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TURNING AWAY FROM HIGHWAY 138

That was Trois Rivières anyway, at least for now. There are still one or two other places there that I have to see but they can wait for another time.

Meandering out of the old town via the residential zone, I rejoined Highway 138. On the outskirts of Trois Rivières this follows the route of the old Chemin du Roy built in the 18th Century to link Montreal and Québec and why I'm here is to follow the route of the old road as far as possible. Apart from that, of course, Highway 138 is in my opinion the most beautiful road in the whole of Canada, although on the edges of the town here you will have to trust me.


We cross the Riviere St Maurice via the Duplessis Bridge, bouncing onto and off St Joseph's Island on our way. In 2011 there was a temporary speed limit in force due to major roadworks on the bridge, and lurking behind a traffic cone were a couple of coppers equipped with a radar gun.

Now that begs a question. Cars registered in Québec don't carry front number plates, so how does this radar work then when it takes a photo of your speeding vehicle and there's no number visible to identify the offending car?

It's pretty much well-known that hire cars have chips fitted in them so that the hire companies know where their vehicles are at any given moment. It makes me wonder whether all cars have a chip in them so that the authorities know where each car is at any given moment. Nothing would surprise me given the controls that the Fascists have imposed on the population since they have been in charge in Western Europe. It's well-known that various Governments are working hard to be able to transplant GPS microchips into members of their population so that they can keep track of where everyone is. How paranoid is that?

Mind you, fear is a wonderful tactic, as any good Fascist will tell you, and I've been told on more than one occasion by more than one person that having been frightened to death by stories of The Bogeyman, American parents are queueing up to have GPS microchips implanted into their offspring.

A Free Society? You are joking of course. The Communists in the Soviet Union and East Germany had nothing on this. I wonder when some politician from the "Free West" will stand up and publicly admit that maybe the Soviets did have a point.


Anyway, having now finished my really good rant, I can tell you the answer to the conundrum, and it's nothing like as scary as the story of GPS microchips implanted in the car (although I'm not ruling that out). However, you'll have to wait until I catch up with the pages of my journey around the Sageunay Fjord, when all will be revealed.

However, I do tend to find myself carried away somewhat, so much so on this occasion that in 2012 I took little or no notice of the bridge. But when I passed by here in September 2013 I did notice that they were still working on it. It's definitely keeping them out of mischief.


On the far side if the river is a really big Canadian Tire outlet and in 2011 it was having a sale. There is a huge amount of exciting purchases in there for me, that's for sure and if I had had $400 handy I would have bought an Air-X wind turbine that was on offer. That made me pass a resolution to open a Canadian bank account and pay some money in there for buying stuff like that. Travelling around with a couple of European bank cards and trying to balance credit limits and daily withdrawal amounts is something that is clearly not working.

Loading up the Dodge after my little visit, some guy patrolling the car park came over to try to chisel me for some cash. I keep on having to remind people like this that back in 1976 and 1977 I was living in a van and squatting in a derelict house due to ... errr ... liquidity issues, but no-one ever gave me anything and I resloved my problems by the pure and simple expedient of hard work.

The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav has picked out a route for me on leaving Canadian Tire but I'm not going that way. I'm taking a different route.

chemin du roy quebec canada avril april 2012

If I had been going full speed ahead along Highway 138 instead of making a detour via Canadian Tires I probably would not have noticed the blue-and-white sign for the Chemin du Roy nailed up on a lamp-post just after leaving the car park.

The sign takes me off to the right along the old Chemin du Roy in the direction of Cap de la Madeleine. And I'm glad that it does because it is so much nicer than the modern Highway 138. We seem to be driving through a nice suburban area with typical, well, maritime type of houses.

low flying cars chemin du roy quebec canada avril april 2012

I don't know if you noticed the road sign in the background of the previous photo, and so when I came across another similar sign a few hundred metres further alon the road, I stopped to take a photo of that. I'm not quite sure exactly what it is that it is supposed to represent but a wild guess would be to suggest that low-flying cars are a real danger to cyclists in this part of Québec.

Anyway, this is another one of those silly photographs to add to the collection and one day I'll collect them all together.

One thing to note, though, is that there is no shortage of ... errr ... street furniture to which to nail the signs. These electricity poles really do get on my wick. Another thing is that at least one of the houses in the vicinity is made of brick rather than wood.


It seems to be my lucky day for trains, doesn't it? I'm glad that I ignored what The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav was telling me and came this way. If I had followed her instructions I would not have seen this train parked up here on this bridge.

general motors GP38 diesel locomotive chemin du roy quebec canada september septembre 2011

I waited around for a few minutes to see if he was going to move so that I could have a closer view, but apparently not. He seemed to be quite happy parked up there on that bridge. And of course that means that I couldn't see the locomotive clearly to see what it is.

Its stock number is 2009 so taking a wild guess I would say that it's a brother to 2007 which we encountered on our way into Trois Rivières earlier. In other words, another one of 733 GP38 locos built by General Motors back in the 1960s. This is of course mere speculation. If you know better than me, and let me know.


Ironically (or maybe not, as the case may be) the reason why I've come down this road, apart from following the Chemin du Roy of course, is to go to the terminus of that railway line. But not to see a freight yard, from where that train has just departed, but the building at the end of the line which this railway was built to serve back in the Golden Age of Rail.



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