 | CANADA |
| CANADA |
FRANQUELIN RIVER HYDRO PLANTS
Now when I was in Franquelin, I'd mentioned the bridge away in the distance down what looked to be the old road, and also the hydro-electric installation somewhere up-river.
It occurred to me that if there was a road out of the town in that direction, there must be a road in from the other direction too. And in October 2016, I was in the area in a 4x4 pickup with off-road kit, big wheels and heavy-duty tyres. Therefore, to go to seek it seemed to me like a good plan.
I'd had a look on one of these internet mapping sites and worked out what might have been a possible route. There were even some waterfalls - the Thompson Falls - along there in the vicinity. They have to be worth checking out, don't they?
And so off I set accordingly, but arriving there though wasn't as straightforward as it might have been. Although I found what I reckoned was the correct dirt track and drove off down it, I was soon stopped by another motorist.
Apparently, it's a private road, owned by a group of people who have a collection of holiday chalets down at the end of the track. I was told that I needed to present myself to the gate guardian and sign the visitors' book.
And so I did. It was nominally $7:00 to enter the area but I explained to the guy in the cabin at the entrance exactly what I was trying to do and where I was trying to go.
Apparently the original hydro-electric installations are now inaccessible, but he told me how to reach the newer ones (because there were two more-modern ones along the river) and where the "snowmobile track" was, and as long as I stayed around that area, I could go in free of charge.
That sounded like a good deal to me.
But then, it's no unusual experience for me to have people telling me where to go, is it?
The directions that the guy in the cabin had given me took me to the barrage where there was a nice little lake and a parking area for visitors.
This looked as if it would be a good place for me to sit down and eat my butty and to read my book for a while in the sunshine. Especially seeing as there's water here. As you know, I'm Pisces, the fish, and there has to be water wherever I settle down. And with a vehicle, I can pick and choose my lunch stops.
There was some kind of circular tourist walk advertised and while I wasn't up to spending a couple of hours climbing up and down the kind of route that they were advertising, I thought that nevertheless it would still be a good idea to go for a tramp in the woods.
Unfortunately, the tramp evaded my clutches and so I loitered in the vicinity to admire the vegetation. Mostly all evergreen conifers and not very much in the way of deciduous trees.
And I wasn't alone here in the forest either.
While I hadn't seen any livestock of note on my travels, I was continually being overflown by large airliners. It's that time of day again isn't it? The early afternoon when all of the flights from Europe come in to Montreal.
Most of them fly along the St Lawrence estuary at round about this time and I must have counted 8 or 9 that flew over me while I was walking.
I'd seen on the information panel at the dam that the footpath went past a belvedere - a scenic viewpoint. It was to there that I was heading.
They weren't wrong either. It is indeed a scenic viewpoint and as it overlooks a lake, it has to be quite high in my table of interest. As you know, I'm not a big fan of hydro-electric power - or, at least, those that are powered by lake retention - but I do have to admit that they do make for some quite beautiful scenery in places like this.
I went back to the parking place afterwards and crossed back over the dam.
I was told that this wasn't actually the original channel of the river but the blocking off of the original course of the river diverted it into a course that was much more amenable to the extraction of the potential power that the river can supply. Hydro-electric power is, of course, the big thing around here for these villages that are isolated from any other source of electricity.
I did mention that round about here were some waterfalls - the Thompson Falls.
I had a good look round and couldn't see very much but after a while I noticed some water cascading down the rocks over there. I had to look at it for a while before I could make out that it didn't appear to be actually cascading over the dam.
There was nowhere to look at the falls from a better viewpoint and so I couldn't confirm anything, but this is the best guess that I can make as to the location of the Thompson Falls.
Another thing that I mentioned earlier was that I was told that this isn't the original channel of the rivière Franquelin.
But whatever it was, the hydro work has created this absolutely beautiful river. And you can work out the strength of the river and how deep it floods by looking at the tree line on the shore. Nothing at all is growing within about 20 feet of the level of the river today.
I would love to be here in April and see what the river is doing then, when it's in full spate with the meltwater coming down.
Back in Strider, I retraced my steps for a distance because I'd seen the sign for the snowmobile trail which I knew led to the back of Franquelin and which I'd tried the other day to follow out of the town in this direction.
It was a pretty rough trail, but then this was the reason that I had bought Strider. He's a 4×4 pick-up fitted with the off-road kit, larger, heavier wheels and proper off-road tyres, just the thing for roads like this.
And I'm glad that Strider and I took this road because the scenery along here was tremendous. This is the Franquelin river that we had seen from up above at the dam just now.
I'd been following the snowmoble trail along the side of the river but a short distance further on I came to a grinding halt. The trail shot off into the hills and was pretty impassible from this point on. There were rocks all over the road and it looked as if it hadn't been cleared for years.
But never mind about that right now. My attention was diverted by what looked like another small waterfall on the river. This led down to a set of beautiful sandy beaches that you can see over there on the opposite bank.
I was eager to investigate so I parked up Strider and clambered over a barrier across the roadway. Not that I needed to because about 30 seconds later someone else turned up with a key.
I was quite disappointed by the waterfall because it wasn't all that much of one at all as you can see. It wasn't very high, and there wasn't very much in the way of the force of water cascading over the falls.
Mind you, it took quite a bit of clambering (and sliding) over a kind of lava bed to arrive at the foot of the falls. I managed to do that without falling into the river so I could be quite proud of that achievement.
And as to why there was so little water cascading over the falls despite the volume of water in the river, you can see the answer to that question by looking in this photo.
What we have here is yet another hydro-electric generating station. This one is more modern, dating from 2010 and is actually owned, for the most part, by the municipality of Franquelin. They apparently make quite a sum of money from Quebec Hydro by the sale of surplus electricity.
And seeing just how beautiful it was this afternoon and how warm it was out of the way of the wind, I went for quite a nice walk along the river to visit the beaches.
The sand, being of ground-down glacial rock, is of a superb quality and was holding its warmth quite well. It was just the kind of place where I could quite happily stretch out for a couple of hours in the summer sun, had it not been for the whining of the hydro-electric generators in the background.
Mind you, I wouldn't want to stretch out in the sun too close to the sides of the valley, and the reason for that is quite clear when you look at the photograph.
You can see that we've had a landslide just here, and it was a huge one too. I shudder to think how much soil came sliding down the hill when that gave way.
And all of the lumber that came sliding down with it too. You aren't going to be too short of winter wood if you were the owner of that piece of land.
By now the shadows were lengthening. It was late afternoon and with my illness I was starting to feel the strain. I left the beach and walked back to Strider along the river.
That gave me an opportunity to take a photo of the river in the reverse direction, just so that you can see how nice and pleasant it is along here, although I bet that it's completely different in the middle of winter. The snowmobile trail might be open for a start, and I might even be able to visit the bridge that I'd seen when I was in Franquelin.
And I'd been lucky with the weather this afternoon too. It was absolutely glorious and there were no complaints from me at all, especially when you consider that we are now into October.
But now I'm going to leave the arrière-pays and October 2016 and travel back, geographically-speaking, to Highway 138 and back in time to early May 2012.
And I forgot to sign myself back out at the cabin at the entrance. I hope that they don't think that I am still there.
©