I drove through Baie St Paul in October 2010 when I was on the way to Labrador but I was in something of a rush and I didn't have the time to stop and investigate. And on the way back of course we were in a driving rainstorm that was turning into heavy snow and the only thing on my mind at that moment was to pass back over Cap Tourmente as quickly as possible before the road became impassible.

In 2011 though, there were no such issues and I had time for something of a wander around.

In 2012 I had also some time to spare and as you may remember, we went for a little drive along the west side of the bay seeing as there was an "incident" that had temporarily closed the road into town.

And so while we were driving around the other side of the bay in 2012, they had reopened the main road and this was the site that greeted me as I drove into town.

I thought as much. That building over there has been on fire, and the fire brigade is still there dealing with the after-effects. No wonder the road was closed off temporarily. As you know, if you have been following me around on my travels, the history of urban Canada right from the very beginning has been one of major conflagrations, and nothing seems to have changed with the passage of time.

I am no stranger to conflagrations, as you might imagine. Back when I was a boy we had a major fire in Crewe, the town where I was raised. The fire was so serious that several thousand pounds-worth of improvements was caused.

Anyway, enough of my nonsense.

Just before we enter the town, we encounter the set of buildings that we had seen from the rear when we were out along the bay just now. These are very much my style of building. Some nice neo-gothic red-brick institutional buildings in fact. These are gorgeous.

I said "institutional" and your first thought would almost certainly be "hospital". And you wouldn't be too far out. These are the buildings of the Order of the Petites Franciscaines de Marie and just here is the Centre de Santé et de Services Sociaux - the Health Centre, hospital and all that kind of thing of Baie St Paul.

As an aside, we shall be crossing the paths of the Petites Franciscaines de Marie again in very early course .

If you were with me a little earlier in Trois Rivieres we encountered the buildings belonging to the Ursulines. They ran the school and the hospital there prior to the Government taking over these responsibilities. Here in Baie St Paul, the Petites Franciscaines carried out those functions.

The building, magnificent as it is, is quite modern, would you believe and dates from 1900. And seeing things like this always makes me wonder about the buildings that they replaced.

Baie St Paul has the air of one of those arty places that you encounter every now and again. First thing that I noticed as I drove into town was that it seemed to be full of arts and statues and the like. Sculptures, engravings, commemmorative plaques about famous people (or whatever passes for famous people around here) but I suppose when the weather is nice it must be really nice here. As it was back in 2011.

There was a good parking spot just at the side of the church and that seemed to be the best place to park. At least it gave me the chance to have a good look at the church.

There's tons and tons of information written about many of the churches along the banks of the St Lawrence but for some reason or another that I have not been able to fathom, there seems to be nothing at all written about this particular one and I can't even tell you the name of the Saint to whom it is dedicated, although St Paul seems to be a good guess.

I'll have to go on making assumptions, and the best I can do is to say that it seems to be a typical Québecois riverside church of the late 19th Century of which we have seen dozens of examples. The twin spires suggest an influence of the Basilisk of Notre Dame in Montreal.

It seems to have been kept in a very nice condition, which is a credit to whoever it is who maintains the churches around here.

The same can be said of the town too. It's extremely nice and tidy - in fact bordering on the "pretty-pretty", by which I mean that it's more of a show-place than a residence, and I bet that they have a draconian town council to go with it.

To give you some idea of what I mean, this is the Rue Jean-Baptiste and your attention will doubtless have been drawn to the sign on the left that proudly announces a Zero Tolerance for noise and for speeding. Yes, this kind of thing is appearing now in rural Canada, which is not only pretty sad but makes me want to vomit, I'm afraid.

I bet that they didn't apply this Zero Tolerance to the police and the fire engines rushing through here with their flashing lights blazing and their sirens wailing, on the way to that fire back there in 2012. It's at moments like that that you realise just how many hypocrites there are who live in places like this.

It's quite frankly dishonest. They should have the courage of their convictions and simply stick up a notice to say "if you are under 25 or if you are different from us, p155 off. You aren't welcome here". But courage is not a quality possessed by people who sit on committees in places such as this, and I would dearly love to see what convictions they might have.

And so all together now, after three -
"Twenty-five is the speed limit "
"Motorcycles aren't allowed in it "
"A one-horse town"
"You have to watch what you're putting down "
Yes, good old Anna Mae Bullock to come to the rescue at a time like this.

Anyway, that's enough of me ranting. I've come here to see the town, not hurl gratuitous abuse at committees and their members, so why don't we continue our walk?

You have to agree that it is certainly a very picturesque town with some nice buildings and some very arty cafés and that type of thing. This is just one of a dozen photos that I could have taken of the town, none of which would really do it justice.

I'm not alone in thinking this either. It is said that Baie St Paul is the third-most-painted town in Québec, and we aren't talking about emulsioned walls either.

I haven't finished with Baie St Paul quite yet. I left the town via Highway 362, the road that follows the coast along the east side of the bay and climbs over the Cap aux Corbeaux, a nearby headland. Halfway up the hill just before a bad bend is a scenic turn-off (and why don't they have scenic turn-ons - it's much more appropriate?)

The scenic turn-off was closed for road repairs back in 2011 but they weren't getting away with this of course. 200 metres further along was the entrance to what might once have been a quarry (and may well still be, for all I know) and that looked like a good bet for a bit of casual parking.

But in the meantime, what do you think about this bucket for the mini-digger that Terry and I own? And how would I get it back to France?

Anyway, having parked in the quarry entrance I then walked back in the centre of the road to the viewpoint. This obliged me to slalom between the bollards whenever a car came along the road. And it was well-worth the hike to see the view.

It's over that crest over there that I came last night. and you will notice the low clouds rolling up the hill, one of which smothered me while I was breakfasting that morning in 2011. .

Talking of breakfasting, if you have a good butchers right over there, you will be able to make out just to the left of centre near the top the visitor centre that I visited that morning.

And the large bare patch just to the left of that? That's the car parking area where I slept on the previous night. The main road of course is just above there sloping down to the right.

I mentioned just now that I had heard it said somewhere along the line that Baie St Paul and the Charlevoix is one of the regions of Québec that is the most-painted, and probably amongst the most-photographed too. It's not hard to see why, is it?

We have of course the St Lawrence River and the Baie St Paul, and the headland out there is probably Cape Tourmente, over which I drove in the dark and gloom that night in 2011 on my way out of Québec City.

If you can remember as far back as the day in 2011 when I flew into Montreal from Paris, we flew along the St Lawrence Estuary and I had a great deal of fun trying to identify where I was. One of the points that confused me was this one, that I was at first convinced was further along the shore at Malbaie.

However, just one glance at this particular view from up here, and you'll agree that the aerial shot that I took from the aeroplane can be nowhere other than right overhead at this spot.

The major attraction of the view from the scenic viewpointt here is the view that you have over the town itself. It really does look splendid from up here.

If you are having difficulties with the orientation, the twin towers to the right of the photo are those of the church whereas the other towers to the left of the photo are those of the buildings of the Order of the Petites Franciscaines.

In one of the earlier photos taken from this spot you saw the road coming over the brow of the hill. Here you can see the road a little lower down the slope.

These days Highway 138 - the Chemin du Roy by-passes Baie St Paul and goes round the back of the headland over which I'm driving. It's just there where you turn to take the road into town - you can see the intersection.

Something moving along the road just there caught my eye and so I waited until it broke clear of all the trees and then took a photo. And with a decent camera and a decent lens, cropping sections out of photos and enlarging them is relatively straightforward.

What we have is an articulated lorry of some description with quite a long load behind it. But I've no idea what kind of load it is that it is dragging along with it.

Finally, before I leave here, I'll take a photo of the hinterland of Baie St Paul because this is quite noteworthy. It looks quite fertile from up here and in its sheltered position in between the mountains I would expect it to be decent agricultural land - something that is in short supply up here so close to the Canadian Shield.

If you look at the photo taken from the air, you'll notice that the Rivière du Gouffre is taking loads of silt with it out into the St Lawrence estuary. And all of this silt needs to be replaced from higher up the river. But of course two problems present themselves
Firstly there isn't so much soil higher up in the mountains. The scouring action of the glaciers during the Ice Age removed most of it, and there hasn't been the vegetation growth up there to decay.
Secondly the paradox about hydro-electric power in the Canadian Shield is that the dams across the rivers are stopping the flow of silt to the valleys lower down the rivers and so the soil isn't being replenished. Instead, the soil is building up against the barrage and in the course of time it will fill in the lakes behind the barrage and the hydro-electric generating capacity will dwindle away to nothing.

And just in case you are wondering, that is indeed our famous little railway line running down there. We had a much closer encounter with it earlier today when we met a train on the line.

On the way back to the Dodge, tiptoeing through the bollards, I encountered a family coming towards me doing likewise. It seems that I had set a trend by parking in the quarry entrance.

As they approached me and we were all nearly flattened by a passing bus, one of the guys in the group commented "on vit dangereusement ici", to which I replied "mais le Canada n'est pas pour les fainéants"

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