CHEMIN DU ROY

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Next stop along my road was the town of Neuville. I followed Highway 138 towards the town, but despite the assurances of the Quebec Tourist Board that they will give "some kind of authenticity to each site that is visited", I hadn't noticed any of the Chemin du Roy signs leading into the place. The road that I was on seemed to be py-passing anything that was of any historical importance and I didn't believe for a minute that it was in existence in 1734.

What I did therefore was to turn off to the right towards the banks of the St Lawrence, look for an older road running parallel to the modern road, and follow it westwards to see where it went, and where I should have come from.

The road that I followed is called the rue Vauquelin and this is its western extremity. Up there on the crest of the hill is Highway 138, along which we have been travelling.

I've spoken at great length about the wide flood plain of the St Lawrence, or maybe the migration of the water course, and I've pointed out the steep banks at the edge of the plain. These have been as much as 30 feet in some places, but how high do you reckon that those banks there are?

My best estimate is that they are probably 50 feet high, and not only that, I've already driven quite a fair way up from the river so we could easily have a total height of 100 feet above the water level. That is certainly impressive.

Turning my attention to the farm, it looks quite a hive of industry. You can see just how much effort is being put into farming around here on the St Lawrence flood plain. I've noticed quite a few farms and having had a good look at the soil it seems to be of a nice dark brown loamy nature, much of which may well be silt brought from upstream in the spring floods.

Given decent climatic conditions and a long growing season, I imagine that your average amateur gardener could have a good deal of fun growing crops in this. Here though, from what I've been noticing, corn seems to be the thing. After all, it only requires a short growing season during which there is plenty of warmth.

Seeing that back in 2012 gave me an idea, that I promptly put into practice. I live at an altitude of 2200 feet in the mountains of Central France and my growing season is about 6 weeks shorter than places just 30 kms away. Therefore, at the next opportunity I bought some Sweet Corn seeds and I took them back to Europe with me.

I planted them within the timescales indicated on the packet and I'll tell you, I have never seen sweetcorn like it. I've never seen it grow this well. Consequently in 2013 I bought a few different varieties of seeds, and we'll see what happens to them in 2014.

So making a U turn, I head back along the old road into Neuville. This leads right into the centre of the town, or village or whatever, and although it isn't indicated as such, I would offer the opinion that this is part of the old Chemin du Roy prior to the building of the more-modern by-pass.

I'm equally sure though that if it had been part of the old road, it would not make the turn that it does back there and climb up that steep bank that we were looking at just now. It might be that it carried on along the shore of the St Lawrence, only to be washed away by a flood, a victim of coastal erosion, or swept away in a landslide. Many parts of the old highway have fallen victim to tragedies such as these.

I came back to Neuville in 2013, however, and this time I made more of an opportunity to have a look around.

I reckon that why I couldn't find a logical route out of the rue Vauquelin at its western end and why I thought that it ended strangely is because now, I don't think that that was the end of the road.

I seemed to have missed the significance of a slight right-hand curve in the road, and if I were instead to carry the line straight on, I'd end up in the rue des Outardes over there, the road that runs along the line of those trees.

It might possibly be that the rue des Outardes was a former trace of the Chemin du Roy but it is now signed as being a cul-de-sac and Private Property, so it was not possible to go for an exploration down there.

The thought that did cross my mind, as I'm sure that it has crossed yours, is that when we were in Donnacona half an hour ago, we followed the route du Bord de l'Eau eastwards out of the town for a while along a very shaky shoreline, thinking that it may well have been a former trace of the Chemin du Roy, until that too disappeared into a cul-de-sac and Private Property.

Talking of things being shaky, it seems that Neuville was originally known as Pointe-aux-Trembles, Shivering Poin. A tremblement de terre is of course French for "earthquake", and the banks of the St Lawrence have had more than their fair share. The fact that the modern name of the place Neuville, or "New Town" is therefore very suggestive.

In 2010 and 2011 I spent several weeks driving around Québec and the Maritime Provinces, and never saw a football pitch. And I don't mean what you lot of Transatlantics call "football" either, but what we Europeans call football where everyone on the field uses their feet to move the ball around, not just one, usually foreign, person who spends 99% of each match sitting on the sidelines.

Anyway, at Neuville in April 2012 I noticed this sign, did a quick U-turn and doubled back to take a photograph, if only to prove that such places do exist.

Yes, we do indeed have a terrain de soccer, and from what I could see from a cursory glance it is just a terrain and not a stade but it's here, with what seem to be full-sized full sized goals by the looks of things. Who knows? We might even have a football league of some sort.

So, there we are.

I was so overwhelmed by the sight of the football pitch that I forgot to go back into the town for a proper nosey about. The purpose of being here in 2013 was to put that right.

Due to the total lack of signage around here, at the end of therue Vauquelin I turned immediately left onto the modern Highway and then turned immediately right to find myself in the rue du Bourdon, "Bumblebee Street".

This was what greeted me down at the end, and the topography and form of the land (you will note the slight embankments to the left and right) were suggestive of traffic passing along there at one time.

Not being completely convinced, I retraced my steps to Highway 138 and the next road westwards, the rue des Erables - "Maple-tree Street" looks much more like it.

However, there is no logical connection between here and the rue Vauquelin, and so I wondered later if maybe I missed something while I was here. I suppose I shall just have to go back for a third time, and won't that news make property prices tumble?

First port of call in Neuville was the public car park, where I had noticed this Dodge Power Wagon, which may be a 1962 model. And I'm afraid to say that I wasn't impressed by it. The bodywork was quite rotten in some places and although there had been some welding done to it, it wasn't of very good quality, there was rust breaking out all over the seams and the less said about the paint job the better.

I keep forgetting though that I learnt my welding and paint-spraying in the 1970s and running a fleet of derelict and depressing taxis in the 1980s I spent most of my time welding and spraying up vehicles.

Nowadays, the electronics and the pollution controls on vehicles don't last long enough to reach an age where they need welding and spraying, and the availability of easy credit means that there are no older cars on the road. There's a good deal of stuff on the roads dating up to the early-80s, and then very little else that's more than 10 years old. I'm not sure how the young people of today are supposed to keep in practice.

There were also a few more-modern muscle-cars parked up here, by the way. They weren't of very much significance today, but it did occur to me that in 30 years time, people will be wishing that I had photographed them.

First port of call in any town is always the church, and here in Neuville is the famous Church of St Francois-de-Sales.

It was built in several stages, starting in 1761 and not being completed until 1915, when the facade was added. It is said that the church contains many original features dating back to very first church that was on the site, but noteworthy that this might be, it's nothing like as noteworthy as in France where churches do indeed include "many original features dating back to very first church" i.e. the numerous Visigoth and Roman chapels that occupied the same site, having been built on the site in the 5th Century, such as some of the stonework in the church of Antugnac , and which don't even merit a passing mention.

The interior is said the be splendid and contains works of art by inter alia Francois Baillairge, whom we last encountered building the jail at Trois Rivieres

A brief interruption to our guided tour while we photograph our Ship of the Day.

This is the MSC Kyoto, sister to several MSC ships that we have seen on the St Lawrence during our travels. She's on her way to Montreal from La Spezia in Italy, via Valencia in Spain.

An elderly ship by modern standards, she dates from 1981, and grosses 43,000 tonnes. Her draught, of 10.4 metres, tells you how much dredging they have to do in the Upper St Lawrence these days.

It seems that she was owned by Maersk for a good number of years, carring the names Lexa Maersk and Maersk Tokyo

This building was formerly the Couvent de Neuville, housing nuns that had been sent from the Congregation of Notre Dame, during the period 1716 until 1966.

In 1759, the British, under Guy Carleton (whom we met at Donnacona an hour or so ago) expelled the good Sisters and occupied the property, much to the displeasure of the local inhabitants. Their pleas eventually reached the ears of James Murray, the new Governor-General of Quebec, and he restored them to their property in 1761.

But just a brief word about the edifice. As you walk past, you'll be impressed by what appears to be a magnificent stone building, but don't be misled. You'll notice from the photo that just the facade is of stone and the rest of it is made of wood.

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Guy Carleton's occupation was not the only vicissitude to behall the Sisters and their convent either. During the War of Independence, the American troops under Benedict Arnold and Richard Montgomery shelled the building, causing an enormous amount of damage during the barrage.

If you look on top of the plinth just here, you'll see some of the cannon balls that were recovered from the ruins of the building.

The property was rebuilt in 1778 and some time later, an annex was added.

There is however a stone building just over road and that looks quite pretty too from here. It was built in 1797 by Joseph Proulx, whoever he was, and subsequently restored.

However, I wasn't impressed at all with the restoration. Whoever did it clearly doesn't have a clue about pointing and has merely slapped a load of cement all over it, joints, stones and all, with no attempt at finesse. Ohh for a good load of nice mortier de chaux - lime mortar, done properly. This is what my house looks like now that I've done the joints with mortier de chaux.

Now if you are wondering, which I'm sure that you are, this is not a single-storey building with dormer roof. The ground slopes away quite steeply at the rear and so was dug out to make a floor below, accessible from round the back.

And please excuse the dustbins.I always seem to arrive on dustbin day don't I?

There are several stone-built houses in this street, but shame as it to say it, there was nothing that really impressed me. In fact, I didn't rate much of the stonework that I saw.

I put this down to the fact that in the region where I live, almost every last house is built of stone and, as you saw in the photo above, I even live in one. I've rebuilt a couple of walls of my house and pointed all of the joints too, so taking all of this into consideration, I don't feel out of my depth in offering an opinion.

There were also a couple of modern false-stone buildings here too, but the least said about them the better.

What we have here is the Chapel of the Procession of Saint Anne. You can tell that it's Saint Anne because she is there with her child. As you may know, each Saint in the Catholic Church has a symbolic emblem by which he or she is associated. There's a procession of Saint Anne here - and that takes place on the Feast of Corpus Christi, just as at Pointe du Lac

And here we have a beautiful example of the Guerre Linguistique - the War of Languages between the Province of Quebec and the rest of Canada. According to the (bilingual) noticeboard of the Canadian National Tourist Board, the Chapel was built in the mid-Eighteenth Century and renovated a hundred years later.

According to the (Francophone-only) noticeboard erected by the Quebec Tourist Board, the Chapel was built around 1830 on the site of a previous church of 1679.

It really is quite hilarious to see the two organisations giving contrary details about the same object, and it immediately brought to my mind the "Parking Zone" schene in Airplane.

But it isn't so hilarious really. It's more reminiscent of two kids squabbling in the playground in the Primary School and refusing to talk to each other. For a country like Canada, it's a national disgrace and it's high time everyone grew up.

This morning I've been listening to Leonard Cohen's Songs of Love and Hate, and as I was leaving Neuville, the track that was playing was one about some woman finding Cohen "lying in a heap"

It brought back memories of a guy called Alan Fearon with whom I once shared a flat back in the mid-70s. In a fit of stress and strain he once loudly announced
"I feel like collapsing in a heap"
to which my spontaneous retort was "you keep out of my car!"

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