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| CANADA |
POINTE AUX OUTARDES
Back at Outardes 2 and Just across the river is an exciting little diversion down to the peninsula of the Pointe-aux-Outardes. A little 14-kilometre drive down to the end is advertised and now that I've driven it, I can tell you that you won't be disappointed.
If you go all of the way down that road and turn to the right, the first thing that will strike you, if the tide is out of course, is the beach. I don't think that I have never seen a tide so far out as this one, except maybe at Southport in Lancashire on a good day.
And the beach is swarming with people looking for what I imagine might be shellfish. I checked with a yokel sitting in his car admiring the view, and not only was he a local yokel but a very vocal local yokel too, and he confirmed that it was indeed crustacés that they were collecting.
I do hope that these people will not keep their catch all to themselves but give out a few to their friends. After all, one mustn't be selfish with one's shellfish.
On a more serious note though, it did cheer me up somewhat to know that the shellfish around here aren't contaminated, as they are back at Tadoussac
There are some beautiful walks around the Point as well, and had I had the time, I would have had a good wander around.
They say that the visitor can see over 200 different types of bird around here, but I bet that there wouldn't be one type of the type of bird in which I would be interested.
Another point of note is that the water in the St Lawrence around here reaches its warmest temperature along the whole of the North Shore eact of the Saguenay. Temperatures of up to a monumental 26.6°C have been recorded.
I don't know what you think, but I reckon that that is cold enough to freeze the barnacles off a brass dinghy.
But mentioning the subject of time, It's quite ironic really that here I am for 6 weeks every year in Canada, which would normally give me all the time that I would ever need to do anything that I would ever want, but I always seem to be rushing around from one place to another regardless, without the time to really stop.
One important place to visit is the cemetery - especially when there's a cemetery without a church attached. All kinds of history can be recorded in a place such as that.
The first thing that struck me was the date of the earliest interment. 1904 was what I could find, and related to a child of 6 weeks old. I was surprised to find nothing earlier. I would have reckoned that a place such as this would have been settled a long time prior to the beginning of the 20th Century.
I compared the gravestone - in the background of this photo - of this infant to another gravestone close by - of a Tremblay as it happened (and this cemetery was packed with Tremblays) - the one in the foreground and dating from 1939.
It seems to me to be clear that the carving on the two stones was by the same hand but, interestingly, on the earlier gravestone, he had chiseled some horizontal lines to keep his carving in place (and vertically, he was a little all over the place) whereas on the later gravestone there were no guidelines and the whole job was so much neater.
It seems to me that he was the only stonemason in the vicinity and in 1904 he was a mere beginner at his carving. By 1939 he had clearly had so much more practice.
This was something that I noticed time and time again on my visits to cemeteries in these remote rural areas.
But anyway, the cemetery, and a church attached, date from 1900 but I suppose that by now, if you've followed this journey all the way from Montreal you can all guess what became of the church.
Of course you can - it was engulfed in a conflagration in 1917. And when it was rebuilt, it was rebuilt nearer the centre of the contemporary settlement. The cemetery was however kept on until 1949
And you can tell that I'm getting old these days. While I was prowling around in the cemetery, two gravediggers chased after me, brandishing their spades.
You might not recognise the view just here but this is a photo taken from the Pointe aux Outardes once again.
We've come back here late in the evening in early October 2015 because we're on the prowl again. You'll recall that I mentioned above that I had been looking for the remains of the abandoned Outardes One Hydro-electric power station.
Although you have seen the photos on another page , we didn't discover them until tomorrow and the reason why they might seem to be out of order was because we were travelling in the opposite direction in 2015 - from Baie Comeau westwards and we haven't reached there yet.
And we have new transport too.
I'm fed up of paying extortionate rental charges to car hire companies, having endless disputes with them about whether I want an upgrade or not, whether "unlimited mileage" really does mean "unlimited mileage" or being stung for inappropriate "cleaning charges " when I hand back the vehicle in an absolutely spotless condition.
When I was in New Brunswick in 2014 I spoke to a Ford dealer about the possibility of buying a small 4x4 pick-up. They didn't deal with the kind of trade-ins that I was hoping to buy. Whatever they took in part-exchange that would have suited me went straight off to auction at Moncton to be sold into the motor trade.
But I have friends and relatives in the motor trade in New Brunswick and the Ford dealer played the game. And now I've ended up with a 2008 Ford Ranger pick-up fitted with off-road pack, larger wheels and off-road tyres.
I had a truck cap made for me, and here we are. Meet Strider, the Ranger.
While you are admiring the beautiful evening, I'll tell you that I know that the old Outardes One is somewhere on the Outardes River near to its mouth close to its confluence with the St Lawrence River and you can't get much closer to the mouth of the river and its confluence with the St Lawrence River than here.
It has long been abandoned and is very difficult to find, and despite my searches today, I haven't found it yet. I'm determined that I'll track it down this year and then next year go to look for the other Outardes dams and the Manicouagan 3 dam that I have missed, but the light is now going quite rapidly.
I'll settle down here for the night and continue my search tomorrow. I shan't be "rushing around from one place to another regardless, without the time to really stop" tonight.
Over there underneath that mountain is the town of Matane. There are a couple of ferries across to Matane too. One, from Godbout, we've taken on a couple of times but the other, from Baie Comeau itself, i've not yet taken
But I'm saving that delight for another time because this year - 2015 - I'm intending to head west upriver.
The St Lawrence River isn't particularly wide here, it's not very deep and we are a long way upriver from its mouth. And so it's very hard to imagine that during World War II two German submarines, believed to be U-69 and U-132, were operating in the river around here and not only sank a couple of ships, but made a successful getaway too.
While we are talking about submarines ... "well, one of us is" - ed ... and U-69 in particular, she was probably one of the most controversial German submarines of World War II
Not the most controversial though - that honour, such as it is, must go to Heinz-Wilhelm Eck and his U-852 which machine-gunned most of the survivors of the Greek freighter Peleus (although it must never be forgotten that American submarines routinely machine-gunned survivors of Japanese ships).
Nevertheless, U-69 was the submarine that torpedoed the Caribou - the ferry that plied its trade between Sydney, Nova Scotia and Channel Port aux Basques in Newfoundland and also the (then-neutral) American freighter Robin Moor, both acts which received a considerable amount of international condemnation although, strictly speaking, they were justified under the Rules of War.
But it's a beautiful evening tonight and as the sun sets down in the west, I'm glad that I decided to stay here the night and watch the glorious sunset. There's just the odd car pulling in to turn round but I don't think that that will disturb me too much.
And with the little breeze that is gently rocking Strider I should be quite comfortable tonight. And with a bit of good luck I'll be fighting fit for my search tomorrow.
The following morning there was not a drop of condensation anywhere at all inside Strider this morning and I didn't think that it was that cold.
But it was cold enough to freeze the can of butane gas again and I had to roll it around in my hands for five minutes before there was enough pressure to make a good-enough heat to boil the water for my morning coffee.
And then I could sit quietly and admire the sunrise, or what I could see of it anyway through the rainclouds, while I ate my breakfast. And after coffee and breakfast I went off on a marathon hike
I mentioned earlier that when you come down to the Pointe des Outardes you need to turn right at the T-junction to reach the beaches where I'd been sleeping. So what happens if you turn to the left?
The answer is that you drive down the road a little way and then disappear into the swamp and the wilderness. The road peters out and it isn't very inspiring at all.
However, there are some quite astonishing things to see down here.
The first objects to catch my eye are loads and loads and loads of these plastic-covered greenhouses. The whoe area is heavily-infested in them and so it seems that the inhabitants are heavily into gardening whenever they can find some soil to garden in.
I can't think of anywhere else where I might have seen geodesic greenhouses before. That is certainly a novelty as far as I am concerned.
This ws quite exciting too. Not necessarily the view of the beaches and the river, although in normal circumstances that would have been worth a photo, but I mean the collection of artefacts in this garden.
Never mind the wagon wheel either, which probably has an exciting story all of its own to tell, but what about the cannon? There certainly must be quite a story associated with that.
It's another one of those things that if there had been anyone about at all to ask, then I would indeed have done so. However, it was just like the Mary Celeste around here.
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