gow (where a High­land Games was due to begin the next day, in this 90-deg humid­ity), and then North on High­way 31E, which turns out to be along the route of an exten­sion of the old Natchez Trace from Nashville to Louisville. In order to find acco­mo­da­tion I turned off this to 31W, where I found an excel­lent 2ndhand book­store in Horse Cave, a city oth­er­wise dead and decay­ing away. The owner had suc­cess­fully used the inter­net to grow his busi­ness, so per­haps the inter­net may yet help save America’s microcities!

Sun­day morn­ing brought the pre­dicted rain, but I rode on, stop­ping for Church at the Methodist Church in Sonora, another dying com­mu­nity, but one that is charm­ing enough to be capa­ble of restora­tion for the tou­sits. Here I was on the Bicen­ten­nial Bike Trail across Amer­ica. I fol­lowed it East to Hod­genville along a beau­ti­ful coun­try road, and vis­ited Abra­ham Lincol’s birth­place in Hod­genville. From there on the weather was clearly threat­en­ing, and at every stop peo­ple warned me that there were tor­na­does ahead. I got to Bran­den­burg, KY, on the Ohio River just ahead of an enor­mous down­pour, for­tu­nately choos­ing to stay in a two-story Motel. I had just fin­ished show­er­ing and clean­ing up when the man­ager came round and ordered every­body out of their rooms since a tor­nado had been sighted less than a mile away. We all sat there for about 90 min­utes look­ing like Lon­don­ers in the Under­ground dur­ing a WWII air-raid. On Memo­r­ial Day morn­ing I waited until the rain was over and then pro­ceeded against a nasty head­wind from the NE into Indi­ana, where all the fields were flooded and the streams bank-full, and there were plenty of tree-branches across the road. North of Palmyra a bridge was out, divert­ing me onto a lit­tle coun­try road run­ning up hill and down dale east­ward to Indi­ana #60 at New Pekin, which had been hit be a tor­nado that day, shortly before I got there. On the last steep switch­back into Pekin I ped­alled too fast and some­thing went in my right leg — my strongest, since my left knee has been “messed up” since a cycling episode in my teenage years. In great pain I made it into the city lim­its of Salem, where a lady in a pick-up rec­og­nized that I was in trou­ble and gave me a lift a cou­ple of miles to the only motel in town. There I rested for a day and caught up on busi­ness necessities.

Salem was the first of a series of delight­ful and appar­ently thriv­ing lit­tle towns in Indi­ana and Ohio: the most beau­ti­ful by far, though, was Ver­sailles, OH, a lit­tle gem.

On Wednes­day, 2 June, I con­tin­ued, in cooler weather but with a Nor’east breeze reach­ing 15–20 mph to Scotts­burg and Ver­non, Indi­ana. Between Ver­non and North Ver­non I nearly got seri­ously injured while try­ing to make a left turn into the Cham­ber of Com­merce offices. The high­way here is nar­row and curvy as it runs along the ridge in the inside of an incised mean­der of the local river. Nobody would slow down and let me turn, and I finally wob­bled off the tar, which was very high above the ground, and slipped off the bike with my legs under a crash barier and my body in the path of oncom­ing traf­fic. My pan­niers were scatt­tered across the edge of the road. Nobody took the least notice, and so I stag­gered into the C. of C. to get a direc­tions out of town and recover.

The fall had fur­ther injured my right leg, and so I stag­gered the last 20 miles into Greens­burg, Indi­ana, using only one leg and in great pain. Espe­cially since the road was busy, shoul­der­less, and there was a strong cross-wind.

The next morn­ing (Thurs­day) was more of the same: pain, traf­fic, cross­winds blow­ing me all over the road, but I got as far as New Cas­tle, IN, where the C. of C. had a cyclist on their staff who gave me a good road east­ward out of town and then North up to Moore­land on old US Hwy 36. Near Mil­roy, IN, I passed through Old Order Amish coun­try, beau­ti­fully tended farms, and a lady in Vic­to­rian styles turn­ing her hay with a horse-drawn machine. Hwy 36 was a delight — beau­ti­ful sur­face, shoul­ders, and light traf­fic, with a tail wind. Right away I met two cyclists, the Lambert’s going in the oppo­site direc­tion. They were long-distance rid­ers, but on this occa­sion just out for an evening spin from their home up the road. A few miles later I stopped to take a Tylenol, and a young lady in a car stopped and startred ask­ing all about my trip. She invited me to meether in the restau­rant at Modoc, her home­town 4 miles up the road, and to stay on her front lawn if nec­es­sary. I demurred, but I had taken the Tylenol too late, and by the time I got to Modoc I was in extreme pain.

The young lady was Mary Nipp, a two-time sur­vivor of breast can­cer, long-distance rider, cycling activist, and bun­dle of energy. Mary insisted on hear­ing all the details of the trip, on pay­ing for my din­ner and break­fast, and on giv­ing me things that I lacked (my lock had bro­ken, for exam­ple). Mary and her Mother and Brother were won­der­fully kind.

On Fri­day, 4th June, I trav­elled with less pain as far as Fort Loramie, OH, and stayed at Lake Loramie State Park, a most delight­ful place. The evening and small hours were, how­ever, spoiled by a group of 4 latwe-arriving youths at the next camping-place. These kids pro­ceeded to get very drunk and rowdy, and then went off to smoke mar­i­juana. They returned still drunk and brawl­ing. I had to get up to goto the bath­room, and this sud­denly sobered them up, since they could not be sure that I had not talked to the Park Ranger, so they hur­riedly left at about 1.45 a.m., leav­ing a lot of lit­ter and parts of their tent. I hope they got home to Day­ton safely.

Sat­ur­day, 5th June brought me to Upper San­dusky, where the only Motel had a pool and whirlpool, so though my wal­let was in pain, I was able to con­sid­er­ably reduce the [pain in my right leg, which was now clearly a dam­aged achilles tendon.

On Sun­day I cruised down­hill and with a tail­wind to Sycamore, where I arrived just as the ser­vice was begin­ning at the local Catholic Church, so I attended Mass, and lis­tened to a fairly good ser­mon. Then on to Belle­vue, where I did my laun­dry at the fan­ci­est Laun­dro­mat I have ever seen. At Castalia I found that I could not get across to Port Clin­ton to take the ferry to the Bass Islands in Lake Erie, since no bikes were allowed on the free­way (Ohio 2) and the old bridge had been torn down. I checked any­way, and found the sit­u­a­tion to be true, so rode on into San­dusky, where I found that the boat for Canada would be leav­ing in three hours.

I had crossed the USA from South to North, Hous­ton to San­dusky, Ohio, in 22 days and 45 min­utes rid­ing time, cov­er­ing nearly 1800 miles ( I haven’t my note­book here in the Library — more exact num­bers later). This is long enough, and so many things have hap­pened in my few days in Canada that I will fin­ish now, and save those for later. I wish you all a won­der­ful time. Please let me know if there are other things you would like to hear about, or whether I am spend­ing too much time on the mechan­ics of the trip and not enough on the human interest.

Posted in 2004 Texas To Labrador | Comments Off