 | CANADA |
| CANADA |
GODBOUT
When I was in Franquelin earlier I had mentioned something about "modern roads"
And I was correct too because I bet that this road was nothing like this 20 years ago. Here's a handy place to stop to take a photograph round by kilometre 811 but never mind the scenery for an instant - there's this magnificent road tunnel here and this is worth a photograph.
Not particularly significant, you might be thinking, but make no mistake, the alternative way of passing beyond this outcrop of rock would have put a few hairs on your chest and a few wrinkles on your brow, especially if you were to encounter a 64-ton artic coming towards you.
And just in case you were wondering, which I'm sure that you were, I did make further enquiries about the road. Never mind being modernised within the last 20 years or so - the fact is that when I drove past here in 2015 I was told that Highway 138 was celebrating its 50th anniversary. There was no road here at all prior to 1965 and everything came in by sea on board a goelette. .
So having dealt with the issues of modern road transport infrastructure, let us once more turn our attention to the real reason why we stopped to wit the beautiful scenery.
We have, right away in the distance, the south shore of the St Lawrence, with the river and then to the left, the road that we will shortly be following. And even a little baby fjord too - what more do you want down this road?
But it was the trees that caught my eye - the mix of evergreen coniferous trees and deciduous trees that, here in early May, were yet to find their leaves.
And don't forget the lakes - we have to mention the lakes, for if there's one lake along here there's one thousand.
Ohhh now look at this!
It's not every day that I'm rendered speechless but I was by the view from just here.
Somewhere near kilometre marker ... errr ... 818 I reckon, at the top of the bank there is probably the most stunning view that you would ever wish to see.
Not only that, there was a pull-in a couple of hundred metres or so away where one can park in safety.
I took four photos from this particular spot - the one above with the standard lens and the next three with the big 305mm zoom lens because I wanted you to see what it was that had particularly caught my eye.
Never mind the freighter in what looks like Canadian Shipping Lines livery over there near the far shore passing under the towering cliffs, it was the snow on the hills of the Gaspesie at the back of Matane that I had noticed glinting in the early evening sunlight.
The second photo is of a substantial built-up area that I thought at the time that I took the photograph might be the town of Matane itself.
I'm still not too sure about it though, because the background doesn't quite match in with the background of the town from a photo that I took when I was leaving Matane on a ship early one morning in November 2010 .
However, I can't think of what else it might be along there. There's not another important built-up area in the vicinity.
This is more like the town of Matane that I remember.
When I was there in November 2010, I didn't get to see much of the scenery because I arrived after dark and I had set out again before dawn. I remember thinking that it was a real shame that I hadn't had a real opportunity to take a photo of the wind turbines at the back of the town.
No such issues though in 2012 with a decent camera
I was in a rush when I drove along this road in November 2010. Winter was fast approaching and not only that, I only had 10 days to be in Windsor, Ontario, and then back to Toronto. That's why there have been very few photos along this road from that epoch.
However, this is one that I had to take. It's at kilometre 824 and is the view of the sandspit guarding the harbour of Godbout, even if you can't really see the harbour from up here.
And you'll notice that there are no longer any leaves on the trees. Winter is just around the corner.
I found myself on the same spot in early May 2012 and this time, as you can see, the weather was so much better and so the photo was better too.
I also had some congenial company here. Not Strawberry Moose, who is as congenial as they come, but with two guys in a car doing exactly the same journey that I was, but in the other direction.
We had quite a natter, not about anything in particular of course, but I'm trying to have two meaningful conversations every day and what with the fuel attendant earlier today at Baie-Comeau, this will do.
When I was here in October 2016, I had a couple of quite amusing incidents at the bridge over the rivieère Godbout on the edge of town, both of which are well-worth recording.
The bridge over the river was undergoing major repair as you can see in this photo that I took very shortly after arriving.
A couple of days later I was heading off into Baie Comeau - ie travelling in the opposite direction - and I pulled up at the lights right behind an articulated lorry. There were just the two of us here at that time.
As soon as the lights turned green, I was expecting the lorry to pull out and set off. But instead, he put his arm out of his cab and waved me out past hime.
I know that this would seem to be the logical thing for a lorry driver to do - you only have to look at the gradient up which he would have to climb from a standing start to see just how much he would struggle - but logic has never ever played an important role in the mindset of a lorry driver.
Maybe that just applies to European ones, although we have had some strange encounters with Québecois lorry drivers in the past .
The second incident was on the way back from Baie Comeau later that evening in the pitch-blackand was even more bizarre.
The traffic lights on my side were showing red so I waited, and a red pickup came through from the other direction. When he reached this end of the roadworks, he turned round and went back down again, even though the lights were against him.
And as if that wasn't enough, we had almost immediately a lorry coming the other way. The driver had clearly burnt the red light because it was touch-and-go as to whether I would block him in as my light changed to green. He made it through with about a foot and half a second to spare otherwise he would have been obliged to reverse all the way back downhill again.
And serve him right too.
At the bottom of the hill is the town of Godbout. This is another small town or village of about 370 people, hemmed in along the shore and the river at the foot of the Pointe des Monts, which is a little further on and which we will be visiting in very early course.
It's off Highway 138 so don't miss the turning because even though nothing much seems to be happening here, it's still a beautiful place to visit.
Brain of Britain has been here before of course, one morning in November 2010. And one day I'll tell you the story of how that came to be because it is really quite incredible how, even at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, the best-laid plans of mice and men can be confounded by sheer stupidity.
And while you ponder over that remark, I'll leave you gazing at the ship, the Camille Marcoux, that brought me here from Matane, silhouetted in the early-morning sun.
I'm too busy gnashing my teeth at having lost a vital two hours of my day.
If you drive all the way down the seafront at Godbout, which is absolutely beautiful, for as far as it is possible to go, this is the view that greets you when you arrive.
Over there in the distance is the Gaspé Peninsula with its spectacular mountains. I vowed then and there in 2012 that one day I would drive over those mountains before I was much older. Preferably when the weather would as nice as it is today because I imagine that the view would be absolutely stunning from up there.
And so I did - several times subsequently. And so it was. But that's all going to be another story.
Such as the story that I would be recounting in 2014. On that occasion I'd come round from Labrador and along the coast to the ferry port here. There's a ferry out at about 11:00 and so I made sure that I was here by 10:00 but as my luck would have it, there's all kinds of reorganisation going on due to the rebuilding work that's taking place at the terminal at Matane.
All of the ferry times are amended and the next boat across is at 14:00. There's no other option but to sit in the queue and wait.
Well, sitting and waiting isn't quite what I had in mind. With only a stand-by ticket, my place on the boat, if there is room after all of the pre-booked places are taken, would depend upon my position in the stand-by queue so I couldn't afford to move the Dodge.
I could however move myself, and so I went for a walk around to docks. Not as much of a dock as I would like to see, unfortunately. Just the building over there that was the passenger terminal, and the loading dock behind it with room for just one ship.
Eventually our ship appeared on the horizon and so I sat down to eat my butties while I watched her approach the shore.
The ship is the Camille Marcoux - the same one upon which we crossed over in November 2010
. She was built as long ago as 1974 in Sorel, on the south bank of the St Lawrence River between Montreal and Trois-Riviéres. She has a displacement of just over 6,000 tons and has a carrying capacity of 125 vehicles and 600 passengers.
And it's a good job that I had the patience to wait in the queue until the Camille Marcoux arrived and not go off a-wandering in the Dodge. I was vehicle number three in the stand-by queue and there were only 5 vehicles from that queue taken up - and they had to use a shoe-horn to fit those on board.
There were about 20 vehicles left behind in the stand-by queue and they would have to wait for the 18:00 ferry. And there would be no guarantee that all of those would cross even then.
"And who was the real Camille Marcoux, after whom the ship is named?" I hear you ask.
He was actually a shopkeeper in Montreal who closed his shop for the day to stop an Anglophone tourist coming in to ask for directions, and for this heroic act of resistance he was duly honoured by the Quebecois authorities.
But let's turn the clock forward to September 2016.
I'm quite ill and having been released from hospital in Belgium for a six-week period I eventually found my way to the north shore of the St Lawrence. As you can tell, I really like the area around Godbout and so I had resolved to spend a week here relaxing.
It took me ages to find the place where I had booked in to stay. It's called one name on the internet but there's another name over the door and that was what confused me.
My arrival was expected, which makes a change following one or two of my more recent experiences, but it was quite early - 09:30 in fact - and so the previous tenants were still having breakfast and my room wasn't ready either.
There was no point in hanging around then, so I decided to head off and had a wander around
My guest house is called the Thépi Bec Sucré by the way and so it comes as no surprise to find that we have a teepee - or tipi - in the back garden. In the summer it's used as a tearoom for tourists but right now it's closed until next summer.
It does however remind me of the story of the chief of a Native American tribe who once took part in a tea-drinking competition. He broke the record, as you might expect, but was found next morning, drowned in his tipi.
And there can't be any bedroom in the whole of Godbout that has a better view out of the window than the one in which I stayed. especially as my return to my room from breakfast usually coincided with the arrival of the morning ferry from Matane.
On one occasion I arrived back up here just in time to see the F A Gauthier coming into view, with a bulk carrier sailing upriver in the background.
By the time that I had grabbed the telephoto lens she had steamed into a beautiful position and the bulk carrier was continuing her way upstream. I wish that I knew who she was.
And that's not the bast of it either. One one occasion, having a quick glance out of my bedroom window, I noticed something big sailing upriver towards Quebec and Montreal.
With the big telephoto lens that I have, I'm in a position to take some really good photos of shipping going up and down the St Lawrence and so I took a photograph of the ship .
With some judicious enlargement, because despite modern terrorism legislation I can still go around blowing up my photographs, I was able to identify it as some kind of cruise ship.
In case you are wondering, by the way, the river is wider than it looks. So much so that during World War II a couple of U-boats were operating right here between Godbout and Matane, scoring several hits and sinking several ships in the river before making successful escapes down the Gulf.
At the end of my week's stay in Godbout, I had to return across the St Lawrence River to Matane. And I was sorry to leave. I had had the best week's stay that I have ever had in my life here at the Thépi Bec Sucré. In fact I've never been made so welcome anywhere else in my whole life
But at least I don't have too far to go for my boat. The ferry terminal is only just across the road from my digs and so Strider (yes, I took the plunge in 2015 and bought myself a vehicle) and I didn't have too far to go.
And I was ever so impressed with this caravan that was parked up in one of the lanes waiting for the ferry. I wouldn't mind having one of those to tow behind Strider. But seriously, I reckon that it really was some kind of garden shed that was being delivered across the St Lawrence.
And bang on time to the minute, our ship pulls into the quay.
If you have looked at the photos very carefully, you'll notice that it's not the Camille Marcoux. She's currently laid up for sale in the port of Quebec and we have another ship - the Felix Adrien Gauthier - to take us across the river. The Société des Traversiers du Québec has been spending your money and has acquired a new ferry.
And I do mean "new" too because she was built in 2014 specifically for this route and is probably the first new ferry in the Gulf of St Lawrence for a good few years. She displaces about 16,000 tons and has a carrying capacity of 800 passengers et 180 vehicles.
The days of being left behind in the stand-by queue may well be over.
But we aren't going on board right now - at least not in the virtual world anyway. We're going for a walk instead.
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