Driving in North America is becoming boring these days. I remember the astonishment that I felt when I encountered my first ever North American roundabout - or "traffic circle" - in Pictou, Nova Scotia , and my ecstasy at discovering my first one in the USA, at New Bern, North Carolina was overwhelming.

Nowadays, though, they seem to be something of a status symbol and every town seems to want to have one. Springing up like mushrooms, they are.

Here on the edge of the town of Yamachiche, at the junction with an exit road for the motorway between Montreal and Quebec, we now seem to have another one.

But my eye has been caught by the service area on the other side of the roundabout. I'll add that to the list of potential overnight stops. As I've said before, lay-bys in North America are, unlike Europe, few and far between. One must make other arrangements for overnight stops.

And make a note of it I certainly did. Here at the Service Area at the Yamachiche roundabout early in the morning on my 2013 drive, I awoke to find that it was the 1st of September. Where is this year going? Where is my holiday going?

This is my spec from last night. I wasn't quite as comfortable as the previous night as there was a little too much noise for my liking.

But then again I did have the window open slightly to stop the inside steaming up, hot steamy stuff that I am, and I couldn't find anywhere really to hide out of the way - everywhere here is near the road. And that big truck starting up his fridge motor at 04:30 didn't help matters any.

Still, I'm not complaining too much. It was better than many other places that I've stayed in the UK. The ... errr ... usual outoffices score quite high marks and would have been perfect had I been able to track down a shower, and we aren't talking about the Open University Students Association either.

The café-restaurant is fine - I always try to patronise the commercial facilities to some degree whenever I've been sleeping on someone else's premises - but the truckers' store was a big disappointment. There wasn't anything 12-volt or anything of any use that attracted my attention

But I find that i am not alone here - as if I ever expected to be.

At some time during the night I have been joined by the Dukes of Hazzard. They are a long way from home and so is the local Law Enforcement Agency, but the latter won't be going very much further in a hurry. The exhaust tailpipe mounting of the Tijuana Taxi seems to have sheared off and the tailpipe is dragging on the ground.

I discovered a sign that I had missed in the dark last night. It seems that maximum parking on the front is for two hours only etc etc. However, underneath it was written a little note something like "for longer stay parking, please use the area at the back of the hotel"

And sure enough, here's another sign that I had missed last night. If only I had seen that in the dark.

Round the back was a huge dirt parking area with enough room for about 300 trucks and I really don't know how I missed it. I would have been right out of the way of everyone and maybe even in a little more peace and quiet through the night. Wouldn't that have been ideal?

And much more comfortable too. I'll add it to my list.

As we come into the outskirts of Yamachiche, there's an old road that merges in on the right. There are some old and impressive-looking houses down there and when you see old impressive-looking houses and an old road you immediately think that it's an important old road.

This hints to me that it might at one time have been one of the traces of the Chemin du Roy and so I went down to see what I could see.

Sure enough, this road comes to a dead stop right where the motorway cuts across its path.

If you have a look directly across the motorway, you'll see a gap in the line between the trees. This might be where the road continued and so it may well be that this stretch of road might at one time have been an old trace of part of the Chemin du Roy

I'd driven past a few exciting objects in order to arrive at the end of the road, knowing that I would have to retrace my steps. I had resolved to look at them on the way back.

Not the least of the exciting objects was this statue of Saint Anne, with a whole pile of plaques around it giving some kind of history of the area.

It seems that the family Bellemare has held this land from father to son since 1703, and celebrated 300 years of ownership in 2002, which tells you that mathematics isn't anyone's particular strongpoint in Yamachiche.

I would have taken a photo of the other side of the statue had the sun not been shining directly in my eyes, because there is a plaque there listing all of the owners in chronological order. The first owner was apparently Jean-Baptiste Gélinas dit Bellemare and it always intrigues me why the early settlers in Quebec changed their names and what was the significance of the nickname "Bellemare" that he took.

But then again, as we know, everyone here was doing it. No reason for Jean-Baptiste Gélinas to be left out.

There's quite a bit of history of the churches recorded here too. It seems that there have been 7 chuches in Yamachiche and at least 2 of them burnt down, so no surprise there.

The churches were dedicated to Saint Anne so my guess a little earlier was correct. But there again, I thought it was. I've been spending quite a lot of time just recently with a local historian in Pionsat and one of the things that we have been doing is to record the local churches in the outlying hamlets. One thing that I've learnt that in the Catholic church each saint is always represented with a little device to distinguish him or her from the others. Saint Anne, who is Mary's mother, is always depicted with a child.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, here was the original domain and this is where the original church - or churches - would have been found. However, after a fire of 1780, there were all kinds of disputes about where the new church should be rebuilt, and I've seen various and different explanations. Some say that the population had already moved to where the town is today and so the new church was built at the new settlement. Others say that the church was rebuilt in its present position and the population followed the church

Regardles of whether the people or the church moved first, there were naturally others who wanted the church to be rebuilt on its initial site. It wasn't until 1788 that the authorities intervened and made a final decision.

By then, the demographics of the area had changed. Following the fall of the British Colonies in what became the USA, a good number of "Empire Loyalists" came to settle here. Maybe this was a part of the conflict over the resiting of the Church, although with the "Empire Loyalists" being Protestant and the local congregation being Catholic, I would have been surprised.

The town itself doesn't feature too much in very many books about Quebec, and that's probably because, just for a change, the church here - the usual barometer of success and wealth of a Québecois settlement - is not very historic at all.

The parish church of Saint Anne is quite modern and, shame as it is for someone like me to admit it, I don't actually dislike it. I've seen many churches much worse than this and I really can't think of any modern religious edifice that would receive a higher standing on my list of appreciation than this one.

Having dictated that, I shall now go and wash out my mouth with soap.

Seeing something as modern as this, it really does pose the question "what happened to the edifice that was here before?"

Of course, there are no prizes on offer for an answer. If you've been following these pages closely you'll be able to make an educated guess. After all, there's just so much arson about in Eastern Canada.

One thing that Yamachiche does have going for it is its Saturday market. This seems to be the day when many of the local suppliers bring their produce to town and I'm all in favour of supporting local businesses.

Unfortunately there was nothing at all here for me to support. I am, as you know, a vegan and don't eat animal products, as you know, and so cheese makers and sausage suppliers were of no interest to me. I was hoping that there might have been a local ice-cream supplier with a dairy-free sorbet, but I was out of luck .

So this is the town of Yamachiche and pretty though it might be, there was only the church to distinguish itself from any one of a thousand other small towns in Eastern Canada.

But here's a thing. In Yamachiche we have a Fanfare - a Jazz Band. They have been going for 120 years (so I bet that they are thoroughly exhausted by now and their listeners thoroughly fed up).and they play airs sacrés as well as airs profanes.

I wood love to hear them play "The Good Ship Venus" or "The Ball of Kirriemuir". You can't find many airs more profanes than those, and Strawberry Moose would lead the vocals. One day I'll post the photos of his efforts at the Sea Shanty Convention in May 2012.

And I promise you that I won't take any more photos of rotten cars - both you and I have had our fill of these. Mind you, there were enough here this Saturday lunchtime in Yamachiche to keep us going for a few years.

I'll have to sort out my gas-welding equipment. I could be on to something here.

The old Chemin du Roy leaves Yamachiche along some kind of side street and this quickly degenerates into a nice dirt road just like we are used to. Aren't I lucky?

And I don't know what that bird was that took off from in front of me, but it was huge. It may well have been an albatros or something similar but what do I know about birds? My idea of bird-watching has nothing to do with wings and feathers.

I mentioned just now that everyone changed their name when they came to settle in Quebec. However, I've just driven past a house where there's a sign hanging out advertising someone else called Gélinas doing something or other. Clearly not all of the Gélinases wanted to be dit Bellemare

Still, as a certain Robert Zimmerman once said,
"You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is The Land of the Free"
although there is no such place as "The Land of the Free" today in the Western world since the Fascists took over.

As Fish sang on the track Fugazi
"Where are the prophets"
"where are the visionaries"
Whatever happened to protest singers and peace campaigners?

I wanted to spend the afternoon in Trois Rivieres so I put my foot down from here. I'll retrace my steps tomorrow and catch up with what I've missed if necessary.

And as I was speeding along the road towards Trois Rivieres, something started nagging me in the back of my mind to put my seat-belt on. Eventually I gave in to this sudden urge and I'm glad that I did because around the next corner I ran straight into one of the Province of Quebec's finest lurking up a dirt track studying the traffic going past.

I didn't actually go straight into him, but right across his nose. And that was uncanny, the sudden urge to put on my seat belt. I just wish that I had had a similar urge to pay the same amount of attention to the speed at which I was travelling.

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