CANADA ST LAWRENCE NORTH SHORE

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I forgot to mention that I've been having bed issues in the Dodge. The bed seems to be coming apart slowly at the seams and it decanted me onto the floor the other night.

Anyway, with having a few minutes to spare last night, I fixed it up and tightened all of the joints, and consequently I had the best night's sleep that I have ever had.

Out like a light at 21:45, woken up briefly round about midnight by receiving a text from my friend Rhys in South Carolina, and then that was that until about 06:30. And in my dreams I was back in Crewe with a former friend of mine who lives in Stoke on Trent.

Yes, it was all happening last night!

And what a good plan it was to shelter behind that building last night out of the wind, because I had the sun streaming in through the windscreen of the Dodge full on my face in the morning, and it was quite warm out of the wind.

So breakfast of bagels, strawberry jam, maple syrup and a couple of mugs of coffee, catch up on my notes from last night, and then time to hit the road, Jack - or Jacques, seeing as we are in Quebec.

I'll remember the Phare du Pointe des Monts for another time.

Back on Highway 138 - the Route jacques Cartier - again, and I didn't stay too long there because I found a road that was named, rather enigmatically, the Sentier des Naufragés - "Path of the Victims of Shipwrecks".

And with a name like that, you just have to visit it ... "well, YOU do" - ed ... and so I did.

However, I couldn't go much further than about here because you can see that the further along the path that I drive, the more snow that there is on the road.

And there are limits to what is reasonable behaviour in a hire car if you are intending to push on from this point later. I don't have the time to sit and wait for the Spring thaw.

So abandoning the Dodge pro tem I set off on foot to see what's awaiting me down at the far end of the path, even if it does mean wading through about three feet of snow.

And you can see that I'm not alone either. Several other people have passed this way since the last snowfall and I did a little later encounter someone else out for a walk down here. But more of that anon.

As for all the snow around here, apparently the weather is three weeks in advance for the season, would you believe?

Usually at this time of the year there is much more snow than this hanging around, and what we have today is what they would usually expect to see at the end of the month. Nevertheless, I made a note to come back here sometime later in the year when there was no snow.

Now, back on the path and I don't know what I was expecting to see right down at the end.

I mean, I wasn't expecting to see a 155,000 tonne oil tanker or a French 68-gun man-of-war ... " PERSON-of-war" - ed ... of the 1630s stranded on the rocks. An old fishing trawler would have done me just as nicely.

But to come down a Sentier des Naufragés and not to see a single naufrage is rather miserable if you ask me.

It's a beautiful little cove with a nice beach and nice little houses and it's a really nice little place to be, but a shipwreck would have been a welcome sight, especially given the name.

I mean, I had to wait a whole 3 hours before I found a shipwreck.

It's not all doom and gloom though. I did manage to take a final photograph of the southern shore of the St Lawrence before it finally disappears from view.

The early-morning mists rising out of the river give the southern shore some kind of eerie appearance and you can understand how it is that ships, even big ships such as the Empress of Ireland can become disorientated and come to grief in the fog.th.

There's also a really good view of a bay over there and They Call Me Trinity - Baie Trinite in fact. And while I was admiring the aforementioned, the people who had preceded me down the path came along to join me. They were locals and told me something of the history of the area.

And you have no idea just how close I was with my idea of a 68-gun man-o-war either. It seems that about 10 or so years ago, the wreck of the Elizabeth and Mary, a ship of the fleet of the legendary Admiral Phips - he who tried to capture Montreal in 1690 - was discovered just offshore here in December 1994.

The wreck was excavated and there's a display of artefacts in the museum in Baie Trinity. I was all for going off there for a look but it is closed for the season, as you might indeed expect if you have been following these pages closely. I shall have to inspect their artefacts another time.

You'll remember that I said just now when I was knee-deep in snow that I would have to come back another time when there was no likelihood of there being any snow.

Sure enough, when I found myself in the area in late September 2016, I had no such issues. Right out further along the road from where I was snowbound is the Pointe-á-Poulin and so I set off down there to see how far I could go.

And never mind the Pointe-á-Poulin either. I went way beyond the end of the Rue Poulin and eventually found myself at the Anse de Sable - Sandy Cove.

And I wasn't alone here either. I was chased all the way down the road by three Dodge Caravans full of people and I must admit to wondering what on earth was going on. This beach seems to be a popular spot this year and so I shall have to make enquiries as to why they are here.

The people from the Dodges all went over there to have a play on that big rock that looked as if it might have been a plaque of volcanic lava. I went over to have a chat to them to see what was going on.

It appears that they were part of a group of High-School students who were out on a field trip along the North Shore of the St Lawrence, although whatever activities in which they seemed to be engaged didn't look too much like intellectual or educational activities to me.

All of this made me wonder whether the young archaeologists whom I had seen at Godbout the other day excavating part of that cache of seashells on the river bank were from the same group of students. I suppose that I should have asked the archaeologists where they came from.

But anyway, I left them all to whatever it was that they were supposed to be doing and went for a wander right out to the farthest extremity of the Point.

Or at least, what I thought was the farthest extremity of the Point because each time that I came to what I thought was the farthest extremity of the Point, there was another Point around the corner.

I'd heard of a similar phenomenon in mountaineering when people climbed up to what they considered to be the summit, only to find that there was another summit further on - and so on.

Having realised that I was likely to be out here all night at this rate that I was going around, and probably ending up back in Godbout by foot as well, I turned round and retraced my steps somewhat, turning my attention to the rocks just offshore.

I went for a clamber about and for a closer inspection thereof. I noticed that the rocks were not rocks at all but nice, black, smooth and shiny, so it seemed to me that these might also be plaques of lava.

You might be wondering about the likelihood of volcanic activity around the St Lawrence River valley, but there certainly appears to be every reason to accept this as fact.

The St Lawrence River valley is situated more-or-less along a geological fault line and there is good evidence of techtonic plate movement along here as well as some evidence of prehistoric volcanic eruptions. Coming across outcrops of lava, and even finding lava fused into airgaps in other rocks, is by no means unusual.

But talking of techtonic plate movement, we are on solid ground here. There have been several earthquakes recorded along the St Lawrence River valley in recent years,and earthquakes with scores of 5 and higher on the Richter Scale have been recorded.

But this pales into insignificance when considered against the events of 1663

Many of you will remember the discussion that we had a couple of weeks ago when we were higher up-river at Les Eboulements . We mentioned that in that year there had been as many as 33 earthquakes along the St Lawrence in that vicinity, the largest of which caused an entire mountainside to slide into the river.

Had the temperature been just a couple of degrees warmer and had there been a little less wind, I could quite happily have stretched out in the sunshine on one of the lava beds. But the day was drawing on, the wind was getting up again and I had other thngs to do. I decided to call it a day.

Leaving the lava beds for now and exchanging further pelasantries with the students, who seemed to be having endless amounts of fun, I walked right back around to the other end of the bay - that is, the end closest to Baie Trinité.

This end of the beach was really quite beautiful too, but it was a little disappointing becase I was hoping that I might see a shipwreck or two, or maybe even just the remains of a shipwreck or something having run aground here. But no such luck.

Still, it wasn't the end of the world, I suppose. I had stumbled upon this beach at Anse de Sable almost by accident and had been very impressed with what I had seen.

All in all, I'd quite enjoyed my little afternoon out here.

And so I slowly made my way back to Strider.

But as I returned to civilisation halfway down the ruePoulin before I reached Highway 138, I came to a shuddering halt along the side of the road.

That was because the view of the bay that I saw as I rounded a bend was quite stunning. Now this is the kind of beach upon which I could quite happily recline in the evening sun, except of course that the sun is setting behind the trees on the left.

So now I can return to Highway 138 and continue my little trip around - unless something else comes along to interrupt me.

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