CANADA - THE SAGUENAY

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And so after much binding in the marsh, I eventually find myself a lunchstop. I'm quite close to the town of Peribonka and so this might be the riviere Peribonka but don't take my word for it as Brain of Britain here forgot to make a note of where he is.

It's as good a lunch stop as you would hope to find on a good day in beautiful weather like this and it's here that I finally make it into shirt sleeves, something that I certainly wasn't expecting seeing as how the day started.

Having eaten my lunch and drunk some root beer, I decide to go for a walk around and see what I can see.

First thing that I do see is the absolutely beautiful setting of the place, with its boat ramp and small jetty. Clearly something of interest on a tourist itinerary and so I'm quite astonished that I've not been asked to pay anything to drive down here, judging by what I've been encountering so far in this neighbourhood.

Second thing that I see is that, despite the gorgeous weather that we are having, there is still some snow on the banks of the river. Winter hasn't quite been all swept away.

Third thing that I see is a notice telling me that this area was first settled by someone called Charles Lindsay, and as recently as 1900 too. I have to say that had I seen this area first I would have colonised it too because it really is so nice here.

Fourth thing that I see is the toilet block, and I have to say that they are the worst toilets in the world. I don't think that they have been cleaned since the end of last season and the water is turned off so no-one has been able to flush them.

It's a pity that I can't take a smell sample as well, because all around here I can smell nothing but pine essence and that's a beautiful smell.If I could bottle that and bring it back home to sell I would make my fortune and no mistake.

And it was only after typing the above paragraph that I thought that maybe I should have used some kind of different order for the things that I saw, so that I didn't have the "dreadful, unclean toilets" and the "smell sample" running next to each other. I certainly wasn't smelling "nothing but pine essence" in the toilets. Far from it, in fact.

Back on the road after lunch and I take a little detour towards the town of St Augustin.

My attention was drawn by the name of the local school, and at first I misread it. That almost provoked a moment of hilarity as my travelling companion, Strawberry Moose and I were on the point of going in to see if there were any teaching vacancies. We both have all of the right kind of qualifications for such a position.

However, it seemed that we had misread the name of the school and that led to something of a disappointment.

I'm sure that I'm right about this idea of mine of a micro-climate existing in this region around the lake. We've all seen photos of areas like this and I've actually visited some, in Ontario when I was there with Liz's daughter Kit in 2010.

Farming in this area must be quite profitable because there wouldn't be this kind of infrastructure for people who are scrabbling around in the dirt in some kind of desperation and poverty.

According to The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav, there's a turning off here towards Sainte-Marguerite-Marie that takes me down to a promontory where I can sit and be surrounded by water on three sides of the road.

This road takes me past a farm where the animals being reared are llamas or alpacas or something like that. They aren't the first beasts of this ilk that we have come across on our voyage. You may remember several days ago encountering some others as we were leaving Les Eboulements .

The road turns out to be something of a disappointment however as it peters out into this - some kind of track of loose sand and a blueberry shack, with barbed wire fencing and that kind of thing. And no sight of any water.

I was thinking to myself that I bet that this road would be fun in the wet, but whatever else it might do, it wasn't going to take me anywhere much further than this and so I retraced my steps.

I remember awarding the detour down to Sainte-Marguerite-Marie a score of ... errr ... "badger-all".

The road along which I am now driving is called the Boulevard Panoramique and it runs alongside the riviere Mistassini that separates the towns of Mistassini and Dolbeau right at the head of Lac-St-Jean. You can see why it's so called, and it's certainly well-worth the name.

As for both of the towns, however, a quick look around didn't reveal anything of any importance or significance. That indicates that I probably missed hundreds of things of importance or interest.

One thing that I didn't miss was another one of these places that sells a million and one different varieties of sorbets such as we met on Duffferin Terrace in Quebec a few days ago .

I ordered Blueberry and Maple Syrup, to which the proprietor turned up his nose. He didn't reckon that it would be a very good mix. My response was that I'm in Canada, and what can be more Canadian than blueberries and maple syrup?

It was obvious that he wanted to have a good chat with me, and in English too. And why not? If he wants to practise his English there's no harm in that. I was there for about half an hour chatting away, and we didn't say much of any importance.

While we're on the subject of blueberries however, one thing that I did learn was that I was sitting in the Blueberry Capital of the World. This region is the source of a major proportion of Canada's crop of blueberries and in the summer there's a huge Blueberry Fair here.

Before leaving the car park at the Bar Laitiere, one thing that I did do was to set up the slow cooker with a dish of rice, purely to see what happens.

The slow cooker was something that I bought in St John's, Newfoundland, in 2010 with the aim of cutting down my expenses on that marathon journey by cooking my own meal as I was driving around.

It's rated at 90 watts and I have a 75-watt inverter that I use for charging the laptop and the like. It will just-about run the slow cooker but it takes hours to cook anything so I have to prepare myself well-in-advance if I want to cook a meal with it. No use waiting until I'm hungry.

There's no point in buying anything that cooks any quicker either as the battery and alternator of the car aren't sufficient to power it, even if I did have an inverter big enough.

Once that's organised, I hit the road. And now that I've reached the head of the lake I'm travelling south in the general direction of Roberval.

And if you recall my remarks about railways when we were passing by Chicoutimi earlier this morning, I now know that there is a rail network out here because I've just driven over a railway line.

About 10 or so kilometres out of the town there is a road that forks off down to the left in the general direction of the lake and so I forked off down it to see what was happening.

After about a kilometre or so the pavement ends and it becomes a dirt road, and brings me past some lovely views of the lower riviere Mistassini, such as the one here in this photo. You can't argue with scenery like this on an afternoon like this. At least I can't.

We continue like this for about 4 kilometres and then the road peters out into a farm drive. I have no alternative but to to turn around and retrace my steps, but because of the views, I'm not going to complain about a wasted journey this time.

But it was driving down here that I noticed that my evening meal might be an issue as the inverter is no longer powering the slow cooker but is instead flashing a warning light at me.

I don't want to do any harm to that inverter as it's the most useful piece of euipment in the car. I'll have to hunt around for the big old 300-watt inverter that I have somewhere in all of the junk under the bed and use that instead.

Some way further on, there's another road off to the left towards the lake. This is the chemin de l'Heron Bleu and there's a sign indicating that down here there's a plage and a balade au bord de l'eau

Judging by the cloud of dust a way down there, this also becomes a dirt road. All in all, it sounds very exciting and my curiosity is aroused so I set off down there for a buther's.

It's another one of these places where there are a great number of private houses with their own private beaches. However, as I have said before, if I had a beach like this I wouldn't want to share it with anyone.

I know that I said that there were signs to a plage and a balade au bord de l'eau, with the assumption of course that they have public access (or else they wouldn't be signed), but I couldn't find them anywhere. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough.

I head back to the main road, which has now become Highway 373, to continue my journey southwards

At St Methode there's yet another scenic byway for me to drive down and this time I forgot to make a note of the name of the chemin.

As far as the scenery goes, it wasn't all that interesting, but there was something else much more exciting. At first glance I thought that this might have been a Humber Hawk and I know that they were sold over here in Canada because Howard at John Scotti's garage had mentioned it.

A second, longer glance however persuaded me otherwise. The rear lights on a Humber Hawk are quite different than these. With the aid of the telephoto lens I could work out that it's a Plymouth.

At this distance though, I couldn't see anything to identify the model of the vehicle. If you have an idea, please . I like to interact with my audience.

Still, it's amazing, the things that one encounters on one's travels.

The chemin Villeneuve is the next road that I try in my attempts to find a decent beach with public access but I have about as much luck as I've had everywhere else today in this respect.

If I can find a decent place to turn round, like just here for example, I can make my way back to the Highway. However I was once more distracted by another side turning off this road that took me over a bridge, round a left turn and then left at another set of crossroads.

That was somewhere that would have been extremely nice and pleasant had there been a view of the lake and the beach. There were plenty of buildings to see but nothing of any interest, and no old cars either. Something of a wash-out in fact.

Something else that seems to be a washout at the moment is the slow cooker. I've just put my hand on it and nearly burnt myself. It shouldn't be running anything like this hot. I suppose that I'll have to forget about the idea of boiled rice for tea

The next side-road was okay. At least there was a reasonable view of the lake and the beach even though I couldn't find a way to any public access. While I was admiring the view of the lake I fell in with one of the local residents.

We had quite a chat too - once more in English. Twice in one day in Quebec is something quite extraordinary and so I asked him about it. He told me that French is indeed the compulsory language around here just as it is everywhere else in Quebec but the people in this neck of the woods are much more mobile and travel around a great deal. English is therefore much more useful to them and so they like to practise it as much as possible.

It's certainly different than in the rest of Quebec. From what I've encountered, the people of the Saguenay are much more opened-out and cosmopolitan.

Another thing that we talked about was the house prices here. Since this area has been rediscovered by the dazzling urbanites of Quebec and the leisure classes, house prices have gone through the roof.

There's a small wooden house near here (right by where I saw that car as it happens) that is the subject of a repossession order and even that will fetch $140,000. The days of buying a small cottage here for peanuts are long gone.

Being a European and being accustoned to British house prices, $140,000 is small change and so I asked him about the winters here. The response was that he didn't know. He has a condo in Florida and at the first sign of snow he p155es off and doesn't come back until spring. I can't say that I blame him

That of course reminds me. Why do birds fly south in winter?
The answer is that it would take too long to walk.

I've now arrived at a town called St Felicien which is not too far from Roberval. It is a beautiful place, well worth much more than a poke around in the gloomy twilight, on the riviere Ashuapmushuan. 266 kilometres long, that makes this river (I'm not going to write its name a second time) one of the most important feeders into the lake.

There's a zoo and a campsite on the edge of town and so I wander off there to find a place to camp but as you might expect, it's closed until the summer. The nearest open campsite is an hour's drive from here (see, even I'm doing it now!) and there is absolutely nowhere suitable for some quiet, casual camping in the Dodge. Caliburn Is much better for this sort of thing. Settling down on a municipal car park or in a side street is much more convenient in a van.

I do however find a hotel, with a vacant room at, would you believe, $42 per night. It's something of a dive with no internet connection but I've stayed in far worse places than this and for much more money too.

No payment by bank card - cash only. And the cash machine didn't like any of my cards and so I had to go chaud-pied as they say around here to the nearest bank.

So here I am, all settled in for the night at the Hotel Richelieu. If you don't hear anything from me tomorrow, it will be because someone has murdered me during the night and stolen my boots.

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