The Magic Bus

Sunshine, the Blue Lagoon and home...

2012-01-02T14:01:00.000-08:00

Dark mornings are a feature of a British winter of course, but in Iceland at this time of year it doesn't really get light until after ten thirty and that takes some getting used to. You can wake up, have a lie in, then get breakfast, and its still dark! This morning though the milky blue dawn revealed a perfectly clear sky and the prospect that we might even see the sun for the first time here. We packed up and made off through Reykjavik's silent grey streets, heading for the airport. Our day snowed-in at Hengill meant we didn't see as much of the city as we would have liked - the Cathedral tower will have to remain unclimbed (by us anyway). As we drove out through the snow-covered lava fields, the sun hid behind the hills, casting a glow over the low clouds offshore before finally climbing above the horizon, impossibly bright. We pulled off the road before the airport to go to the Blue Lagoon, a small lake full of mineral rich water which was giving off clouds of steam ahead of us.

Its not quite the natural wonder that it appears to be. The water is pumped from a mile underground and then used at the nearby geothermal power station before being pumped into an artificial lava lake-bed which forms the Blue Lagoon. Not that there was any mention of that on the signs outside which talked a lot about the natural healing properties of the water, but you can forgive them for that. "Come and bathe in power station-outflow" isn't perhaps the ideal way of pulling in the punters. It is though, a lovely experience. The water is warm and a cloudy blue. It was -6C when we were there and the clouds of steam made it impossible to see from one side top the other. P and I smothered ourselves in the white silicate mud and were instantly ten years younger. Tom, who hasn't got ten years to lose gave the mud a wide berth. He liked the lava cave though and it was all slightly surreal. It was very relaxing too and we left feeling that we had warmed up our inner cores and taken a few lines off as well!

From the observation deck we enjoyed our last big views across icy Iceland before making for the airport. Even at midday the sun was only just above the horizon so it never really feels like anything more than early morning, until the light slowly begins to fade and twilight settles over everything.

We never did see the Northern Lights in the end, although we had our fingers crossed right until the last minute at the airport where it was still cold crisp and clear - the perfect conditions apparently. But, not quite, according to the lady at the cafe at our gate who told a couple of disappointed English tourists that it wasn't NEARLY cold enough to see the Northern Lights yet. Maybe we will have to come back again. It was a lovely few days and left us hankering for more.

Into the wild...

2012-01-01T12:47:00.001-08:00

We felt somewhat thwarted by the weather yesterday, having been forced to scuttle back to Reykjavik without really seeing anything of the countryside. Actually "countryside" doesn't seem to be a word that you associate with Iceland. It suggests rural idyll with hedgerows and cows chewing the cud and butterflies. Iceland isnt really like that - at the moment anyway. I think a better word for Iceland's interior is "terrain". But what terrain it is. We emerged from the city into a perfectly iced landscape; vast open stretches of white rolling off to blunt-faced cliffs topped with a perfectly squared-off shelves of snow. The sky was duck-egg blue, streaked with misty clouds tinged rose from the sunrise. It was a breathtaking drive through a silent frozen world. The road had been ploughed but there had been a couple of inches of snow overnight making it all but invisible. We swished along over the smooth surface stopping occasionally to stand in the chill and take it all in. It couldn't have been more beautiful.

We stopped at Thingvellir National Park and found the famous chasm between the tectonic plates which opened up relatively recently. Normally you can walk through it but the snow was too deep, so we had to admire the view instead. Thingvellir was the site of the first Icelandic parliament - a meeting place really, where for a few weeks a year people would gather and laws would be made. One man would recite all the Icelandic laws from memory. We could have spent more time there, but with only a few more hours of daylight left we pushed on to Geysir, an hour or so further.

The first clue that we were getting close to Geysir was the sudden mist which smothered the road. Then we noticed that the ditch beside us was steaming and soon, that the whole field next to us seemed to be smouldering, We parked and went to look. All around us little vents were steaming away and boiling water was dribbling along beside the path. Geysir gave its name to the geyser of course and we walked within a few feet of one which erupts every few minutes. We saw it go several times, the boiling pool sucking in and out a few times before suddenly releasing a huge bubble of steam.. Small birds, with fluffy brown breasts peeped and flitted around us through the steam. They are about the only wildlife we have seen. Thor, who took us to his community bonfire last night told us that a couple of polar bears have swum over from Greenland in the past few years only to be shot. Iceland does not really want enormous hungry bears on the loose. They would certainly frighten the horses, of which we have seen dozens; little Thelwell creatures with fat necks, bowed backs and shaggy mains.

After soup and hot chocolate we hit the road again, and had it more or less to ourselves on the way back. Occasionally we passed a clapboard farmhouse with a porchlight glowing as dusk flattened out the landscape. After a couple of hours we were back in Reykjavik's slushy streets, the sky a bruise of blue. That was a New Year's Day we won't forget.

New Year's Day in Iceland

2012-01-01T11:58:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T16:18:00.000-08:00

From a riotous Reykjavik which feels like its under bombardment. The fireworks have been going off across the city like one giant display for three quarters of an hour. It's amazing. The sky is now thick with smoke. Happy 2012 to you all!

Reykjavik - last day of 2011

2011-12-31T10:33:00.001-08:00

We're in a really lovely apartment in Reykjavik looking over snowy roofs to the cathedral. The Hallgrímskirkja Is a splendid building that looks like it was built by the Vikings but was actually constructed between 1945 and 1986. It's made from stepped concrete pillars rising to a sharp point. We were there an hour or so ago, listening to the chimes at 3.30 and watching black clouds assemble offshore. We walked back through a sharp hailstorm to our cosy pad for cups of tea and Heather's Christmas cake which we brought with us.

Waking at Hengill this morning we weren't entirely sure that we were going to be able to leave. We were the only guests, the corridors were silent and empty though a tinny Icelandic rendition of "silent night" was drifting down the stairs from reception. Invisible hands had set breakfast out for us and we sat lookng out into the darkness wondering if the snowplough had been. It had. The driveway had been cleared at some point in the night but our car was still marooned on a hillock of snow with its wheels dangling in the air. I went out and fought with the gearbox a bit, rocking the car backwards and forwards in snow that was rapidly turning into slush. Eventually I won and the car skittered out with snow flying from the spinning wheels.

We loaded and left. But now we had a conundrum, the roads had been cleared but some time ago and they were filling it's snow again. Our somewhat diffident reception girl had advised taking the direct route to Reykjavik on the small road but didn't recommend it without studded tyres. We decided to head north toward Thingvellir over the hills and join the main road which was more likely to have regular snow ploughs. The road was less full of snow than the day before but we were still making deep tracks in it and it was very slippery. As we started to climb and the snow got thicker I began to wonder whether we were going to get through. Without saying anything P and I both started making mental checklists of anywhere that we passed that looked like it had signs of life. There was a large farmstead and a cabin off in the distance and that was about it.

Once we had climbed over the first pass we were pretty much committed to going on - trying to turn around would have meant getting bogged down in the deep snow almost immediately. We descended to Thingvellir Lake and skirted its icy edge, gunmetal waves raking the surface. Then we started climbing again with ragged lumps of snow flapping against the windscreen. At the next rise I stopped. If we're we we're going to do this we might as well make the most of it. Out we got and felt the cold air against our faces and the wet snow trickling through our hair. Tom danced around and P and I looked up at the snowy rock walls around us. It felt like the ends of the earth.
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Out! And off...

2011-12-31T02:42:00.000-08:00

Probably straight to Reykjavik - its still snowing. At least the road has now been ploughed.

Stuck

2011-12-30T08:47:00.001-08:00

Galvanized into action by the sight of the snow plough clearing the main road I thought I would head off down the drive and see if we might be able to get to our restaurant. No, is the answer. I went 20 feet and eased gently into a snow bank where the car stuck fast. Great. The plough may get up here tonight and if it does it will pull us out. Sigh...

Iceland - December 2011

2011-12-30T08:42:00.001-08:00

Hotel Hengill Dec 30thI suppose when you come to Iceland, in the depth of winter, you should probably expect the weather to be less than balmy. The clue is in the name really. Iceland. It's not called Hotland, or even Warmishland. Nevertheless I hadn't expected so much snow that we can't actually leave the hotel. To be fair neither had the Icelanders who tell us this is the most December snow they have had in twenty five years.

Flying in to Keflavik in the premature darkness of the late afternoon yesterday, the view had been serene; tiny twinkling lights each casting a pastel glow in the fresh snow. Judging from the black tyre tracks in the road there had been more than a dusting of snow but less than a dump, and it had stopped. The empty airport, brightly lit, felt like somewhere in North Dakota or Montana in winter. Ruddy people with big boots and thick rustling coats; granules of blowing snow hissing against the window.

Our first night was to be in Hengill, at a hotel in the middle of nowhere perhaps an hour or so from Reykjavik where we hoped to see the Northern lights. Picking up the rental car though, I had the first inkling that maybe Iceland was not to be taken lightly. The big blond guy behind the desk whisked through the paperwork, and casually, with an air of someone who drives through remote and snowy places as a matter of course I said "So would you recommend taking route 1 to Hengill when it's as snowy as this?". He froze, stared at me with concern and went pale. "Well..." he began and I could see him wondering how to say "you must be nuts". There followed a rapid conversation in Icelandic between him and his colleague, an older woman who shot several concerned glances my way. She brought up a road map on her computer screen which showed the travelling conditions on the major roads all over the country. Most said "wet snow" some said "impassable" a couple said "cleared". Our route was on either snowy roads, or on roads not even on the screen because they were too small. Both of the desk staff were now looking at me rather severely. We bought the extra insurance, picked up the keys and bade our farewells. "Be very very careful" they said "Iceland has never had snow like this in December. Never!"

For most of the way the road was snowy but it had been ploughed and everyone drove carefully. We took the long route along the biggest roads, turning off only for the last fourteen KM on a small road which had been ploughed hours before and now had low drifts sweeping across it. It was thrilling to be out in the wilds of Iceland - Iceland! As we rose, the thermometer in the car fell to -4.5C and that was as cold as it ever got outside. Two hours after we left the airport we saw the glow of the hotel up a hillside and found the access road, swept with bigger drifts. We slithered up it and took our place alongside the only other car in the car park. There was no one at the front desk and apart from a single group of Japanese people having dinner the place seemed utterly deserted.

Eventually a tall skinny woman in her twenties appeared and said she had not expected to see us as the direct road from Reykjavik was closed. But she got the chef to stay on and cook for us, trout for P and succulent lamb for me and Tigger. Afterwards we curled up under fat, snowy duvets and slept We set the alarm this morning as it doesn't get light here until well after ten and we didn't want to waste the day. There were two tables of Japanese people at breakfast looking uncertainly at the smooth snowfields in the darkness outside. We pulled on long johns, snow boots, big coats and hats and gloves and felt adventurous.

We struck out for Thingvellir National Park a short drive away but nosing back down the drive in the car it was immediately clear that quite a bit more snow had fallen overnight. Turning left to re-trace our steps it was also clear that no one had driven that way this morning. But for the markers on either side of the road it would have been impossible to see the route. The car brushed through the drifts which stretched like giant fingers across the road. We could feel the snow banks forming under the car as we drove. We were climbing back towards the pass we had crossed last night and a mile or so from the hotel we knew it would be foolish to go any further.

I put the car in reverse and drive back in our tracks until I found a stretch where the wind had blown most of the snow off the road surface, where I turned around. I just missed the turning to the hotel, taking the wrong fork n the road, and this time when I tried to turn around, we got stuck. A guy in a 4x4 on balloon tyres rolled up and watched us struggling for a bit (those stupid English people) before coming out to see if he could hook on a tow rope, but after digging out in front of the tyres a bit, we got going again and soon we were back at the hotel.

Tom was quite happy as he wanted to get not the big drifts all around us and soon we were all buried up to our waists and throwing snowballs. We climbed up to the half buried footpath sign a couple of hundred meters up the hill behind the hotel, panting in the dry air, our faces stinging from the blowing snow. Enough. We slithered and fell back down the hill and shook the snow off our clothes. The Japanese who had looked as if they were waiting for a lift had disappeared and the hotel seemed completely empty.

We went out to the hot tub, leaping through the snow in our swmming gear and feeling the snow build up on our heads as we soaked. Occasionally you catch a whiff of sulphur from the geo-thermal power station half a mile away and the hot water reeks of it, but it's rather exciting to think of all that heat coming directly from deep below the earth. So here we are, at Hotel Hengill, with absolutely no way of getting out. They think the road may be ploughed tomorrow. Maybe. The hotel feels empty in a Marie Celeste knd of way. Plenty of signs of life - the lights are on and the breakfast buffet is still out at noon, but there are no people. The two staff have retreated somewhere. I went down to the end of our corridor where there is a small area to sit and discovered that someone had left the outside door open and a snow drift was gently making its way inside as the wind howled through. I cleared the snow but couldn't quite close the door as the hinge was packed tight with ice. I bought some cuppa soups from Tesco on impulse as we walked to the tube yesterday (yesterday!) and they are now looking like lunch. We will miss the wonderful lobster place on the south coast we had booked for tonight. This afternoon will involve books, a movie (hurray for the iPad) and perhaps another session in the hot tub and we will have to read about the natural wonders all around us which are blanketed in snow and cloud.

Watch this space!

2011-12-30T08:35:00.001-08:00

I have the rest of the Ecuador trip written, but haven't yet got it onto the blog - it's coming though, and only er, six months late...

Rabida Island

2011-06-29T19:44:00.000-07:00

The engines roared into life at six this morning and, wide awake I went on deck to see the sunrise. I was surprised to see the woman who cleans the rooms at the wheel but I guess they all take turns so the captain can get some rest. We were heading past a long low island like a turtle topped with cloud. On the other side was a much bigger island being rained on heavily but it never got to us. Our destination was Rabida Island and we watched a couple of sealions rolling around in the surf just offshore. The pangas took us to a black sand beach with its usual compliment of dozing sealions. Behind the beach was a salt lagoon and there were a couple of flamingos snoozing away with necks, heads, beaks and a leg all tucked away under their wings. From a distance they looked like two candy flosses that someone had stuck in the shallows.

This was another chance to snorkel and P and I took turns to take Tom out with us to a couple of rocky atolls just offshore. There, the sea life was simply amazing. I watched a huge turtle nibbling away on the grassy fronds on the reef and he was completely unconcerned about my being there. His beaky head snatched and nibbled while his flippers held him in position. I floated over him for a bit and then something else caught my eye - it was the sealion that we had watched flipping about through the waves. It moved with such tremendous speed and agility, vanishing out of the water in a stream of bubbles and splashing back into it. I don't know if it was fishing or playing but I watched it zip about for several minutes, before it shot back towards me and away to a different part of the reef.

I swam back to get T who was resting on the beach and took him back in the hope of seeing the turtle. It had gone, but all of a sudden the sealion appeared right underneath us perhaps two feet away. I could hear Tom shouting through his snorkel "Look! Look!". The sealion flicked around us and swam away, with Tom in hot pursuit. He didn't catch it (probably that was a good thing...) but it was thrilling to be so close and feel like we were with it for a while.

Without flippers, the snorkeling is hard work for Tom and I dropped him on the beach and went to find Philippa. She was on the other side of the atoll and as we met up we suddenly saw a sealion hunting about six feet beneath us. It was motionless apart from its head which slowly scanned left and right looking for fish. We floated right over it, carried along at the same speed as the sealion and it didn't give us a second glance. Everyone else had gathered on the shore waiting to go back, so we left the sealion hunting and swam back to the black beach, feeling we had been let in on a secret that no-one else knew about.

Here be dragons (well, penguins)

2011-06-29T19:17:00.000-07:00

Another hot morning and a panga ride to Dragon Hill. We had hoped to see flamingos here but the lagoon was flamingo-free so we had to settle for more big Iguana. How jaded does that sound? Nothing but unique sightings will do for us!

There really is life everywhere here and almost none of it is scared of us. Birds will let you walk right up to them and sealions can barely be bothered to look at you. The terrain around Dragon Hill is fairly flat with occasional volcanic vents creating little puckered mounds, squiggly with cooled lava. We have two guides, Diego and Margot, both of whom are extremely knowledgable. Margot is perhaps more so, but also inclined to serve it up in 20 minute verbal essays while we desperately long for shade, Tom walks in small circles and Diego's group skips past, heading for a gambol in the surf with pina coladas.

At our second stop, on Bartholomew Island we hoped to see some of the rare Galapagos penguins, of which only 800 pairs exist. We saw one little feller looking lonely on the lava-rock shoreline and he stared at us as we stared at him. We had to shoo some obstinate seaions off the jetty where they were soaking up the sun and not inclined to move. They barked at us for a bit before flopping into the water. We climbed a twisting boardwalk 360 steps up a martian landscape. The soil was red and black and the vegetation had barely taken hold. You could almost feel the rocks cracking in the heat so the breeze at the top felt like a cool stream. The view down a green neck of land with crescent shaped beaches either side had a pleasing symmetry to it.

There was more snorkling later on but P and T opted out and with the sky now clouding over and the sea turning into an unfriendly grey swell I nearly did the same. I'm very glad I didn't though. The water was clear and cool and within a few minutes I was looking down at the unmistakeable outline of a shark sleeping on the bottom ten feet below. It was a white-tipped shark, four or five feet long. A moment later a big eagle ray flapped past and then another shark which I followed for a while. Green and orange parrot fish looked up with their pursed lips and three little penguins wizzed past my face like fat torpedos after a school of fish. It was glorious.

Under way

2011-06-29T19:14:00.000-07:00

Sometime around 4am, through our Dramamine comas we heard the engines come to blissful stop. The waves had flattened too and we dropped back into a more comfortable sleep. We woke a few hours later to a bright, clear morning to find we had traveled south east to the tiny island of Santa Fe. Fortified by a magnificent breakfast of eggs, toast, fruit, cereal, yoghurt and thick black coffee we were ferried in the pangas (as they call the zodiac boats) to the beach. It was not large and it was pretty much claimed by a large group of sealions, lounging around in the sunshine and not the least bit bothered by us.

The sun was fierce now, even at eight thirty in the morning. We began a guided walk through a scorched landscape with prickly pear trees ten feet tall. Often there was a fat iguana underneath, claws like long fingers and a brilliant yellow crest like a cockatoo. They wait for the cactus fruit to fall out and we watched an iguana rolling a prickly pear around under its gnarled hand, scraping off the spines before snapping into it with its angular little mouth.

Back on the boat they equipped us with snorkel gear. Well most of us. "We don't carry snorkel gear for kids" said Ricky wth an irritating smile. P and I told him in no uncertain terms that that wasn't good enough. If you sell an expensive cruise to adults and kids alike promising that snorkel equipment is included, then you should include it, or at the very least make clear while we can still make other arrangements, that there isn't any for kids. Telling us when we are on the way is no use at all. Ricky's smile vanished and he looked somewhat chastened as he realised we weren't to be brushed off. Stiff letter to cruise company is on the way... Anyway we found a mask that almost fit Tom (but no fins) and went off snorkling, but the sea was choppy and T's mask didn't really work and, frankly, it was all rather trying.

No more 1am starts though. In the evening after supper, we did our "navigation" to South Plaza on Santa Cruz, in calm waters. All was quiet when we went to bed and we slept like the dead.

In the Galapagos

2011-06-25T13:56:00.000-07:00

We weren't due to meet our boat until noon, so after breakfast of fresh-fruit and home-made apple-cake in a sunny courtyard, we walked back into town. On the key, fishermen were cleaning silver tuna under the noisy scrutiny of a couple of dozen scruffy pelicans. There were sealions too waiting patiently under the tables for whatever was thrown away. One was leaning against the leg of a busy fisherman, looking at him like a faithful labrador. Another raised itself up, with its flippers on the work-table sniffing the fish and squeezing its eyes at the fisherman. The man told it off and it reluctantly got down to wait its turn, glossy flanks shining. An Iguana lay at the base of a dry fountain and the trees were full of pelicans.

We got coffee and ice-cream at the place we had eaten at the night before and were served by the same waitress who couldn't keep her eyes off Tom. It was a nice easy way to spend the morning before we collected our bags from the lovely Josy and took a two minute taxi ride to the ferry port. There was no boats called the Galavan that I could see and no-one to meet us, so I called our agent Lilian who assured us that someone would be there, and eventually a Zodiac boat cruised up to the jetty and Rodolfo, the driver loaded us on. We sped across the choppy bay to where the Galavan 1 was rolling in the swell. An older couple was already on board, Chris a short man with humour in his eyes - from Perth "the best kept secret in the world" and his elegant friend Cecilia from Brazil ("Brrrazeew") As the boat heaved at anchor, lunch was served. It was plentiful and good: fish spiced with curry, rice, salad and lots of fruit. Neither P nor I could stay in our little cabin for long as the world rolled under our feet. T, who seems invincible to motion sickness was happily oblivious and thrilled that he got the single top bunk above our bed.

The fourteen other passengers and our naturalists boarded a little later and had their lunch at which point we assumed we would get under way, envisaging that our next stop would be some remarkable Galapagosian atoll where we could roam among giant tortoises and dragons. But instead we all got back in the zodiacs and went back to Puerto Ayora. It felt like a bit of an anti-climax, as we climbed onto a waiting bus and began climbing between farmsteads dripping from a passing shower. But the first stop made it all worth while. It was a lava tunnel that could easily fit an underground train. It snaked along for four hundred meters, its arched ceiling sometimes soaring up to church heights. It was formed by a tube of lava which had cooled at its outer edges leaving a tunnel in its wake. Even Tom, who can be blase about these things, was impressed - especially when the lights went out briefly leaving us in total darkness. "I can lead us out by the light from my watch" he piped.

Once out, and ten minutes further along the red dirt track was a farm where some of the wild tortoises like to gather because it has a number of mud holes. We found a few wallowing in the murk, eying us warily. Another ambled past us (perhaps that is unfair, he could have been galloping for all I know) and what followed was a tortoise face-off. Two leathery necks extended and the two biggest tortoises hissed at each other for a bit, before, presumably exhausted, they each settled down into the mud.

There was a small display of tortoise shells which were big enough for Tom to get into, and then we all sank back into the bus for the port and a rather precarious journey through the harbour swell to the boat. We had another huge meal (with much concentration on the horizon by me and P). Laced with Dramamine we followed T to bed and were rolled around in our beds as the boat sat at anchor - until 1 am when the engines started up, apparently they were bolted to the foot of our bed. The noise filled the room and bounced around our heads but at least we were under way.

To the Galapagos

2011-06-25T13:24:00.000-07:00

Our departure this morning was a comedy of manners. Our Galapagos cruise included being picked up from Pablo's home and taken to the airport, but somehow in confirming the arrangements with the company yesterday Patricio, Pablo's assistant, had decided that was an unreliable arrangement, cancelled the cab and asked Roddy to take us to the airport instead. So at 7am Roddy backed us out of the drive under the rather hurt gaze of the man with the smart minibus who had been sent to pick us up and hadn't been cancelled at all. So we unloaded our bags, reloaded them in the new cab, apologised to both Roddy and the new cab driver, and got going for the airport.

Quito airport was the model of efficiency. The queues were orderly, the check-in staff courteous and helpful, security was secure, but allowed you to keep your shoes on and didn't make you feel like you were somehow getting in their way (a la just about every airport in America) . In short it was the antithesis of the stereotype "South American Airport". But the flight itself, well that was something. After several years experience of the best that 21st century commercial aviation has to offer, Aerogal was a bit of a shock. It really was from a different age. An age where you could still get on a brand new plane for one thing, and a plane where the seats had plenty of legroom and free widescreen entertainment, an age where the cabin crew were immaculately turned out and delivered free hot food and drinks, an age where the the planes took off and landed on time. It was, in short, unbelievably good and a quality of air travel that is but a misty memory in the US and Europe.

We had a brief stop in Guayacil, which from the air was a gleaming patchwork of rice paddies with tiny farmhouses perched on little islands. As we loaded more passengers the crew sprayed some kind of disinfectant into the air. They are very concerned about not introducing contaminants into the Galapagos and all our luggage had to be screened before we checked it in in Quito.

Ninety minutes after taking off again, the islands appeared in the Pacific, low and tawny in the deep blue of the ocean. The little airport at Baltra (once part of a US Air Force base) was muggy and crowded but our driver was there with a placard for us and ushered us onto a bus for the short ride to the ferry which takes you to the main island of Santa Cruz. The drive was broken only by a large Iguana that didn't want to get off the road and had to be shoo-ed off. It hissed at the driver before sauntering into the scrub. There was little to see along the road to the ferry; deserty scrub and the occasional ruin of an old building. The Galapagos weren't even pristine when Darwin got to them of course. Pirates had been using them to hole up and take on provisions in the 16th century and then whalers discovered them and killed perhaps a hundred thousand giant tortoises. Farmers came to clear the native plants and grow bananas and other crops. The middle of the main island is still privately owned by farmers and is full of non-native species, even as the park service tries to restore the rest of the chain of islands by removing non-native species as far as they can, and particular the rats and goats which have destroyed so much habitat. On one island alone they have culled something like 200,000 goats. On the drive from the ferry to Puerto Ayora - the main town on Santa Cruz, there was still an other worldliness to the landscape. V-tailed frigate birds soared around above us, and we passed stands of curious angular trees.

Rosy at the Galapagos Suites was every bit as friendly as her emails and her little hotel was everything the rave reviews on TripAdvisor had suggested, complete with a hammock strung up across a corner of our balcony.Puerto Ayora has the feel of a low key Caribbean town, mostly low-rise plain buildings and one-room storefronts packed with t-shirts and flip flops, dusty streets humming in the sunshine. We walked out to the Charles Darwin Research Station which looks into the best way to preserve the Galapagos and its species. Its best known for its tortoise breeding program and they have learned how to dig out the eggs and transfer them to incubators, such that 98% of the eggs they move now hatch. We saw them taking some of the baby giants out of boxes, painting numbers on them and etching a groove in their shells. The island-specific species are returned to their native islands once they are a bit older. The Station is also the permanent home of Lonesome George, the last of his sub-species and perhaps two hundred years old. No-one has found a way to date these giants accurately yet. He was asleep, with his long neck stretched out in front of his impossible shell. It was like watching a dinosaur and elsewhere at the Station, on a walking trail we were surprised by a few more giants with their elephant feet, grumpy expressions and watery eyes. Some may have been spared by whalers a hundred and fifty years ago as being too small to eat. They are lumbering time travelers, plodding their way through the decades.

Back in the town, we explored a bit and had supper overlooking the harbour. As night fell snatches of salsa music and laughter drifted up from the street below and dogs set up a barking relay. How do people live with dogs like that? When disturbed by, I don't know, someone sneezing in a different part of the town, they will bark for five minutes straight, and then another one will become aware that there is a rock in the yard and start barking at that. Hello earplugs.

El Teleferiquo

2011-06-25T09:58:00.000-07:00

It was the Fitzgerald's last day in Quito. Sui Fun and Robert had left early for Peru, so the rest of us got into tourist mode. El Teleferiquo, a gondola up a mountainside overlooking Quito, soars up to 4050 meters ( about 13,365 feet in the old money). We flagged taxis to the base and on our way caught a cloud-free glimpse of one of the snow-topped volcanos that ring the city. The taxi, grinding along in first gear, only just made it up the steep access road. P and I looked at each other as the revs dropped and dropped, but we got there in the end.

El Teleferiquo has a slight air of dreams unrealised about it. The "craft village" at its base is a sad cluster of empty shopfronts; doors gaudy with Visa and Mastercard stickers for tourists who were intent on just getting up the mountain. People don't come here to buy CDs of panpipe music or Panama hats, they come to ride the gondola and get a thrill from the thin air at the top. That's what we did anyway.

We emerged at the summit into a cool wind with much less oxygen in it. Anything uphill was an effort, but the views were well worth it. As if sensing our presence, Cotapaxi had pulled the cloud hat over its head, but the sprawl of Quito far down in the valley below was fascinating - particularly watching cigar tube jets come into land at the airport. In the other direction , the jagged outline of the mountains were crisp in the clear thin air.We puffed and gasped a little way up the hill to take photos and enjoy the sharp breeze and the piercing sunshine. Lunch was at a gaudy cafe, once part of a now defunct hotel. We sat in mauve vinyl boths looking through grimy windows at the pristine mountains around us.

At the bottom of the gondola was a nearly deserted funfair - The VolQano, which acted as a small-boy magnet. For an hour or so, weary staff trailed after us to start up silent rides for the boys' benefit.

Back down to a mere 2600m in Quito, jammed into a minibus at rush hour, with diesel fumes wafting through the windows, cars flitting past and cutting in, a smiling woman in a trilby hat selling oranges by the roadside, sunshine boring into our necks. The Fitzgeralds and I went map shopping while P took a hot t home.

Later, as the Fitzgeralds finished up their packing and souvenir buying I hustled out to the pizza place at the end of the street. Its been particular fun for Tom to travel with the two boys and he will really miss Jon and Aiden. We all hugged and wished each other well and they left for the airport. Another part of our Cambridge experience drifiting away. So now we are three again, with three weeks left to go....

In the Cloud Forest

2011-06-25T09:29:00.000-07:00

The cloud had lifted from the forest this morning and hummingbirds are apparently late risers. Hard to imagine them taking it easy with a cup of coffee, but but all was quiet at the feeders. After salty scrambled eggs we changed into Wellingtons (what would the noble Duke think of his legacy to the world...) and met our guide for what was billed as a three hour walk through the forest. Our guide was a bony young chap, tall and skinny and carrying a machete with him. A little way into the forest he swung it at what he described as a blood tree, leaving a small slit in which welled a crimson jewel of sap. He smeared it onto our hands whereupon it turned into a smooth white paste, which he said was used to relieve mosquito bites. The boys were impressed and Tom started seeking mosquitoes in order to test it out. They had a great time in fact; there was a lookout tower with terrifying open bamboo ladders to climb, a rope swing into the trees and a couple of ziplines across small valleys. On the first one we came to, I went and then Tom went. Most of the way at least. I watched him come to a dangling halt about fifty feet from the end and at least a hundred feet from the ground. He was absolutely thrilled. We threw a rope to him but it fell short and so he was pulled giggling back to the launch point where P was clipped on to the pulley as well and their combined weight finally got them across. "Can I do that again?" asked T.

The forest was damp and earthy and quiet, we saw - or heard at least - a couple of hummingbirds but for the most part all was still. At some point we realised that our three hour hike had passed the four hour mark and Roddy, the driver, told us that Pablo's car had to be back in Quito by four o'clock in order to avoid a hefty fine, as different cars are banned from rush-hour driving on different days of the week to ease congestion. That meant we had two and a half hours to get out of the forest, pack up and get to Quito. We raced along the last part of the walk phoning in orders for sandwiches for the road. Yes, the Cloud Forest has a mobile signal. We threw passengers, bags and lunch into the cars and raced away, now with ninety minutes to do the drive that had taken us two hours the day before. It was a white knuckle ride as I struggled to keep pace with the more powerful Disco. I thrashed the little car back up the 6,000 feet we had descended, dodging past trucks labouring up the steep inclines in clouds of exhaust. As we got into Quito, the usual racetrack became even more competitive as we were now part of the race - not just observers. We slid into the most marginal of gaps and cut everyone else up mercilessly - though to be honest that is just normal driving behaviour in Quito. Two blocks from Pablo's house at 4.05, Roddy spotted a traffic cop on the corner and quickly pulled into the car park in front of a row of shops. He had a chat with the policeman, but he refused to let Roddy continue so the car had to stay where it was until 7.30pm and everyone in it had to walk the last bit to Pablo's.

It was strange to be in his house without Pablo but we worked up a pile of pasta and sat in the formal dining room surrounded by his wonderful pictures of South America.

Back in Quito (and then off again)

2011-06-25T08:59:00.000-07:00

We got to Pablo's late last night after stopping for a pizza at a place that was crowded when it was a shack (said Pablo) but had lost all its customers since moving into bigger premises. The food was good, but there was only one other table of people there.

This morning we were off again, to the cloud forest at Mindo a couple of hours away. While I was loading the car I noticed that Sebastian's temporary exhaust fix had been exactly that and the tailpipe was hanging loose again. I called Diego at Simon's Car Rental and within forty minutes he had delivered us a new car and taken away the old one. I'm not sure there are many car companies - anywhere - that would have been as efficient.

Pablo had to return to Cambridge and so we said goodbye to him with big hugs all around (Pablo's trademark). We were very sorry to leave him, and sad too that a little bit more of our Nieman group had been chipped away. Doors slammed, arms waved, farewells were shouted and we were on our way to Mindo, with a friend of Pablo's driving the Fitzgerald's in Pablo's Discover and P, t and I sharing our car with Robert and Sui Fun.

Mindo is 6000 feet lower than Quito and once we left the highway we were weaving down a twisting mountain road trying to go easy on the brakes. The plants either side of us grew taller and broader as we descended and everything became more lush. Mindo is a flyblown little town with dogs hanging around street corners waiting for a bike to chase, and teenagers leaning on parked cars talking about whatever teenagers talk about in Ecuador (probably the same as everywhere else). All of us were feeling weary after all the driving of the past few days and we slumped into a restaurant feeling hot and irritable. The place was called "El Chef" but the expensive wood inlay in the chairs and tables spelled out "El Cheff" I wonder what the owner's reaction was when his brand new, custom made dining room set arrived... The food though was generous and good; trout for some, pork for others and Sui Fun and I almost finished the bowl of hot sauce on ours.

There is a definite disconnect between Ecuadorians dealing with Ecuadorians and their financial dealings with foreigners. They are friendly and helpful (without exception so far) but at the Sachatamia Lodge, the 20% discount for cash and upgraded rooms that Pablo had agreed, turned into a ten percent discount and no upgrade when we actually arrived minus the only Ecuadorian in our group. It didn't matter though. The cabins were new and cosy with big windows looking directly into the forest; a dark tangle of crooked trees, vines and elephant ear leaves. Creepers creeped, butterflies pranced and hummingbirds buzzed. Their wings really do make a racket. Feeders were set up all over the grounds and were always surrounded by electric sparkles of colour, as birds ranging in size from sparrow to bee dipped their long beaks in for a drink; their wings no more than a mist with a tinge of colour. Sometimes they would freeze-frame to a stop, their tiny wings held vertical for a moment as if cooling their hummingbird-armpits and then folded away. They are aggressive little things too, chasing each other away from popular feeding points.

The three of us headed down a dark path into the, lined with deep mossy banks. Faint slivers of late afternoon light reached through the canopy but the forest remained cool and gloomy. A bigger walk tomorrow. We slept that night to the sound of a raucous orchestra of frogs and insects jamming together into the night.

El Quinche

2011-06-21T19:39:00.000-07:00

Tom loves having two boys to play with and they vanished off into the gardens before breakfast, while we fried up eggs and last night's potatoes. The morning started clear and blue and Pablo dropped us off at the start of a trail along an abandoned rail-bed, which ran around a river valley. The engineers had dug out cuttings in places, revealing a soft white stone that local people would dig out and sell for making a kind of whitewash. The land fell away, sharply in places, into a green gorge with a river rushing along its spine with a sound like distant applause. There is such rich greenness here and it is a constant surprise to see so many house plants growing wild; vast yuccas with towering central spears like a jouster's lance. Across the gorge, the town of El Quinche sat in the sunshine, the blue domes of its enormous church shining.

The walk took us splashing through a muddy tunnel, the boys hooting echoes off the cool walls. We came to a bridge spanning the gorge with broken sleepers in the middle revealing the sparkling river far below. Ont he outskirts of El Quinche we were met by a curious man, roughly dressed and with a wild expression who brandished some kind of multicoloured cards at us. He didn't speak and we couldn't work out what he wanted. It was vaguely unnerving though and we turned back the way we had come.

Pablo had ordered a vast paella for us with big pink prawns staring at us with their beady grape-seed eyes. The sky was darkening and thunder crackled in the distance but we sat under umbrellas in the courtyard and willed the storm to stay away. Some of Pablo's friends had joined us and Sebastian, a mechanic made a temporary fix for the exhaust to get us home. We packed, loaded and left the farm, driving back up the track in the golden hour before sunset. Instead of turning onto the main road and heading for Quito, Pablo led us further up the hill, the fading sunlight bouncing pink off the clouds and painting a white farm across the valley. Cotton wool mist was tumbling slowly down the hillside and at the top of a bluff we watched the day draw to a close. One one side were hills slowly being smothered by cloud, on the other, far below us, El Quinche sprawling into the evening light, flashes of sunlight bouncing from windows and ponds. Pablo wants to buy some land up here and he spoke to the old man who greeted us from a hut on the end of the bluff. Pablo said he's spoken to him many times, but he wont sell. It is an idyllic spot and keeping it clearly means more to the old man than money. Back down the track we jolted and before we finally made for Quito we turned into El Quinche to see the church. It is one of the most famous in Ecuador and as evening set in, it was busy in a way it must always have been with stalls selling candles and devotional trinkets out front, quiet beggars in the doorway and people inside crossing themselves and murmuring at the altar rail.

To El Quinche

2011-06-21T19:15:00.000-07:00

Our last morning in the Hacienda and we rushed to breakfast, drooling. The maitre d', chef, head waiter (I am not exactly sure which - perhaps all) has taken a shine to Tom and ruffles his hair at every opportunity. He also insists that Tom speaks to him in Spanish, so T has been muchos graciasing and por favoring at every opportunity. Breakfast was every bit as good today, and we staggered back to our rooms to pack before the drive to Pablo's family farm at El Quinche a little way north east of Quito. The tarmac felt unrealy smooth after yesterday's rock and roll. We swished through charmless concrete hamlets, stalls with fruit hanging on strings, barrows full of watermelons and people everywhere. They are small, the people here, high cheekboned and serious. The women wear hats, sometimes we see clusters of schoolchildren in matching uniforms waiting by the roadside. People cross the busiest fastest six lane roads barely giving the traffic a second glance. Youths lounge on little motorbikes with looks of disdain common to youths lounging on motorbikes everywhere. Goats and cattle graze on the verges and the median. The houses are flat roofed and meager. There are no signs of wealth along these roads. At a point where the road narrowed to two lanes, a woman sat on a speed bump, an open hand outstretched to the cars passing either side of her.

Pablo's farm is down an ancient cobbled road, deeply gouged by heavy rain and jolting wheels. There are squat bungalows - a door and two windows - either side of the track, with brightly coloured washing strung out like bunting. Entering the gateway to Pablo's farm was like entering a cool green oasis; serene lawns punctuated with fruit trees and a couple of fat palms. The farmhouse sits around a red-tiled courtyard with a small chapel to one side. It was built by Pablo's parents and he shares it now with his brother and sister.

From here we intended to go to the market at Otavalo, ninety minutes away. But halfway back up the track an ominous clanging from under our rental car announced that the rubber tailpipe clamp had said "enough already with the bad roads". We turned back, put Robert and Sui Fun in Pablo's Discovery and settled in to a quiet afternoon with pot noodles, books, puzzles, g and t and peanuts. Rather nice in fact. I walked around trying to free up a stiffening back and spotted a very large wasp struggling to drag what could only have been a small tarantula across the patio.

The sun goes down like clockwork at 6.30pm and darkness falls on Ecuador like a cape. The rest of the crew arrived back from Otavalo at about nine with a big bag of fried chicken and boiled potatoes. We ate, and slept.

Cotapaxi

2011-06-21T18:39:00.000-07:00

We woke feeling somewhat desiccated and breathless. Pablo told us he never sleeps with a lit fire in the room at this altitude (about 11,000 feet) as it tends to use too much oxygen. Feeling thick headed and slightly dizzy, we learned our lesson. A thin light was streaming through the slatted shutters and everything smelt of woodsmoke.

Breakfast was a magnificent affair in a bright room painted with scenes from the rainforest. Our hovering waiters had set the table with Ecuadorian cheeses, a bowl of cubed fruit, a jug of yoghurt, brown sugar, a smaller jug of syrupy coffee and some hot water and milk to go with it. They brought us foamy green glasses of Naranjita, a sour fruit rather like a cross between passion fruit and an orange. Pablo had one brought out for us on a plate and it was mouth wateringly bitter on its own. Then there were eggs of course, with rich orange yolks, and bread with freshly churned butter the consistency of cottage cheese. It was a noisy feast with many "I couldn't - well go on then"s.

So, on to the Cotopaxi National Park a few miles drive along a dirt track, and over a wooden bridge with no sides, barely wider than our cars. The great snow-capped volcano was still obscured by cloud and in the car park at the entrance we were joined by two multicoloured buses with grimy children grinning through the open windows. After a brief verbal tussel with the gatekeeper who thought we should have a guide (Pablo knows the place inside out) we drove up and up along washboard roads, climbing to about twelve thousand feet. onto a wide plain - a filled-in caldera - studded with rocks of all sizes which Cotopaxi had spat out over the years. I imagined them landing red hot and crackling with heat, the sky full of ash. The track picked its way between them and sometimes over them, great hunks of basalt threatening to rip out the differential. The wheel ruts had worn into small gorges in places and we jolted and bounced along under clouds which glowered at us, spat rain and ocasionally threw down cold handfuls of hail. A herd of wild horses galloped past wet and shiny, one or two stopping to roll in the the damp tundra. We rocked on across lava beds covered in a layer of fine ash, the great volcano itself still hidden and mysterious, only its lower slopes visible.

At the point where the road crossed a river and climbed a sheer black mud wall we stopped and walked, following the river upstream to its source; a magical clear spring with water jetting up from the ground as if escaping from something terrifying deep below. We spread out. Michael, his boys and ours climbing a perfect cone-shaped volcanic vent covered in vegetation and very steep. I went for one on the other side of the spring. Philippa and Pablo walked towards the plain and soon we were all the tiniest little specs of colour, virtually invisible in this gigantic landscape. The rain fell in a fine mist and after jumping back across the stream with much hilarity and only two wet feet (Tom's) we made for the vehicles. Unbelievably in this remote and forbidding landscape there is rather a nice little restaurant; salmon pink and thatched, with a view across to the invisible volcano. There was lots on the menu but they made it clear that there was really only the menu of the day in fact so we had that: quinoa soup with hot sauce, chicken, rice and vegetables and some kind of sweet and foamy mousse for pudding. Then, the clouds lifted and lifted some more and we could see the vast bulk of Cotopaxi. The snow on its slopes was ridged and tumbled, revealing ancient glaciers. We snapped away and that was all folks, the clouds rolled back into place. Tom wondered what would happen if it chose this moment to blow its top. "Would we be OK?" Well, probably not in fact...

We drove up the road which climbs Cotopaxi's lower slopes inthe hope that the clouds would clear again, but at just under 14,000 feet with light heads and blowing mist all around us we turned around and headed back for the Hacienda.

There we pleaded for a truly light supper and Mignon arranged for a dark green vegetable soup, plates of cheese and ham and baskets of warm bread. The kids had theirs at one end of the room, chatting happily about Nintendo strategies, while the adults sank into sofas at the other end with glasses of wine and a delve into some of the history books Mignon has collected which refer to visits to the Inca Palace we have all enjoyed staying in for the past couple of days. Its a remarkable place.

A month in Ecuador - May 28th to June 28th 2011

2011-06-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

I'm lying on a creaky leather sofa, feet pointing towards a fat black stove humming with heat, the logs popping and cracking and giving the room a faint tang of smoke. The walls are the colour of ochre, the wood floors dark and burnished and the ceiling has heavy beams running across it. The doorway to the bedroom goes through a wall two feet thick and in there another fire is fizzing away. Through the next doorway the bathroom has yet another fireplace glowing in the corner while P has a bath in the claw-foot tub.

We are at the edge of the Cotopaxi National Park in Hacienda San Augustin de Callo, a handsome farmhouse which incorporates an Inca palace. From where I sit I can look over the Spanish stone courtyard which was full of llamas this morning, eating carrots from our hands and staring at us with their goaty eyes. Heavy-tiled roofs, black and wet with rain, overhang the edge of the courtyard on two sides creating a sheltered walkway. One the other two sides are Inca walls with dark stone blocks that fit together so perfectly that you couldn't insert so much as a piece of paper between them. They used no mortar and no-one quite knows how they did it. This is an ancient place in the shadow of Cotopaxi, the tallest active volcano in the world. If it wasn't obscured by grey-white cloud I would be able to see it through the window of our bedroom.

Our day began in Quito, ninety minutes north, at the home of our Nieman friend Pablo. His house in the newer part of the city is a cross between a Swiss chalet and a Japanese Ryokan. The hardwood floors are as solid as steel and the brightly coloured walls are filled with Pablo's photographs for National Geographic and others. Quito is around ten thousand feet up and climbing the stairs leaves you panting for breath and slightly dizzy. We've had headaches but on the whole the altitude hasn't been too much of a problem.

Quito is less frenetic than I thought it might be. The airport was calm and efficient, the people we've met restrained and courteous. Our cab driver, so often the bane of foreign airports could not have been more helpful with our piles of bags and our lack of Spanish. Arriving at sunset and into the rush hour, the streets were packed with darting yellow taxis, thundering blue buses billowing black diesel fumes with conductors standing in the open doorways. At stop lights, scrawny children juggled for tips, and women in skirts, shawls and porkpie hats sold tubes of pears, oranges and bags of nuts. There is none of the insistent, relentless, in-your-face "I give you good price" hustling. Here if you don't want to buy, you don't catch their eyes and they move on.

On our first full day after arriving we went to Old Town Quito a bouncing cab ride away from Pablo's house. Its a place of modest grandeur, of squares and colonial buildings with fancy stonework picked out in peppermint and peach. We went into a couple of churches with dark stone facades slotted with narrow doorways. Once inside though, the entire altar wall was covered in gold leaf; every corkscrewed piller, every niche, every section of wooden lattice was gleaming gold in the dim light. I remember reading someone's account of travelling through South America and noting how Catholicism had to be even more vivid here to catch people's eyes in countries where their daily lives were already full of colour and extremes.

Outside on the sidewalks everything is bustling. Smart city types in suits and perfectly white collars walk importantly past people selling clockwork toys, lottery tickets and baskets of rambutans. Cars race and beep, buses compete for passengers, a man with no legs lies on a wheeled bed accosting people with a megaphone.

Here though, in the serenty of the Hacienda there is just a feeling of ancient calm. A rooster is crowing confidently somewhere. We ventured out briefly this afternoon to a hill so perfectly conical it too was thought to have been built by the Incas. Its a natural feature in fact, but was used as a lookout by the Incas and then the local nobles. We drove up it in pouring rain hoping to walk around the top, but the rain pounded on the car roofs and the muddy track began to turn into a river so we slithered back down and into brilliant green fields, past steaming black horses and fighting bulls, past the bull-ring on the edge of the Hacienda and into our rooms, mellow with firelight.

Dinner last night was in the black-walled stone room built by the Incas as some sort of ceremonial hall. Its just large enough for a long wooden table and serves now as a dining room. Our group filled it: the Fitzgeralds from Cambridge, Robert and Sui Fun from Hong Kong, Pablo and the three of us. The three kids (Tom and two Fitzgeralds) got there earlier and were eating spaghetti, delighting and exasperating the white-tuniced staff. The staff are a friendly and sincere bunch, dedicated with some seriousness to ensuring our every need is met and a little unsure about how to deal with our inclination not to put them to too much trouble. We are eating like Lords. We'd had a three course lunch and so were served a "light" dinner, starting with moist balls of deepfried cornmeal with a froth of avocado puree followed by buttery chunks of sea-bass and then a range of perfect deserts: rich chocolate cake, a wicked little chocolate mousse and a passion-fruit cake that woke up the salivary glands. Mignon, the aristocratic lady who owns the place, joined us for dinner. She is the niece of one Ecuadorian president and the granddaughter of another. Her father was a noted amateur bullfighter and black and white photos of him show a tall, charismatic man entertaining a group of friends from behind a bar in the Inca Great Hall, a mounted bull's head on the wall behind him and a tall gundog in front of him with its front feet on the bar. They are all in baggy suits with open collars. Mignon is very definitely of this stock, fizzing with energy, all flashing green eyes and unlined skin. She loves this place and wants to share it. I get the feeling she enjoys having company too.

When, after brandy in the low ceilinged sitting room we finally ambled back to our rooms we found the ever-helpful staff had stoked up all three fires to industrial levels and heavy wooden shutters had been closed over the windows. Tiny merangues in paper cases were gently melting beside our beds and Tom was soon asleep with flickering firelight reflected on his face.

Goodbye Harvey.

2011-06-01T17:14:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, as the last of the snow was vanishing into gray and gritty puddles, I pulled the cover off Harv with a sigh, knowing it was time to spruce him up and find him a new home. I had envisaged a difficult couple of months with internet ads, tyre kickers and lowball bids. But what actually happened was that the moment Harv's cover crumpled to the ground, our next door neighbours Frank and Peggy looked over the fence and asked whether we would ever consider selling...

To be honest, that sums up our experience of GMC ownership. We have been blessed with good luck throughout the whole process of finding, buying, travelling in and ultimately selling our GMC. From the moment the Michigan snows melted just enough for my Dad and I to drive him down from Traverse City Michigan, to the parts and advice that were all in easy reach on the 'net as I tidied him up, to the community of owners who got us going again in a matter of hours in Halifax Nova Scotia when we lost a CV joint, to the house in Cambridge that came (by chance) with a drive just big enough for Harv, to the people next door who had admired him from afar from the moment we drove in. And as much as anything our fun with this old boy has been about the people he has introduced us to along the way; the Jerrys in Michigan who got us going in the first place, the unbelievably knowledgeable enthusiasts at GMC.net who were never short of advice or humour, Jim and Elly Brennan and the kindhearted folks in the Tidewater Crabs, Paul and Nancy in Halifax wwho opened their home and garage to us, and the many, many unnamed people along the way who made space for us at busy junctions with a smile and a wave, or who came to chat on a garage forecourt, or in a newly found campsite. What a delight to drive something that seems to kindle warm feelings in those around you.

Harvey has taken us into places popular and quiet, mountainous and flat, wooded and barren, coastal and inland. He became a part of our lives in a way we hadn't expected. Philippa found it hard to be inside our GMC when she knew it was about to be no longer ours - there were too many good memories embedded there. I found it impossible to believe that the motorhome I had spent so many hours in, under, and on top of', wrestling with, being perplexed and occasionally soaked by was not going to be ours forever. But he isn't. In fact he isn't even ours now. Peggy and Frank have already taken Harv on an inaugural drive and will park him in their own back yard just as soon as they have made it ready for 26 feet of seventies gloriousness.

So, thanks for everything Harv. The journey that began in a musty GMC in Virginia when Philippa and I looked at each other and "just knew", went on to a chilly Michigan barn and Harv, followed by a great roadtrip with my Dad through the backwoods of West Virginia, then to Washington DC, the mountains of New York State, Quebec, Gaspe, Nova Scota and Maine, has ended with our next door neighbours driving our pride and joy off into the sunset in Cambridge, Mass. There was a lot of fun on the way and hopefully too the inspiration for a book I will write one of these days...

And what of this site? Well I think the GMC-related posts have probably come to an end, but this blog is really about a state of mind and the story of a journey - many journeys in fact. So I will keep writing here about other trips, other adventures and other ways to ride the Magic Bus. Thanks for coming along. We've enjoyed every minute of it.

Upgrades...

2011-05-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

So when we first got Harv I had a list of things I wanted to do to ease our seventies classic into the modern world, and I went out and bought a load of Bits to install. It was the usual story of ambition over ability and most of those bits travelled around the Northeast with us last summer, hidden away in boxes as I ran out of time to put them in before our big trip. Now though, they are all in. All those little jobs are complete and I am rather proud of the result. Why the sudden fixing frenzy? Well, that will be explained further on. For now though, feast your eyes on the quality workmanship...

First up, a backup camera! This was fun and fairly easy to fit. I knew the in-dash dvd/radio had connectors for a backup camera so it was just a case of buying the camera and about thirty feet of the relevant leads. I found a great little camera on Ebay which even had infra-red LEDs for backing up at night. How can something so sophisticated cost less than $25?

Well it did and once it arrived the next question was where to fit it. I didn't want to start drilling into Harvey's bodywork and luckily I didn't have to. There was a readymade housing already there.

At some point a previous owner had fitted universal mount thing for adding a bike rack or a tool box or a more sophisticated towbar. I don't need any of those things, so I got a $2 tube plug and cut a circular hole in it to fit the camera. All the connections fit right inside the metal tube and it works really well. There is an independent power source to the camera so whether the radio is on or not, it turns on and lights up the screen whenever you select reverse. Now THAT is satisfying...

OK, on to the next job and this too was surprisingly easy once I had worked out where all the bits went. Using the McMaster Carr catalog and the parts list set out by someone on GMCnet (and I forget who it was - send me the name and I'll credit him) I got all the makings for adding gas struts to the propane and generator doors. I wish I had done this before our trip last summer. No more balancing the blooming doors on my head or fiddling with the bungee to get them to stay up. Nope, they now slide up smooth and easy. if you haven't done this upgrade, do it! Er, that's if you have a GMC if course. If you don't, well you are probably already asleep.

OK, moving right along here, we get to what was the biggest pain in the arm of everything I've done to Harv. The Saga Of The Blinds, soon to be a mini-series. They were a real nightmare to put in, and the expensive valances from Applied GMC came with minimal fixings: ie some pieces of bent aluminium (I am sticking with that spelling as we are going back to England soon). They arrived so late that I didn't get a chance to put them in before we left on our two month road trip and we lugged the big box they came in for four thousand miles, before ultimately stowing them in the basement. Well I got them out and bought some neat little pre-drilled brackets, an assortment of screws, rivets and drywall anchors (which worked very well in the carpet-like sidewall insulation). I got a rush of nostalgia going to Home Depot to get the fixings, remembering the many hours I spent there last spring when Harv was but a new arrival. Anyway, it all worked very well, and even though I had to cut the pre-cut valances down to size in most cases, they actually look rather fine.

The blackout blinds are honeycomb and have a layer of aluminium foil for insulation and they match the valances perfectly.

The back was a little trickier but the job that had weighed most heavily over me turned out to be really rather straightforward once I'd found the right fixings. Actually, that's usually the case with a lot of these kinds of jobs, until you break something in the course of fixing something else. Thankfully that didn't happen this time...

I also tidied up some wiring under the bench seat and around the digital tv box given to me by a nice lady at our first GMC rally with the Tidewater Crabs.

So Harv can face the next 33 years with the confidence that he is fully in step with the younger generation; TV, backup cameras, gas struts, fitted blinds...

He is your favourite Uncle with an iPod.

What fun its been. I'm glad I've had the chance to metaphorically straighten his tie and brush his shoes before handing him over to his new owners. Yes, new owners. What prompted this sudden flurry of DIY is the fact that we have sold our beloved GMC. But he won't be going far. More on that to come.

He's back!

2011-03-31T12:17:00.001-07:00

Mike did a great job on Harvey, replacing some front end components and rectifying a small transmission leak. Well more of an ooze actually, but anyway, it isn't any more. I drove back on the freeway with Harv going better than ever. I went back to Jim's in Somerville for a re-inspection and "Bustah" handed over the sticker with a smile and a handshake. The GMC effect again...

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

Wot no Harvey?

2011-03-28T13:25:00.001-07:00

Nope. He's still in New Hampshire, where Mike the mechanic has just got back from his week's vacation. He tells me that the autoparts shop next door is inexplicably out of a part they usually have in stock, and it won't be in stock until tomorrow at the earliest. So Harv should be ready to come out swinging late Tuesday or Wednesday. But I can't get to him until Thursday, so our drive will remain eerily empty until then. Its rather strange coming home and seeing an open space instead of the comfortable rear end of our GMC.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

Inspections and front ends

2011-03-19T06:09:00.001-07:00

Like death and taxes, some things are unavoidable. One of those things is the Inspection required to register your vehicle in the place where you live. Harv has been sitting in the driveway on "Taxation without Representation" plates (DC) since we got here last August; a kind of poke in the eye at the state where that slogan gained some traction back in the late seventeen hundreds. But there was to be no Massachusetts insurance without Massachusetts plates so eventually I had to go down to the RMV and learn to say "Motah-home". And that brings us to the picture on the left; Harv suffering the indignity of being poked about at Jim's Heavy Duty Inc in Somerville to get his inspection sticker. Well all was fine, er apart from some play in the front end which was enough to get Harv branded with the scarlet R of rejection. This is good news to whoever eventually buys Harv because now I have to make sure that his front end is rippling and beefy like an Olympic weightlifter so he can get his inspection sticker. But where to go for such attention? To GMCnet, that's where! After a quick inquiry about where to take our pride and joy I get a reminder about the Black List which contains all the information you need about GMC Mechanics Near You. Sure enough, just forty five minutes up the road, Mike at New England RV Service has been working on GMCs since they were new and has one himself. Brilliant. I arrange to drive up and in the meantime the sun is out, the temperature has risen into the high sixties and I can have a proper look at Harv for the first time since the snow melted. The two batteries at the front were on their last legs when I got Harv last February so I fit two new ones (one is a backup) along with a new clamp. The generator was still dusty from when we finished our big trip so I clean it up and find a loose wire. After fitting a new connector, the generator starts at the first click of the starter rather than the usual two or three seconds so I feel unfeasibly pleased with myself. I have also worked out what extra connection I need to wire in the digital TV receiver more neatly and I wire brushed the hob back to its original gleaming stainless steel. There would be pictures of all this, but yesterday I drove up to New Hampshire and left Harvey with Mike the Mechanic to have his front end sorted out. Mike is on vacation next week so it will be ten days or so before I can go back up to collect Harv, and in the meantime I am having tinkering withdrawal...

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Aaaaah....

2011-03-12T09:16:00.001-08:00

The sun is out and the temperature has soared into the balmy mid-fifties. Harvey shook off his cover and fired up first time, as he has all winter. So did the generator. I've got some little jobs to do to get ready for spring and, gulp (sorry Harv) also getting ready to sell our trusty GMC...

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

Awwww

2011-02-28T05:57:00.000-08:00

How about that? Harvey painstakingly re-imagineered as a throw cushion. It's the work of a very clever lady in Scotland called Lucy Moose http://www.lucymoose.com who will make your 2d photo, doodle or sketch into 3d soft-cushion reality. My amazing sister Helen had the idea to send her a photo of Harv and this is the astonishing result. Thank you Helen and thank you Mrs. Moose.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

Brrrrrrr....

2011-01-02T10:12:00.000-08:00

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

Zzzzzzzz....

2010-12-19T17:29:00.001-08:00

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

Nope

2010-12-19T17:15:00.000-08:00

Which of course means nothing unless you are reading this blog chronologically. But if you see the post below you will notice that this title is a response to that one. We strive for snappiness here on the Magic Bus. Even if I haven't updated it in a worryingly long time. Other Things have got in the way and Harv is tucked up in the drive outside snug in the full sized cover we found in the top box.

But anyway, no that wasn't Harv's last outing because we had another brilliant day trip at the end of October. This time we headed down the Boston's South Shore through towns with the names of English villages; Hingham, Cohasset and Scituate. It was one of those fall days when the blue sky is almost too bright to look at and a cold wind blows through your bones. At Hingham Harbour we had great lunches at the Stars Diner which is an old fashioned sort of place with a surprisingly varied menu. We opted to go the traditional route and consequently there were fish, and also there were chips ("fries" in American" but "fish and fries" will never, ever sound right).

Tom enjoyed the freezing beach and we all enjoyed getting back into Harv and trundling along the little roads through the old timey landscape. It feels like old Massachusetts despite being as built up as it is. We had half a notion about getting as far as Plymouth but in the end we settled for Duxbury Beach which the guide book had good things to say about. Its at the end of a snaking beach road which gets narrower and ever more sandy at the edges as you curl through holiday houses, sandy dunes and dogwalkers. Unfortunately when we got to the beach itself it was....

It seems a strange thing to close off a beach car park simply because it is off season. Was there perhaps a danger that people would come and be unable to buy things at the souvenir stand? In any case we did what everyone else did and parked along the road instead.

The beach was wonderfully brisk. "Absolutely freezing" is another way to say that.

We stomped about for a good fifteen minutes before beginning to lose feeling in our limbs, at which point we decided it was probably best to head back into Harvey for cups of tea and things to eat. Isn't that just the best thing about a motorhome? Whenever you need a a quick spot of something to get you going, its available.

We never did get to Plymouth. In the end we belted back up the highway to Cambridge as the temperature dropped still further, feeling rosy from the sun and wind. I'm so glad our parents were all able to have a taste of life in our GMC.

Our last day in Harv...?

2010-10-26T19:44:00.000-07:00

We've been spoiled by these clear fall mornings. They look so warm and inviting despite the fact that its decidedly crisp once you step outside. Heather and Jeff came to pick us up for a day of walking and outlet shopping and general tourism.

We made for Cathedral Ledge and revelled in the grand view over a brilliant collage of fall foliage. Tom rock climbed and we all got wobbly knees getting too close to the edge.

Its where they filmed some of "The Last of The Mohicans". There is a sequel coming out apparently. Its called "They Found Two More". (Overheard at an overlook).

We had lunch in a plain sort of Lobster Place called "The Lobster Trap" but the food was excellent and not expensive. Lobster rolls all round, even if we did feel a bit sorry for the gloomy creatures in the lobster tank with bands on their claws.

A post-prandial stroll around the shallow waters of Edge Lake and then back to the Conway's own monuments to Consumerism: the outlet villages. To be honest, I think outlet villages are increasingly a way for chain stores to dump their least popular items at prices which are barely lower than the actual stores. We didn't find any real bargains, though Tom is now definitely OK for socks. And so to Harv, where we turned the front seats round and got some drinks out and chatted away the last of the afternoon before dusk, and Heather and Jeff departed for their B and B. One more night in Harv - and perhaps our last, though I hope not. Its been great to sneak in one more getaway with our old friend and very hard to think of Harvey in someone else's hands this time next year. If that really was our last outing though, that was the way to do it, in another wonderful American landscape.

Lake Conway, NH

2010-10-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

The fan heater worked a treat overnight and we didn't need to turn on the main heating. I think the aluminised honeycomb blinds really make a difference too, stopping the heat from escaping through those big windows. When we pulled them open we were amazed to discover a large blue lake sparkling through the trees, no more than thirty feet away. We hadn't been aware of it in the dark last night. It was such a pretty morning with the sunlight illuminating the changing leaves; flaming reds, yellows and oranges and every colour in between. The lake looked blue and cold and P and I felt we could quite happily spend the whole day in Harv, mooching about and enjoying the view. But it was too nice a day to waste so we unplugged Harv and made for the office for advice.

The lady there scoffed at any thoughts we might have had about going on the famous scenic drive. "I wouldn't go near it this weekend" she said, as everyone else would be on it too. She recommended a trail to a series of waterfalls - "Diana's Bath" - and drew out the directions on the map. Thus armed, we set off in exactly the wrong direction. In our defense I will only say that the map was somewhat misleading, given that it completely ignored the first junction at which we had to make a decision to turn.

But anyway. It was a long pretty drive past little cobalt lakes ringed with flaming trees, before we could turn around in the parking lot of a closed ski-lift. Traffic heading for the Frieburg fair slowed us to a crawl through North Conway and it was lunchtime before we finally got to our destination.

Diana's Bath was well worth the effort. Its a winding, leafy hike through the woods to a series of shallow waterfalls with plenty of rocks to climb and rivulets to jump; just steep enough to feel slightly dangerous.

We met Heather and Jeff for supper in a nice restaurant with a somewhat distracted waiter who was trying not to appear overwhelmed by what is the busiest weekend of the year in Conway. The roads were clear by the time we left and soon Harv was hooked up and braced for 28 degrees F overnight with the little heater doing its thing again. But there was an unexpected extra. This weekend is the last that the campground is open and it has beome a tradition for the regular campers to go into Halloween mode (three weeks early). There were orange pumpkin-lights stretched between awnings and trees, ghost lanterns, fake cobwebs and lots of trick or treating with kids dressed up. Tom grabbed a bag and joined in - holding the torch under his chin for ghostly effect. Everyone was friendly and ready for a chat. Fires were crackling and the clear sky was sparkling with stars.

Up, up and away....

2010-10-26T19:13:00.000-07:00

Outside the Route 104 Diner

Along with the rest of the Boston Metropolitan area we headed north on Columbus Day weekend to admire the fall colours. Mostly they were red, green, amber and back to red again, initially at least. Stop-starting up 93 is a traditional Friday evening pastime in these here parts and at the beginning of a three day weekend it becomes a game for the whole family. We swiped Tom up from school at 2.30 on the button and flung him into Harv but we were not early enough to beat the rush. So, we settled back and relaxed into it, It was fine actually. We kept moving for the most part and after about three hours we pulled off the freeway and into the Route 104 Diner, which by happy chance was located on Route 104.

Its a small old fashioned aluminium and glass diner with a big extension tacked on. Inside, its all fifties memorabilia and capable waitresses. Steak tips for me, fried oysters for her and a cheeseburger for him - complete with one of those paper hats that used to be all de rigeur for diner kitchen staff. The service was terrific, the food was great and the atmosphere was jolly. If you are on Route 104 in Meredith NH, seek it out.

Back in the parking lot a guy climbed out of his pickup and came straight over to us. "That is an AWESOME rig, just AWESOME" he kept saying, walking around it, smiling and shaking his head. I'd forgotten Harv's pulling power...

It was dark by the time we got to the Cove Camping Ground in Conway NH, about 160 miles from Cambridge. The last few miles along narrow, winding, unlit roads with drizzle smearing the windscreen were testing. It was a relief to find our space, adjust the airbags to level off and get cosy for the night. The overnight temperature was forecast to be around freezing this weekend so I brought up a quiet little electric fan heater to cycle on and off and save the propane. Tom got tucked up and P and I assumed the position in the back with books and G and Ts, smiling at the fun of being away again.

How do you like them apples...?

2010-10-06T13:12:00.000-07:00

They were all like this. Honestly, they really were that perfect, although in different colours. Carlson Orchards near Harvard Mass is the biggest operation of its kind in the state and the orchards are planted on a south facing hill that never gets frost. The apples are slightly unreal in their perfection.

It was a bright crisp day and we'd driven out in Harv in the bright sunshine. As soon as we got off the freeway the road began to wind through trees just beginning to change into their fall colours. The orchard was busy but not seething when we arrived and we bought a bag to fill. Some of us sampled quite a few as well. It was really nice to see so many different varieties after the usual fare that tend to do the rounds in the supermarkets; all of which are designed first and formost for their travelling qualities rather than their taste. I liked the Ginger Gold which had a distinctly gingery flavour - delicious.

The event (for Nieman Fellows and families) was arranged by a former Nieman now running an excellent international news site http://www.globalpost.com/ He invited us back to his splendid house for drinks and apple crisp and I was hugely gratified to find so much interest in Harv, parked modestly on the lawn.

Everyone wanted a guided tour and I was only too happy to oblige. Many of the Nieman Fellows are journalists from overseas and I could see their sudden realisation of the potential for embarking on road trips here. I unashamedly promoted the idea of life in a GMC and there was more than one person who was distinctly taken with the idea...

Oooh shiny!

2010-10-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

OK. Time to do some upgrades and some replacements and some general messing about, which of course is the other great joy of these machines. On the top left you see a thirty two year old, non-adjustable airbag valve linkage. Perhaps I should have warned non-aficionados look away now. Too late. Below it is a shiny adjustable replacement which should make it easier to set the ride height. The old ones came off with barely a muffled harrumph. The new ones went on enthusiastically ready for their key role in Harve's future.

And here...BEHOLD the $3 Schrader valve that was supposed to keep the air in the air pump tank, but secretly let it all out very slowly so I wouldn't find out about it and tell it to stop. Well I did find out and took it straight off. Finding a new one was not easy given that I couldn't think how to describe it other than as "that air valve thingy" but Ace hardware online came up trumps and the new one went straight in with an air of no-nonsense authority. The air doesn't sneak past IT let me tell you.

Back on the road (for the weekend)

2010-10-05T17:26:00.000-07:00

I'm a little late with this post but after a couple of weeks sitting about in a house with a roof and no wheels we got restless and decided to hit the road again. We struck out north for Cape Anne on a bright Friday afternoon, mixing in with a river of commuters flowing toward the weekend. Cape Anne is only about forty five minutes from Boston and it was great to be back behind Harvey's wheel powering along the highway. We'd missed this easy rhythm of the road and even a short journey was enough to bring back memories of our summer in Harv.

There is really only one campsite on this promontory: the Cape Anne Camp Site. Its hilly and wooded and the sites are secluded. Its nicely old fashioned with a terrific lady on the front desk offering no-nonsense advice ("leave a cloth on the table to mark your spot - I'll get you one") and a brilliant recommendation for supper. "Lobsta Land" was clearly named to drive away those with foodist pretensions and looks fairly unappealing from the outside too but inside it feels fresh and light with a view over the sea marshes and the menu is a modern take on all the usual New England favourites. It was a treat.

We woke up in the woods the next morning with shafts of sunlight through the trees. It amazing how quickly you leave the real world behind when you are in your GMC in the woods with a beach down the road. Wingaersheek beach is really beautiful with the finest white sand, big round boulders to play on and a long stretch of shallows for running very fast in if you are seven. Or even if you aren't.

We had intended to spend an hour, which turned into the morning, and then with a brief intervention of cheese and pickle sandwiches, the whole day. I looked like a stop light by the end of it and was somewhat crispy around the edges.

Jim and Nancy in Manchester-by-the-sea had invited us round for supper and given us GMC space in their driveway so we tore ourselves away from the sea and the sand and the hermit crabs to drive to Manchester. There was fine dining, there was ping pong and much hilarity and a smashing bunch of people who we will make sure we see again. We had a peaceful night in the driveway...

The next day we struck out for Russell Orchard which we had imagined as some kind of bucolic, victorian throwback with be-smocked haywains offering us wooden trugs full of blushing apples. Well there were apples. It was a huge commercial venture and, it has to be said, rather a fine one with everything apple-related that you could imagine.We decided against the wagon-ride and stocked up on various apple-related goods as well as some rather good fresh donuts made in one of those brilliant conveyor deep-fryers (which I have always coveted). Then to another beach - Crane Beach - on Jim's recommendation. It was very different, with rolling dunes and big, wild breakers. Tom was in it up to his waist straight away until a lady warned us about dangerous riptides caused by the hurricane many miles offshore overnight.

It was a good way to end our weekend and we left Harv a little sandier than he was. We came home with salt in our hair and alarmingly red cheeks but feeling relaxed and happy and wishing that this could have been the start of another epic road trip...

And all because of a horseshoe nail.

2010-09-13T07:10:00.000-07:00

After two months of hard driving, Harvey has been resting in the driveway and we have been resting in our new house. But its time to get oil under my fingernails again so I have been going at a series of small jobs. First a day with a Rug Doctor to get the carpets back to their usual colour, then an oil and filter change and now I am chasing up a problem that caused the speedo to fail. This is it:

Its the plastic speedo drive gear which is designed to fail if, say, your lower speedo cable is thirty two years old, somewhat twisted, worn through in a couple of places and devoid of any lubrication whatsoever. You can see the chipped gears at the top.

I will get a new one and a new cable and a couple of other bits and pieces including the plastic transmission governor gear which is a cheap and useful spare part if that goes. Its supposed to be an easy job to get it out, but I think my exhaust headers are in the way. Any tips from you GMCers out there...?

Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mile 4054

2010-08-18T19:54:00.000-07:00

That's it. Its taken us 59 days to drive from Washington DC, to Cambridge, Mass. Apparently you can do it in about 8 hours, but where's the fun in that?

At the Megunticook RV Resort this morning we had pancakes and coffee and a bit of tidying up as the sun trickled through the trees. We hit the road and almost immediately a pickup truck flashed its lights and the driver gave me a vigorous thumbs up. It felt like a good omen. The satnav said four hours to Cambridge but that seemed a little pessimistic to me and so it proved. The roads were fast and silky with big sweeping curves. Harv was as smooth and powerful as ever, effortlessly eating up the miles. At 65 mph there is no trace of vibration, and the water temperature hovers just under 180, even at 84 degrees outside, which it was today. Hats off to you GM.

This part of Maine is mix of the old and the new. There are big towns with McDonalds and large commercial districts, and between them, little hamlets with roadside attractions dating back to a different age. One peeling billboard for a "Motor Museum" advertised car rides and "nickelodeons".

At Biddeford we pulled off for lunch thinking that the town may have echoes of its pretty English namesake. Perhaps it does but we never got that far as there was a Tim Horton's in a mini-mall on the way and having had such a good time there on the Canadian border, we though it only appropriate to give them another go. Clearly Mr Horton only recruits intelligent and easy going serving staff because it was just the same experience as the last time and the food was good too. So long Biddeford. Another time perhaps.

Once over the mighty Piscataqua River Bridge we hit New Hampshire, which was no more than a sign and fifteen minutes on the freeway. Then we hit Massachusetts where it seems to be a legal requirement that you talk on your cell phone while driving. Actually, local custom seems to dictate that you also slow down while doing this and weave about a bit in the middle lane. Or, as in the case of one elderly lady we passed, hold your phone in front of your face so you can text while steering for the off ramp, twenty miles an hour slower than everyone behind you. We both have cellphones so we should fit right in. At A and E.

At the Tobin Memorial Bridge we stopped to pay the toll and the young Hispanic guy in the booth gave me a big smile and said "When I grow up I'm gonna be like you man! Get me one of those things and drive all OVER the Northeast." I can recommend it.

The last ten minutes reminded me why we tend to avoid big cities on these trips. Cavernous potholes, hopeless drivers who straddle the lane when they stop, thus cutting you off from the exit you need, temporary road barriers which leave a gap just big enough for a car but narrow enough that one more coat of paint would make our motorhome too wide. It was good to get out of the city centre and into the street where we will spend the next ten months. The house has a GMC sized drive but also a tree at the entrance to it which very nearly did for us. We squeaked past it with less than an inch to spare, thanks to some lads on the street who were kind enough to move a row of trash bins which gave us just enough room to manoever.

Its now just past ten and we are marveling at the extraordinary luxury of a kitchen with several feet of counter space, a washing machine, a dryer and a sink with a seemingly unending supply of water. I'm told that its possible to spend at least twenty minutes in the shower, should you wish. We had supper at a place called the Lord Hobo around the corner and it was stunningly good, with the best range of beers in Boston.

Harv is parked outside; batteries off, cupboards emptied, freezer defrosted. He needs a good clean and there are several things I want to sort out or upgrade over the next few weeks, which I will reproduce in loving detail here no doubt.

What a trip though; from Pennsylvania Dutch countryside to the mountains of New York. From the foreignness of Gaspe with its impenetrable French and fascinating history, to the unspoilt wilderness of Nova Scotia and then the tranquility of Maine. There were whales, moose and bears; a breakdown which became a fun couple of days in Halifax with some terrific people. Some absolutely terrible roads, some absolutely brilliant ones too, sunsets, thunderstorms, crashing waves, smiles from people watching us go by in our funky motorhome - a little boy pointing us out at a campsite and saying "I would have THAT one". So would we.

When we set out on this adventure we didn't really know if it was feasable to buy a thirty two year old motorhome and launch off into the unknown with it. But it really is. It is the most comfortable RV either of us have ever travelled in and its no less economical than the modern ones. It is powerful and easy to drive; light steering with solid brakes which never faded. Everything worked as it was supposed to and when problems arose, they were easily fixable. Best of all though were the smiles it generated wherever we went.

This has been one of the great experiences of our family life. Tom is just a brilliant traveller, able to keep himself entertained for hours at a stretch while we sit up front, but also throwing himself into the wild surroundings we've tried to find; scrambling over rocks, plunging into rivers, lakes and the sea, racing through trees and across beaches. To be able to park under the stars, by the ocean, in a forest, is a special treat. Philippa and I have loved the solitude and the quiet, and the fun of the three of us.

The sad thing is that may be our first and last big trip in our magic bus. There will be weekends and possibly even the odd week or two, but we go back to England next summer and we will have to sell Harv in the spring.

It won't stop me dreaming about other road trips though - up the spine of the country from Texas to Montana, north to Alaska, down the east coast to Florida, or around the Four Corners. There are just so many roads still to do...

Rockport Maine. Mile 3862

2010-08-18T07:41:00.000-07:00

It was a perfect morning in Acadia as if the park was mocking us for leaving. Tom's "cooking with eggs" repertoire expanded again with a quick lesson on boiled eggs, which we ate in rough wooden eggcups we'd bought for a dollar fifty each in Bar Harbor.

We'd decided that if it was raining we would scoot up to the freeway and stop somewhere north of Portland, but with the sun streaming through the trees we stuck to the coast and made for Camden. First though we followed the westernmost road in the park, which we had somehow failed to follow yesterday. This is the less traveled part of the island; the scenery is less dramatic, but it is every bit as pretty. It reminded both of us of the Devonshire countryside; narrow lanes winding through fields and woodland with scattered villages and glimpses of the sea.

Around one curve we spotted a familiar shape in the undergrowth and I went back to check it out. Sure enough, it was a GMC with wildflowers up to its wheel wells. It was faded but seemed to be in reasonable shape.

Somehow neither of us noticed the causeway back to the mainland, but soon we were back in a cluttered forest of roadside fast food signs and billboards, mini-malls and car dealerships. But that too came and went to be replaced by handsome little towns like Ellsworth where we stopped for a break. The main street had a tiny art deco cinema and a hodge podge of interesting shops and cafes. The Maine Grind is on the ground floor of a former Masonic Hall and is just about the perfect coffee house. Free wifi (natch), good coffee in cups the right size for a normal human, everything baked fresh on the premises and even a bowl full of hard boiled eggs should you be so inclined. Tom sucked on a mango smoothy made on the spot with a real mango, and P and I settled into leather couches and made arrangements for our impending landing in Cambridge. If this is what civilisation is like, its really not so bad.

There was more to explore in the building which had various arty and crafty type places, one of which had a female manaquin in a black wig standing guard by the stairs. She eyed me coldly when we came in, before dropping a plastic arm on the floor with a crash. We both pretended not to notice.

Caffeinated and happy we rejoined Route 1 heading down the Maine Coast. The road is broad and smooth and there is clearly more money around here. Harvey woofled through prim little villages like Searsport with large, pristine wood frame houses floating on expansive lawns, spouting turrets and widow's walks. Then to Belfast which burned down in 1865 and decided to build its main street from brick thereafter. We bought sandwiches from a red caravan where the rosy faced girl behind the counter told Philippa "You speak English very well!" almost as if she was addressing a small child. She meant well though and went on to say how difficult she found it to understand someone she'd encountered the day before "He was from England and I couldn't get a word he said. He had to point to the menu in the end." The harbour was breezy and full of toy boats though Tom preferred the big rocks beside it.

Next stop Camden which is pretty but in a rather knowing sort of way with everything painted up just a bit too brightly. Its also somewhere that seems to prefer RV's to park somewhere else. Like Belfast. What parking there is, is clearly aimed at cars and one availale space was signposted "no RVs". We found two spaces on our second pass through and took them. The harbor was busy with pleasure boats, from multimillion dollar luxury cruisers to a tiny little traditional sailboat with a single sail we saw heading out. Someone had carved wonderful faces into the remains of an old jetty, and they stared eerily across the water.

Our campsite was a few miles further on and gave us our last night in Harvey, for a while anyway. We used things up in the fridge in a rather eclectic sort of pasta followed by blueberry pie, which is a Maine staple. Then we had a walk down to the sea at a small overlook. it felt like saying goodbye to this trip in a way. One more family movie on Harv's drop down screen; we all chose Wall-E which is really one of the loveliest things to come out of Hollywood. To the city tomorrow and new lives doing new things, but first, a final day on The Road.

Still in Acadia... Mile 3774

2010-08-17T08:36:00.000-07:00

We had big plans for today. We would drive over to the eastern side of the island, cycle in the back country, eat at a hidden-away lodge famous for its "popovers" and do a little hike to take in the splendid views. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas. We woke to mist and rain. The Ranger said it was set to last all day and into tomorrow. We considered treating it as a driving day and heading south, but in the end we decided to take it easy, go to the wifi cafe at the other end of the sea-wall, then head over to the classic car museum and maybe go for a lobster supper somewhere. Somehow we didn't do any of that either. The wifi cafe was closed, though the wifi was still on so we sat outside in Harvey and blogged with the last of the batteries in our laptops. Then we set off for the museum in driving rain and somehow ended up doing a big loop which veered off well before the museum and brought us back to within a mile of our campsite.

Teeth gritted, we pressed on to Bar Harbor and found that just about everyone on the island had done the same and it was seething with moistened tourists. We crawled through town and managed to find a space between all the cars in the RV parking lot. Public information message here: folks, an RV parking lot is for RVs. They are the big caravans with engines. If your car does not look like that, you park somewhere else because you can and we can't. Are we clear..?

We had lunch at a place that was remarkable mainly due to its surly teenage hostess. In fact "surly" credits her with actually having an opinion about those coming in to pay her wages, when in fact she was just so utterly bored that we were like buzzing flies as far as she was concerned. Had it not been pouring with rain outside we would have walked out. But our lip-pierced waiter was a pleasant young chap and wanted to let us know that he too had travelled and enjoyed seeing the world. So all was not lost, but I fear Bar Harbor is heading in that direction.

I'm sure that twenty years ago - maybe less - it was a real place, and it still has a fine harbour and hills rising behind it, but the town seems to have sold its soul to tourism. Souvenir shops line up one after the other selling T shirts and lobster fridge magnets. We bought T-shirts and Tom tried to persuade us to get lobster fridge magnets (we already have some) and we wandered around damply, killing time.

Eventually we walked back through the drizzle and escaped in Harv.

Tom was glued to some new lego as we wound through dark, treelined roads back towards the campsite. We stopped for a cup of tea at the rocky sea wall by the campground to watch the waves crash over the rocks and smell the sea.

On the other side we saw a beaver swim across the pond. That's what Acadia is really about and I'm sorry we haven't had more time to see it. Tomorrow though we will see what the weather is doing and try to find some more wild Maine before heading on to Cambridge and the end of this journey.

Acadia

2010-08-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

Tom did wait until eight and then pulled on his clothes and rushed out. P and I were sitting up in bed having tea when Sophia appeared at our bedside full of conversation. She is a real livewire; cute as a button and with the same kind of bouncing-off-the-walls imagination as Tom. They are friends as if they always have been. Philippa and I put some breakfast things outside and then sat back and waited while the two of them ran around. Eventually Sophy joined us for breakfast and we listened in while the two of them had stream of consciousness conversations. Tom told Sophy about his "gorilla dreams" and she told us about her cousins and the dog that died. "He didn't make it". she said simply.

Then it was back to the bike and scooter and drawing pictures of fruit to stick in the trees so they could pick them like monkeys. It was the most fun he has had in ages, and very sad that Sophy and her family had to leave. They had come from Chicago and were heading to Prince Edward Island. Tom waved them off. He later told Philippa that he had had a dream that night where he saw his initials carved into a tree with someone elses and a big heart around them. "What were the other initials?" she asked "It was M" he said. Which left us none the wiser.

We dusted off the bikes and set off for a trailhead to the coast which was a couple of miles away. Our first site of the sea was a shallow lagoon lined with a carpet of mussel and clam shells. We walked out onto a sandbar which was becoming an island when we got back to the beach as the tide was coming in fast. We clambered over big rocks and had a picnic watching breakers crash just below us. The Pres had done exactly this walk a couple of weeks before and I hope it was a day like this - blue and blowy with dazzling sunshine and brilliant white spray thrown up by the waves.

We biked on further to Bass Harbor for a drink at a cafe overlooking the water. We could have stayed all afternoon, but we'd had lunch and it was too early for supper so we dropped our bikes at the campground and caught the free shuttle bus to another trail. This one went steeply up through a tangle of tree roots and rocks before coming out at a great overlook next to Somers Sound which is apparently the only fjord on the easter seaboard, though I am not exactly sure what that means. Below us a good sized yact was heeled way over in the wind and the deep blue bay was a mass of little white boats. Its a grand spot.

The shuttle bus took us back to the campground and supper and a movie and another day to come in Acadia. All is completely quiet around us. Where did I put my guitar...

Acadia National Park Maine. Mile 3732

2010-08-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

President Obama and family were here a couple of weeks ago, but I doubt they would have had to listen to the guy across the campground from us playing his guitar and leading the singalong for quite as long as we have. Had we been the First Family, I imagine a nondescript but athletic individual with an earpiece would have gone over and made it a matter of national security. I'm not against three middle aged people regaling the neighbours with their rendition of "Back in the USSR" - we've all done it - but after a couple of hours I am looking for my gun. Harvey actually has a gun cupboard with a lock, but we keep books in it and I'm not sure that runnng out brandishing "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" would have the same effect. Actually it might...

It didn't.

Anyway. So now we are deep into America, having persuaded the border police that nothing they had read about us was true. It was a pleasant enough crossing - if a little complicated and requiring a lot of paperwork and questions. We crossed into Calais, which is a border we are familiar with in France, where it is pronounced Calay, but in Maine it is Callas.

On the Canadian side of the river the town is St Stephen and it feels like a border town somehow. I wonder what it would feel like if you didn't know it was a border town? But you do, with direction signs on the main street saying "USA, left turn" and shops advertising that they take both kinds of dollars. There was a busyness to the place that wasn't justified by anything other than its location.

Before we crossed the border we used up our remaining Canadian cash at a Tim Horton's, which we have passed a million times since entering Canada and never stopped at because of a misplaced snobbery that they were some kind of Canadian McDonalds, Oh no. Nancy in Halifax put us right on that one. They also serve great coffee in a range of civilised sizes so you don't have to get a bucketful of the stuff AND they sell terrific pastries and donuts and again you can get little mouthful-sized things if you want for less than a dollar. Why on earth didn't we come here before?

Having used up our $9.29 with the bemused server ("Hi, we want to spend $9.29. What shall we have?") we turned left for the USA and joined the queue over the bridge into America. The entry point was a bit like a tollbooth, but we pulled over and went into the old customs house now serving as a border post. Though doubtless equipped with the latest state of the art everything it was also a rather homely sort of place with chipped formica counters and old metal file drawers with the officer's names on, which some had decorated with pictures of their kids. There was none of the sullen irritation found in Dulles or JFK here, but a willingness to help and actually a very friendly officer who dealt with Philippa, and beamed when talking about his young son. "Welcome back" he said - and meant it.

At this point, the front of the GMC was in the US while the back was in Canada

While were there an officer ran in and said "call 911, there's a van on fire out here!" and he pointed in the direction of Harvey. I felt an icy lump form in my stomach and ran out to see that actually there was smoke pouring from under a minivan on the other side of Harv. The owner was pulling into the petrol station and his wiring had got a bit too hot. The smoking soon stopped, the fire brigade arrived and we went on our way into Maine.

They call this bit of Maine "Down East". Its not very touristy and not particularly prosperous. We passed endless grocery stores up for sale or falling down; a "Dairy Dreams" snack bar with its roof falling in, next to a house looking blindly through boarded up windows. Occasionally we saw people by the road selling things from trestle tables - clothes mostly. The road varied between newly-laid fresh black asphalt and ancient rotting tarmac creased by the sun and the cold and crumbling away at the edges. I drove right down the middle for as much as I could.

In East Machias we saw a restaurant with tables outside covered in dazzling white tablecloths. Lots of cars were parked by the road and we joined them but found that the restaurant was closed and there was a wedding going on. From the road we looked down a grassy bank to a simple wooden arbor made of birch poles where we could hear the bride and groom saying their vows. It was a lovely little scene.

"But what did you do about lunch"? I hear you ask. Well thanks for your concern. We had lunch at Helen's Restaurant in Machias three miles further on, and it was excellent, since you asked. Philippa had a succulent lobster roll and I had a Haddock sandwich ("our best selling item!") composed of freshest, whitest, moistest, and best cooked piece of fish I think I have had on this whole trip.

Across the road was a travelling funfair manned by bored hispanics with no English. But Tom learned how to work a dodgem car and during those five minutes went from cross-faced "this was a waste of money I can't make it work" to bouncing with excitement "thiswasbrilliantmyabsolutefavourite". He also went on the whirling saucers twice and wanted to keep going. Philippa and I felt dizzy watching.

And back on Highway 1, winding through canyons of trees almost up the road's edge until we reached Acadia. Its a big park and not quite as either of us had imagined. We were expecting untrammelled wilderness but its actually collection of very pretty villages, surrounded by craggy shoreline and modest mountains carefully arranged to look gorgeous.

We shall explore tomorrow and Tom has promised to wait until 8 before going to find Sophia who is camping a couple of sites down and is six, going on, ooh at least eight. She marched over to us all blond hair and confidence as we were sitting outside and swept Tom away. They played together until it was dark and I think he is a bit smitten.

St Andrews, New Brunswick. Mile 3575

2010-08-13T17:41:00.000-07:00

Philippa and I snuck out into the dark last night and craned our necks skywards looking for meteors. The sky was cold, clear and sparkling and it took a while but we both saw flashes of light shooting towards the horizon. Tom has a bit of a thing about meteorites and believes that at any moment we could all be wiped out by one. He is right of course, but its hard to explain to a seven year old that its not really worth worrying about. He was deeply asleep by the time the Perseids appeared, and I don't know whether they would have eased his fears or fanned them.

It was chilly when we got up for the ferry this morning and I turned on the heating while we staggered about yawning. We threw on some clothes, drove 3 miles to the ferry terminal, got boarding passes, got in line and had breakfast in the GMC. So civilised.

It seemed to be mostly holiday traffic; several RVs, a few trucks and a lot of Harleys with owners wearing Harley Owner's Club regalia from Maine. Nearly all seemed to be in their fifties, dressed up as rebels from the fifties. Its a three hour crossing to Saint John, New Brunswick in the Princess of Acadia which is a pretty sizeable ferry, able to carry 650 passengers and 155 cars. It also has a Starbucks, the first we have seen in weeks. Its been so nice to be in places overlooked by the Starbucks megalomania. That said, we both had lattes.

On deck it was sunny but freezing so we retired inside. There was free wifi for blogging, a Shrek movie on a big screen for Tom and a nice quiet crossing was had by all.

From a distance, Saint John appears to be under siege from industrialisation. It is surrounded by oil refineries and gravel processing plants and some kind of factory with giant chimneys belching grey smoke. I'm sure it has its lovely bits but we decided to press on down Route 1 on the coast. It felt a little alarming to be driving fast on a big highway after all this time pottering about.

We turned off at New River Beach, a provincial park of the type the Canadians are so good at. There was plenty of parking and toilets and a little cafe and a great big swathe of beach. When we got there the tide was so far out you could barely see it. We had lunch at a picnic table and when we went back to sit on the sand for a bit the water was already in. The beach was so shallow the tide must have raced across it. Tom did his usual civil engineering projects with a bucket and spade, and soon had a large sand-hole to sit in as the waves came further up the beach, carrying a thick mat of bladderwrack seaweed with it. Tom sat in his hole popping the air bladders as they were washed up to him. That's what you do when you are seven.

A little scorched we pressed on with sea on one side of us and fir and pine woods on the other. An hour later we went south to sparkling St Andrews a touristy little place with a wide harbour. The main street is all brightly painted wood-framed shops and galleries with shingle roofs. We got an "overflow" site at the big campsite by the bay and cycled back in for supper on a sunny terrace overlooking the water. We cycled back through the streets of the main strip and found (again) a plethora of churches. There were three on one block each separated by a single house.

Its our last night in Canada. Tomorrow we will try out Philippa's new visa at the border and make our way to Acadia National Park in Maine. O Canada, you have been great. Lovely landscapes and terrific people. Can I stay?

Digby, NS. Mile 3508

2010-08-12T18:08:00.001-07:00

This was not a day to seize, more of a day to slide into. And that is what we did. A late breakfast outside, a bit of trampolining for Tom at the playground, a bit of tidying up and then a cheery farewell from Gloria and Vaughn and off we went to find out what we were going to do today. Whale Cove was a smashing little place with a great campground and we were sad to leave. I think we could have spent half our trip on Digby neck.

Just a few miles down the road was Sandy Cove, named of course after its burgeoning industrial belt and international airport. Or maybe it was the beautiful "sandy cove" with almost no-one on it, down a winding lane which petered out at an elderly jetty. We made for the beach with camp chairs and books and a bucket and spade and that was the day sorted.

The next few hours were taken up with sandcastle construction, reading, dozing, eating hamburgers for lunch made by Dad, more sandcastles, more reading and well, you get the idea. We all had too much sun and the sea was too cold to swim in but looked lovely.

The cove had one curious incident in its history. Sometime in the mid nineteenth century (accounts vary but between 1854 and 1866) a man in his twenties was found lying by the only rock in the sands (which is still there). Both his legs had been recently amputated above the knee, and were bandaged up. Beside him was a jug of water and a loaf of bread. He was taken in by various people in the surrounding villages and he lived there until 1912 without ever explaining who he was, where he had come from or what had happened to his legs. In fact he remained almost completely silent for the next sixty years. Early on he was thought to have suggested his name was Jerome and that he may have been from Trieste, but no-one ever really knew for sure. The best account I found of this mystery is here. It was rather eerie to look across to the rock and think about the story on such a sunny and carefree day.

Eventually we ambled back to Harv and got back on the main road along the Neck, headed for Digby. "How is Harvey these days?" I hear you ask. Driving better than ever in fact, thanks to his own spot of surgery, smooth and stable. On Paul's advice in Halifax I switched to regular unleaded (from plus) and noticed no difference in power at all. We have had more questions about our GMC here in Nova Scotia than anywhere else, at petrol stations, campsites and on ferries people want to know about Harv. At the campsite in Digby the owner got us squared away and then said "that's quite a rig you got there..." and asked the usual questions. Its so nice to drive in something that everyone smiles at.

We walked into the Digby harbourfront. Its a fairly plain little town with a handful of restaurants and what looks like a busy harbour. We had a plain little supper enlivened by the presence of a little cat, a stray rescued by the restaurant owner and getting used to people. The waitress said it wouldn't let anyone pick it up, but it hopped up on me and went to sleep.

We walked back to the campground in the glow of the early evening. Tomorrow we have to be in the ferry line at 7am, at the end of the road about three miles away. A text message from my Mother says tonight is a good time to see meteor showers (the Perseids says Mr Google). A natural firework display to mark the end of a spectacular time in Nova Scotia.

Whale Cove. Mile 3480

2010-08-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

Philippa was all for getting up promptly and catching the 9.30 ferry to the next bit of Digby Neck this morning, but the rollercoaster had knocked us out and we woke to find Tom standing over us looking with concern at his clock "it says 9.19 you know..." We had breakfast at 10 and thought about aiming for the 12.30 ferry instead.

These little ferries are terrific. They run 24 hours a day and cost $5 return for every vehicle. Once he'd waved us into position, the crewman came over and said "what year?". "1978". He nodded slowly and approvingly.

Our whale watching appointment was at the ferry landing on the other side. We zipped up into big orange survival suits, which our guide said were to really ensure that they could find the bodies, as the water was cold enough that you only had a fifty fifty chance of lasting more than fifteen minutes in the water. It looked nice though, flat and mellow in the sunshine.

The zodiac boats can really move and Tom's eyes lit up as we throttled up and bounced out into the bay. Within twenty minutes we saw a big whale spout ahead of us; a humpback.

We drew up perhaps forty feet away and watched it move steadily through the water, blowing every ten seconds or so before diving with a curl of its tail. Tom was as entranced as we were "I saw a Humpback whale's tail!!!!". Further on we saw two others swimming together, and then a juvenile which was much shyer, blowing a couple of times before diving for more than five minutes. It would surface some distance away, blow a couple more times and then vanish again. Tom, our guide said the whales were becoming increasingly inquisitive about the whale boats and seemed to have learned that they were no threat. Its such a thrill to see them so close.

Back on shore we headed west again to find the "Balanced Rock" trailhead. It is, you may be surprised to hear, a trail to a rock which is, er balanced on another rock. A nice little walk in wonderfully warm sunshine, and the rock hadn't fallen over or anything so mission accomplished.

Another fifteen minute drive takes you to Freeport where you catch the next ferry to Brier Island. Right by the dock is Lavena's Catch Cafe, which Glora had recommended. We'd expected a seafood shack I suppose, but Lavena's is a proper restaurant and was fully booked when we got there - "we only have the terrace available" which was outside in the sunshine and exactly where we wanted to sit. Philippa started with seafood chowder in the lightest butteriest broth I have ever tasted. It was a delicious little warm mouthfull of fishyness. Lobster was their special tonight and it seemed like a no brainer, so we ordered one each. They are somewhat alarming really - red painted little aliens. Or giant sea-woodlice. Either way, they were delicious. So full. Please. Carry. Us. To. RV.

Waiting for the ferry back, there was a board about the history of the ferry service, which started with a sailboat in the in the 19th century. It later became motorized and run by ferrymen with terrific names: Cossaboom, Sollow and Outhouse.

When we drove on again the same deckhand guided us on and asked all about Harv. "Now that is a nice rig. I don't like the new stuff, but yours has lines". We had a long chat with him and showed him around. He left us for a bit and came back to say we should go up onto the bridge and meet the captain.

Up we went and met Captain Frank Gillis "call me Frankie". His accent was a fascinating mix of English accents - more Norfolk than anything. He showed us over the little hand controls that he drives the ferry with - and then he headed out. It was fascinating to watch him manoeuvre against the rising tide - and not at all easy because the current runs at eight or nine knots which is, I am told, fairly pacy.

He slotted us in against the next jetty while answering Tom's questions about the radar. What a lovely bunch of people there are here on Digby Neck, its been a treat.

Whale Cove, Digby Neck, NS, Mile 3460

2010-08-11T19:35:00.000-07:00

OK, this is how a campsite should be run. Gloria and Vaughn own the Whale Cove Campground which is really their extended garden. They have water and power and all that stuff; the sites also have plenty of space and ours looks down onto the Bay of Fundy. But what's more important is the way they welcome you in, with big smiles and lots of chat and a little office full to bursting with shells and knick knacks. They had a sheet of paper with useful tips about the area and Gloria phoned to book us a whale watching trip. They could not have been nicer and it was half the price of the place at Parkers Cove this morning where everything was just so and neatly clipped, but somewhat sterile with all the sites crammed close together. The front office, while polite, never let you forget that this was a four star campground you know. It was like a restaurant which is so aware of its expensive menu that it forgets to ensure that you also have a good time. Come out here folks, this is what its all about.

Where did that come from? Always start a blog with a rant, that's what I say. Anyway, onward. Overnight Philippa and I were awoken by the most astonishing thunderstorm. It sounded like Armageddon or at the very least some major rearranging of tectonic plates. At one point lightning was flashing every three seconds or so and rain was falling so heavily that I thought Harvey was in danger of being flattened. We opened the back blind to watch but the lightening was so close and so bright we were completely dazzled and closed it up again. It was at least half an hour before Thor moved his workshop somewhere else. Thankfully, before it got dark I had minutely examined the area where water came through the other night and wielded the silicone sealant with some gusto, and we were bone dry all night. Well done Harv.

By morning, Parker's Cove was completely obscured by fog and we squelched out and off. Upper Clements, a short drive south west has an amusement park and given the fact that sightseeing was more or less impossible due to the fact that all the sites were hidden in the fog, we drove in. Tom, needless to say, was thrilled, especially by the fact that there was hardly anyone there so we could do any ride we wanted immediately and as often as we liked.

First stop then was the wooden rollercoaster, which he and I did twice, and would have done more times if I hadn't pleaded for clemency.

We came back to it later in the day though and the three of us did it four more times on the trot. We staggered off with blurred vision and aching kidneys and Tom pleading for just one more go opleasopleasoplease.

It was a gentle, old fashioned place where nothing is too fancy and some things don't quite work, but everyone has a good time. We bumped each other in bumper cars and bumper boats, and T and I chased each other around the lazer tag arena (we were the only players...). We had a dual treat on the waterslide where a large lady was insisting that her three kids should be allowed to go on it despite the fact that they were each about a foot short of the minimum height requirement. She was apparently oblivious to the numerous signs saying anyone not tall enough would not be allowed on, and a big, embarrassed security guard was eventually called and shepherded them all off. The lady was still arguing with him ten minutes later. While this drama was playing out we watched the log flume ride come to an sudden unplanned halt. All the water drained out and a maintenance guy climbed up to lead the occupants of one of the fake-log boats back down the water chute to ground level. Not quite the entertainment envisaged by the park perhaps, but we enjoyed it. The sun came out and the day passed in a happy haze punctuated by the background roar of the coaster, squeals of delight and fairground music.

The drive to Whale Cove took an hour or so, passing by Digby and onto the long spit of land called Digby Neck. It was a beautiful drive along a fast winding road through green landscape in the golden light and long shadows of the late afternoon.

After checking in with Gloria, Vaughn asked me all about the GMC "I have never seen one before!" I showed him around and he was bowled over, grinning from ear to ear and saying "Well look at that!" whenever I pointed out the various things that make these old boys a bit special. His accent sounds to my ear like a cross between a Norfolk accent and one from the West of England,

We fried up some delicious fresh scallops for supper and walked down to Whale Cove itself. Its a big rocky bay with a jetty at one end and a couple of houses perched on the hillside. There seemed no real way to get onto the beach, until we found a muddy track - just some flattened grass really - that led steeply down to the rocks. Some of the boulders on the beach were the size of buses and after exploring a bit we tried climbing over and between them to get back to the road, but every route we tried ended up being too steep or too precarious. With the light going we found our original path and headed wearily back to the campsite. Best part of the day Tom? "The rollercoaster".

Parker's Cove, NS. Mile 3415

2010-08-09T19:14:00.000-07:00

You can't beat pulling up the bedroom blind and seeing the sea right there. It was a gorgeous blowy morning with big sunshine and we sat outside for breakfast, milk blowing from our spoons every time we took a mouthful of cereal.

The Ovens, you may recall, had a bit of a gold rush in the 19th century and you can still pan for gold on the beach today. We loaded up the mule with salt beef and whiskey, and went out to strike our claim in Lister gulch, with the aid of some pans that we rented from the nice girl in the shop. She told us that one chap is a regular and has made more than $3000 from the gold he's found on the beach. Someone else found enough gold to make himself a wedding ring. So Tom was convinced that a mere thousand dollars worth of gold was a pretty reasonable target, and was somewhat indignant when walnut sized nuggets weren't tumbling from his pan at first dip. But fairly quickly we did strike paydirt with literally several pieces of iron pyrites which took no more than an hour to swill out from the beach. But also, glittering in the bottom of my pan were the tiniest flecks of real gold. Philippa insisted that we put them in a little bottle and take them with us which we did, though they were so small we couldn't separate them from the rest of the gunk, so I'm not giving up the day job.

What do you mean you can't see it?

Today we had to cross Nova Scota from the Atlantic shore to the Bay of Fundy so we headed North West, stopping for lunch at a Provincial park in Dayspring on the banks of a river. The woods had a soft brown floor of pine needles the trees were evenly spaced and all the underbrush had been cleared. they were the tidiest woods I think I have ever been in and ideal for hide and seek with a seven year old. Even if he can never quite resist peering out to see where you are and giving himself away. Every time.

Once we resumed the journey we found ourselves on fast, tree-lined roads with more or less the same view for a couple of hours. The villages were small and agricultural, with occasional signs for fresh peas or rhubarb, but mostly there were trees.

We finally emerged in the grandly named Annapolis Royal, founded in 1605 and the oldest continuous European settlement in North America, after St Augustine in Florida, which the Spanish established forty years earlier. It was once the capital of Nova Scotia but Halifax stole its thunder in 1749 and its now a quiet little town with some well preserved historic buildings. We stopped at the Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens which date all the way back to 1981, when they were created to help revitalise the town. So, not very historic then and strangely it doesn't mention any of that in the leaflet. But to be honest that doesn't really matter, because it has been planted very prettily to create a network of different gardens each of which reflects some different aspect of history or garden design.

One of the most magical parts was a trail which goes outside the garden and along some of the dykes which were originally built by the Acadians in the early 17th century to create farmland. They fell into disrepair by the early 1900s and in 1940 the government embarked on a twenty year re-building programme to ensure that Nova Scotia maximised its available farmland. Rushes and reeds swished waved in the wind and crickets chirped around us as we walked.

Back in the gardens they had built a replica of an Acadian house from traditional materials, complete with a bread oven and wooden clogs set out on the hearth. Everything was done with great care and we all enjoyed it. We also enjoyed the pastries and iced coffee from the German bakery next door. The family had come from Saxony in 2002 and the lady baker still had a deep Churman accent as she showed us over her blueberry slices and raspberry pastries and apfelstrudel.

Fifteen minutes further north is Parker's Cove and a terraced grassy campground looking over the Bay of Fundy and a (slightly) heated pool. It is apparently the only four star campground in Nova Scotia and is rather pleased with itself, to the extent that it is unnecessarily expensive. So we all had a go in the pool, despite the grey skies hovering overhead threatening rain. It hasn't fallen yet and hopefully it won't tomorrow, when we have a surprise treat for Tom. Not far from here is an old fashioned amusement park where we plan to have some old-fashioned amusement.

Still in the ovens. Mile 3320

2010-08-09T17:44:00.000-07:00

The tide is in - about twenty feet from our back window - and across the bay I can see a handful of orange lights twinkling against an inky sky. Breakers are breaking and the wind is whipping around us and all is very snug inside. We have just got back from an afternoon in Lunenburg which is a world heritage site, but more importantly it passed the Richard and Philippa "livability test" - ie if we had to live there, we wouldn't complain too much.

Our day began here at the Ovens though. Gold was discovered on the beach in 1861 and spawned a town of about a thousand miners, complete with a bank, saloons, stores, a multi-screen cineplex and roller disco. Some of that though, I made up. The town lasted just six years and nothing is left of it now, but some say on moonlit nights you can still hear the eerie pulsating echo of "Staying Alive" by the Beegees drifting through the trees... There is a nice clifftop walk to three of the caves, which we did, and we may pan for gold on the beach tomorrow which will almost certainly make us exceptionally rich.

And so to Lunenburg which is set out on a grid system as per an eighteenth century British survey. The surveyor though was clearly oblivious to the fact that he was surveying a steep hillside, so the town feels a bit like San Fransisco with steep streets levelling off sharply at intersections before plunging downwards again. Its a little time-warp of a place where ninety percent of the buildings are wood and most are at least a hundred and fifty years old. They have ornate carvings in the eaves and around the windows and the details are picked out in different colours. It was settled by protestant colonists from Germany, Switzerland and France in the 1750s and has a bit of a Bavarian feel to it - particularly with the white clapboard churches which seemed to be on just about every block. Its not completely twee though. Plastic lawn chairs, barbeques and kid's bikes scattered in back gardens remind you that these are real homes too. But those kids go to the most amazing looking school. It was built in the mid 19th century by far-sighted planners who thought that children should have plenty of fresh air and sunlight, so they built the school on top of a hill and gave it big windows and its still in use today.

The town also has a really good fisheries museum, which may sound like a contradiction in terms but it was busy and informative and fun. I liked the detail that the town had a sudden influx of Norwegian fishermen when the second world war broke out, because they were at sea when Norway was occupied and they didn't want to go home. There was lots about lobsters and several looking a bit gloomy in tanks including one with claws as big as a man's foot. It must have been at least thirty pounds. There was also a whaling exhibition with photos of whales being hacked up on the Nova Scotia shore as recently as 1972. The equipment on display had been bought for the 1973 season which never happened because of the whaling ban.

My favourite exhibit was a nineteenth century fishing boat, with all the original narrow bunks and other fittings - and menus. It seemed that the fishermen got all the stuff that they would otherwise throw away: fish head soup. fish cheek stew and so on. They had a ten year old cabin boy to help cook for a crew of 14. We relied on a rather good restaurant instead (Grand Bankers Seafood), with a view of the harbour. When we got back up the hill to the carpark there was a little business card tucked into Harvey's door with a picture of a stretch GMC on one side and a note from Nancy and her friends the Holloways from Georgia on the other. They were in town too - sorry to miss you folks!

Harv carried us back to the campsite as the light drained from the sky and we backed into our place on the edge of the shore. It should be great to wake up to tomorrow.

The Ovens, NS (near Lunenburg). Mile 3298

2010-08-09T17:38:00.000-07:00

We are on the road again. It was a gorgeous sunlit morning in Halifax and time to give Paul and Nancy their house back after the Invasion of the Parts Snatchers. Harvey fired up and moved out as if the events of the past two days were a minor and slightly embarrassing interlude that we needn't discuss any further. Actually there was nothing to be embarrassed about. Both the cv joints we replaced were original, and thirty two years isn't a bad track record for a part like that...

Nancy led the way to the pretty route to the coast and with a final wave, left us at the turnoff to Peggy's Cove. It was certainly the most enjoyable breakdown anyone could have possibly had and Paul and Nancy we thank you both.

Peggy's Cove is the most famous of the pretty little coastal villages in this region and consequently the busiest. But the road from Halifax takes you through postcard territory with deep blue inlets fringed with ochre coloured rocks. There are crisp little clapboard cottages and older fishing shacks on stilts over the water, sagging with age, red paint faded in the sun. The road also passes through an area called the Barrens which is a strange netherworld between the sea and the shore. Grassy hillocks topped with large stranded rocks rise around shallow pools of seawater cut off by the tide. It was an eerie and beautiful landscape.

Everyone turned off at the Peggy's Cove sign and there are two huge car parks for a village of perhaps twenty houses - and the most photographed lighthouse in Canada. As a village, it is not exceptional (although the lighthouse is a bit of a showoff), and it is rather overwhelmed by visitors. That in itself means that the village adapts to them and is changed by them (er, us). I think the bagpiper playing "Speed Bonny Boat" at the lighthouse, was possibly the start of a fightback by the locals who would prefer to have their village to themselves. It nearly worked on me.

What really makes Peggy's Cove is the shoreline. It is a dramatic sweep of low smooth rock pounded by thunderous blue-green waves throwing up plumes of foaming spray. We watched transfixed as the breakers rolled in and smashed into the shoreline. Cormorants dived into the waves almost as they broke. Tom loved racing over the rock and despite we tourist hordes Peggy's Cove is rather special.

Just down the road is the King Neptune campsite which Nancy steered us towards to meet some friends of theirs who are part of the GMC Cosa Nostra. We pulled in and there was a burgundy GMC gleaming in the corner. It was empty and we were about to turn around when a little car pulled up alongside and Bill and Nita waved and smiled at the unfamiliar GMC in their midst. They were great fun and we compared notes about our vehicles and looked over the interiors. They are so infinitely customiseable that every one seems to be different. We talked about our trip and Nita said they had been to Gaspe many years ago. "We should never have gone" she said "we had only just bought our GMC and didn't have a clue about what we were doing". She shook her head, smiling at the memory.

On down the coast past chocolate box villages - each one just a small jumble of wooden houses, some white-painted, others faded and grey. Small fishing boats were moored at the end of jetties. Some inlets were full of small scrubby islands with pine trees and rocky beaches. Others were broad and blue with yachts bobbing at anchor nearer the shore. It was the prettiest stretch of road we have drive on this trip - not the most dramatic or the most rugged, but a perfect little scene around every curve.

We stopped for lunch at the Trellis restaurant in Hubbards, where we sat ouside under some kind of trellis (strange that). Everything was home made and P and I had the most delicious salads with our smoked salmon quiche: spinach and strawberries with Asiago cheese and some kind of poppy seed dressing, the recipe for which I tried and failed to prize from the waitress who said it was a state secret.

Back on the road and Tom curled up and went to sleep on the sofa as P and I enjoyed the view. He woke up in Mahone Bay with its three churches in a line, each trying to edge the other ones into the bay it seemed. There was ice-cream, there was shopping, there was posing for pictures through a cutout of giant ice-creams and then there was a final ride to our campsite across the bay from Lunenburg. Its a great spot where you can pan for gold on the beach and see the caves, or "ovens" as they were known here. Its so nice in fact that we will stay here tomorrow too. Harv, its good to have you back.

Halifax Nova Scotia

2010-08-06T18:35:00.000-07:00

Harv is off the axle stands and ready to go, with one new half axle and one reconditioned CV joint on the other side. Oh and I fixed the belt squeal and still had time to be a tourist this afternoon, so all in all, rather a good day in fact.

This was the problem that caused us to rethink our travel plans. That little crescent on the top left, should actually be a ring, but Harvey ate the other bit and so all the ball bearings that fit in the spaces in the lump of metal on the right, fell out. Stop me if I'm getting too technical here. That rubber boot on the right which fits around the whole thing had a split in it on the other axle, which was letting the grease out and when we took it apart the cv joint was showing signs of wear, so Paul constructed a new joint and I fitted it this morning. So now both axles should be good to go. Any questions? Good. Test on Friday.

I fixed the irritating squeal by tightening the alternator belt and went out for a test drive. Everything seemed fine and I am so glad we decided to come down to Halifax. Not only was it great to get Paul's invaluable mechanical assistance, we have had a smashing couple of days with some lovely people. Thank you both very much.

I caught up with Philippa and Tom in Halifax later on. Its been a baking hot day which seemed like a good excuse for a stop at Cow's Ice-cream, a Prince Edward Island company which makes extraordinarily good ice-cream. If you like that sort of thing of course. I just had one to be polite.

In the Maritime Museum they have a foam giant squid which Tom was fairly keen on, and a small but moving exhibition about the Titanic. Halifax was the closest city and the staging point for the recovery operation. All the clothing from the dead was supposed to have been burned to stop curio seekers but some of the rescuers kept little bits and pieces which ended up in the museum. There was a tiny pair of boys shoes which one of the police officers couldn't bear to throw away and had kept in his office drawer until he retired.

There was another exhibition about a massive explosion which wiped out the heart of Halifax in 1917. A supply ship collided with a munitions ship in the harbour and created the largest man-made explosion before Hiroshima. It was heard two hundred miles away. 2000 people were killed and 9000 injured and the waterfront area was completely levelled. An anchor from one of the ships was thrown nearly two miles.

The buskers were still going strong when we came out and we watched a young man escape from some chains up a ladder. The trick, it strikes me, is not so much the trick itself, but the amount of time you spend building up to it. There does come a point amid all the "in a moment I will escape from these chains, but first..." when you want to shout "just escape from the chains already!".

Nancy came and met us for supper in a waterfront restaurant (Paul is away for the weekend) and took us for a drive around Halifax afterwards. It is a great little city - a bit like a mini-Vancouver in some ways, with that same mix of interesting waterfront and leafy downtown neighbourhoods.

Tomorrow though we will leave it and head on with our journey.

Halifax NS, Mile 3289 (does it count on a tow truck...?)

2010-08-05T18:47:00.000-07:00

Breakdowns really don't get any better than this. Imagine if you were stranded in the middle of Nova Scotia but could get a tow truck within ten minutes and a free ninety mile tow to a guy with the tools, knowledge, time, parts and kindness to fix your vehicle and let you stay at his house while he did so. Well that's what happened today and I still can't quite believe it.

I decided last night that if we could get to Paul in Halifax it would probably make sense to do so. So I rang our insurers this morning (plug for Progressive here) and spoke to the wonderful Cindy who said that normally we would be covered for only the first fifteen miles of a tow, but as there was no registered repair place anywhere near us we were covered for a tow all the way to Halifax. She had the gravelly voice and can-do attitude of a seasoned wheeler-dealer and fixed us up in minutes. I told Cindy that Philippa wanted to send her flowers and she gave a throaty chuckle.

It so happened that Darrel of Arbuckle Towing was in the neighbourhood and before I was even dressed he was pulling into our car park. We hitched Harv up and headed for the freeway, the three of us squeezed together on the bench seat next to him. He was a great guy; friendly and careful with our pride and joy. Ninety minutes later he was backing Harv into Paul and Nancy's driveway and I felt the tension ease.

Paul has all the tools you could possibly want and a deep mechanical knowledge of GMCs. He has two - one of which is a stretch he is restoring. He has replaced half shafts and cv joints dozens of times and it took about half an hour to get the broken one off. The new one (which he happened to have) went on easily too and we decided to check out the other one which had a leaky boot and was chucking grease about. It is a bit worn and will probably get us home but if we can get another new shaft tomorrow we will fit it.

Nancy took Philippa and Tom out for the afternoon and they came back with new books which Tom was nosed into. After supper she dropped us off at the boardwalk downtown and we moseyed about, people watching. After so long in little places the crowds and the rich mix of faces was quite a surprise: kids dressed as punks and goths, native and black Canadians, tourists and locals. There's a busker festival on at the moment and we watched some as the mist crept in and the light faded. Nancy picked us up and we collapsed gratefully into our beds. Harv is still jacked up outside, but I'm hoping we can get him back on all six wheels tomorrow. I still can't believe our luck...

Salt Spring Provincial park rest area, NS Mile 3199

2010-08-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

Remember that strange sudden vibration back in Quebec, three weeks and fifteen hundred miles ago? The one that the mechanic couldn't pin down and never happened again? It happened again. What's more I have been able to pin it down quite easily this time, by tracing the source of the large bearings which landed on the road accompanied by a rather bad grinding noise. Consequently we are spending the night in a rest area off the Trans Canada highway just west of New Glasgow.

But let me start from the beginning of the day, when old Harv was still the picture of health. It began raining just after we had breakfast, and got hard enough that the walk we'd planned around the peninsula didn't seem quite so appealing. This was a day to do some driving and get ahead of our schedule to maybe give ourselves an extra night somewhere further south. We set off in driving rain which continued all day with barely a pause. We were soon out of the Highlands National Park which has been one of the biggest highlights of this trip. It would have been nice to have one more day but the rain meant that playtime was over.

We cruised down the east side of the Cape and made for Englishtown which required a two minute ferry crossing. The rain was really hammering down as we sat in the queue for the ferry and getting on was a bit of an ordeal as the ramp was so steep that poor Harv dragged his tail on the jetty. We paid our five dollar fare through the window and I jacked up the rear end as high as it would go with the airbags as we made our way across. No graunch on the other side and no damage done so all was well.

Englishtown has a museum dedicated to the Nova Scotia Giant, one Angus MacAskill who lived from 1825 to 1863 and peered over the rest of us from a height of 7 foot 9. He seems to have been rather a kindly and quiet sort of fellow; one of the many victims of the Highland clearences in Scotland. There was a lifesize statue, one of his size fourteen and a half boots, his great big bed and other bits and pieces in what seemed to be the front room of someone's house. Tucked away on a wall was a typewritten piece of paper which told the story of a Nova Scotia woman who was actually two inches taller than Mr MacAskill and born in 1844. She was "Exhibited" by Phineas T Barnum. It seems extraordinary that little Nova Scotia should have been home to two such people but there was no mention of whether they ever met.

We pressed on through the river of a road, stopping in Baddeck for a slice of "Tom's Pizza" . Our Tom was thrilled and insisted on ordering. They gave him a Tom's Pizza fridge magnet and he felt like he was in a special club. We found an ice-cream place with wifi so we sat on a bench under an awning outside and uploaded our blogs while T ate something multicoloured that tasted of bubblegum.

After a quick stop at the Coop we got back in the submarine. Tom and Philippa played "road bingo" for a bit and then read while I wondered how far we could go. 185 miles was the answer and we were about forty minutes away from the campsite when That Wobble started up again. Rats. I pulled off the highway onto a spur to the Provincial Park which has a large tarmac rest area next to it. The wobble stopped, but as I turned there was an ominous crunching noise. Not good. I stopped and got out to find five large ball bearings on the road. I looked underneath and saw that a CV joint had broken. We were here for the night.

This is where being a GMC owner has some advantages. There is a network of owners offering tools and mechanical assistance called the Black List which I have with me, so after a quick call to the invaluable Leigh Harrison back in Woodbridge for some mechanical and parts advice, I called the nearest GMC owners in Antigonish, about forty miles away, and Halifax which is twice as far. Richard in Antigonish was on the road when I reached him but said he would ring around for advice. Paul in Halifax was at work when I reached him and when I told him our story he said "are you the guy on the internet?" Amazingly, he knew about the blog. Even more amazingly he said he probably had the parts I need and if I got towed there he would do the work. Richard rang back and said if I got the parts, he would come to our parking lot and help replace them. They both said it was relatively easy job. It gets more complicated (and would require a tow) if a wheel bearing has to be replaced but even if that is the case Paul has the tool required. So there are options and we will sort through them tomorrow.

For six weeks I had been dreading that this would happen in Meat Cove or somewhere impossibly remote, simply because that would have been the absolute worst place to try to sort it out. As it is, we have a phone signal, water, food, power, a quiet (free) place to park and a network of extraordinarily helpful people who are doing their best to get us going again. Watch this space.

Ingonish NS, Mile 3014

2010-08-04T09:43:00.001-07:00

We awoke to a million dollar view this morning. The sun had risen over the headland down the coast and the sea was flat and creamy blue.

Meat Cove was nice when it was overcast, but in the sunshine it was gorgeous. Looking down the slope below us the other campers were sitting and admiring the golden morning. We had breakfast at our table outside looking over the sea and wouldn't you know it, (drum roll here) WE SAW SOME WHALES! A pod of about ten pilot whales rolling and diving along in a tight group. They would dive simultaneously and come up thirty seconds later with little white bursts of waterspout.

Chris had told us about the path up the headland on the other side and we found the trailhead a little further up the road. It was a steep climb through woodland, before it opened into grassy meadow on a steep ridge up to the summit. It was quite a pinnacle up there and P and I both felt wobbly watching Tom skip about completely unconcerned by the drop on either side of him.

Just offshore we could see the whales again - and hear them when they came up for air; little whooshing noises like someone blowing through a hosepipe. While we watched, an eagle suddenly soared up from the cliffs below us and flew over our heads, no more than thirty feet away. Tom was more thrilled by that than seeing the whales I think.

On our way back down Tom suddenly stopped and asked "what's that smell". It was distinctly moosey and we saw fresh tracks in the mud that weren't there on our way up. There was no other sign of the beast itself though we stopped and listened. Its amazing that such big animals can also be quite invisible if they want to be.

Ok. Time to tear ourselves away from wonderful Meat Cove. That meant navigating out of the campground up a steep gravel and grass rise and onto the gravel road. It was steep enough that grinding Harv's rear ed into the dirt was a distinct possibility and to make matters worse there were a number of sightseers who were clearly interested in our aged motorhome, but more interested in whether we were going to make it out of our site. Harv has just started making a bit of belt squeal when cold too and I hate the thought of people nodding knowingly and dismissing Harv as just one more old banger. So, I let the engine warm up a bit, low gear, a gentle three point turn to get the angle right and up and over we went with only the meerest hint of Harv's tail skidding on the grass and just the tiniest bit of belt squeal. I will have to sort that out though, its embarrassing.

The gravel road was perhaps more terrifying going back as we now had to go up the steepest bits, rather than go slowly down them. Harv's not so keen on the steep corrugated gravel slopes being front wheel drive. The choice is to drive slowly to minimise the bumps but risk losing traction, or drive fast to get up the hill but risk crashing into potholes. I gritted Harvey's teeth and roared up the hills, slaloming between the bumps, enjoying the wide-eyed terror of the oncoming drivers.

After four days of "dry camping" we needed to empty the holding tank and fill up with water, which we did at a nice little campsite back on the good road. The owner, a round-faced man with a walrus moustache saw us parked across from his office and said we were the second GMC to come in this year. He knew all about them and we talked big engines and pneumatic suspension for a bit until Philippa arrived and we changed the subject to the shellfish he was selling. We bought a small steamed lobster and half a King crab for lunch.

Further south was a good swimming beach with a car park which we pulled into, and pulled straight out of. It seemed that most of Nova Scotia had the same idea and the beach was standing room only. The sea looked like some kind of ferry disaster - a tangle of bodies being hurled around in the waves. Less than a mile further on was another car park, with three cars in it and another great stretch of coast. No sand here, but no crowds either and we had crab and lobster sandwiches watching the big waves crashing in.

There was something else coming in too; a large black and white lump of something entering the mouth of the bay. It took a long time to get closer but when it did I could see through the binoculars that it was something dead. We could see the people on the busy beach around the cove begin to notice it too and eventually a few people swam out to get a look at it. It had obviously been dead for some time and appeared to be on its back - probably a pilot whale like the ones we had been watching in the morning. As it got closer, people came out of the surf and joined the rows on the beach looking out to sea, arms crossed and apprehensive.

The whale was pushed ever closer towards the sand and the ranks of onlookers but at the last minute it veered off towards the rocks at the side of the beach. People in bright beachware crowded around to watch as it was lifted and thrown by the waves; into the rocks then out again, until it eventually lodged. The waves made it look alive as it flopped and rolled in the water. Even through the binoculars I could tell that people were somber about it. There is a macabre fascination with a dead whale. Few people want to see one actually die, but everyone wants to see one when its already dead.

The drama played out, we hit the road again and dipped back into the National Park. This campsite is quiet and pleasant and clean and tidy and, to be honest, rather boring compared to last night. What wouldn't be? Sitting in this spot and writing last night I was intensely aware of being at the top of a steep green slope sweeping down into the sea. The atmosphere of your surroundings always changes the atmosphere of your living space somehow. Tonight that crackle of electricity has gone and our little sitting room is back to normal. Peaceful and quiet.

Meat Cove, NS. Mile 2970

2010-08-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

If you drive to the north end of Nova Scotia you get to Cape Breton. If you drive to the north of Cape Breton, you come to the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. If you drive north through the park and out the other side, you get to Bay St Lawrence. If you head north from there, the paved road eventually turns into a gravel road and five miles further on, the gravel road stops at a grassy headland. Then you have reached Meat Cove, the northernmost community in Nova Scotia, which is where we are now.

Harvey is perched a little precariously on the lip of a steep grassy slope, looking down into the steel-grey waters of the bay. When we first got here, I couldn't see a place for us to camp. Chris who emerged from the office hut pointed out a slot which I backed into but which required the full extent of Harvey's adjustable air-bag magic to get us vaguely level. Chris was impressed and asked lots of questions about Harv and our trip. We've been further north, but this feels like the tip of our journey somehow. From now on we head steadily south west until we hit Boston, roughly eight hundred miles away.

It was sad to leave Corney Brook this morning. The lovely little bay was blue and beckoning but we had stretched our stay out as long as we could. Back onto the rollercoaster through the park and past our two trailheads. No moose today. There were some steep switchbacks which gave us great views along the coast further north. Velvety green headlands tumbling into the blue ocean.

We stopped off to see a replica of a stone-built cottage of the kind built by some of the early settlers here. They were crofters from the Isle of Sky who were fleeing the "clearances" in Scotland. The hut was a simple round structure with a wooden division down the middle and a thatched roof. It was set in the most heavily protected area of the park which contains the largest old growth woodland in the Maritime Provinces. Tall slim saplings were set amongst big ancient trees; birch and elm and sugar maple, some of which were 350 years old. The saplings bide their time, surviving on hardly any light and when one of the big trees keels over, one of them spreads out to take its place. Sounds rather like life at the BBC...

At Bay St Lawrence we stopped for petrol and a tiny lady came out to fill us up. Harv's filler cap was almost over her head. She gave us directions to the coop and recommended the chowder at the Meat Cove cafe. We stocked up at the coop and then found the Bay St Lawrence Community Centre and Cafe, which was a plain sort of place with a great lunch menu - delicious lobster sandwiches and "bottomless tea" which came in a white china pot with a jug of real milk. It also had wifi so P and I were able to break several days of radio silence by updating our blogs and firing off some emails. T read patiently waiting for his turn.

Then it was our last bit of northward travel, up the steep and corrugated dirt road to Meat Cove. I took it in low gear at about ten miles an hour, gritting my teeth over the washboard surface. No-one really knows why its called Meat Cove by the way, so don't ask. The campsite is on one of the last bends in the road and has mostly tent sites on grassy terraces overlooking the sea. From our bedroom at the back we look right down on the water. We can wake up and whale-watch and of course, as usual, we will see many, many whales. With its trademark breezy optimism, the Nova Scotia tourist board wrote something to the effect that Meat Cove is a place where you can stand on the cliffs and watch whales putting on a show for you. I hope its Guys and Dolls.

We played on the beach for a bit and despite the cloud and the cool wind Tom was straight into the sea. I was straight into a book.

The Chowder Hut (as recommended by the diminutive gas-pump lady) is a large wooden hut on the edge of the campground and served Tom chowder, me halibut and Philippa mussels as we sat on plastic chairs on the chilly terrace wrapped up in fleeces. Everyone here is smiling and friendly as if we are all in on the same secret. From our usual perches on the sofas at the back of the GMC I can hear the sea crashing against the rocks and see the flicker of orange camp fires on the slopes below. Otherwise it is pitch black. No stars tonight. Whales in the morning. I hope its not "Hello Dolly".

Corney Brook day three.

2010-08-02T10:06:00.001-07:00

Walking on the empty beach this mornin, under a blue sky, feeling the warm round pebbles under our feet and watching the waves pick themselves up and flop onto the shore, we decided to stay another night here. I mean really this is as good as it gets so why rush off. We packed up and saw an empty space backing onto the sea so I wandered over with a lawn chair to reserve it, just as a couple on a Harley pulled in to it. Rats. I really wanted to look over the sea but it turned out they had stopped for coffee and were only too happy to let us move over. Philippa dropped the money for the space into the slot and we set off for another hike.

Back we went up the rollercoaster road, past the Skyline trailhead and on for another ten minutes or so to a little parking area for the Fishermen's Cove trail. There was one other car parked there. Perfect. This trail is altogether longer and steeper than yesterday's. The guides differ on exactly how long it is but we are sticking with the one that says its a 9.8 mile round trip to a little cove that had a tiny fishing village in it decades ago.

We began in a high meadow with tall grasses almost obscuring the narrow track and as we worked our way down into the valley the white barked birches grew more dense, as did the bleached skeletons of long dead spruce and fir trees. Thick brush lay all arond, a tangle of rotting tree limbs and ferns. The trail was steep and rocky - boggy in places - cutting along the side of a steep sided valley and narrow enough to feel like a goat track in places. A river the colour of tea crashed about in the bottom. There were piles of moose dung all over the place and we disturbed some little brown snakes which shot out of our way and then sat still on the slope hoping not to have been seen. The sun was hot but dappled through the trees and a cool breeze made twigs creak and grasses swish.

Two hours later we emerged beside a perfect little steep-sided cove; orange cliffs topped with green foliage plunging into a sweep of azure water. The river had widened and deepened and was dammed behind a bank of beach pebbles, forming a dark pool which rushed through a narrow channel into the sea. We could see a couple of people on the far side of the cove and a young guy at one of the wooden camping platforms, but that was it. We all changed into swimming gear and tried the river, which was freezing, then the sea, which was surprisingly warm. So many beaches here bill themselves as the warmest north of Florida or Virginia, but the water really was nice.

The young lad came down to point out a Bald Eagle sitting regally on a dead branch with shoulders like a fifties suit. Such a big solid bird with its white head and thick yellow beak. When it flew off, it simply extended its big wings and flapped once, then soared around the headland. Later we watched birds we thought were kingfishers flitting along the cliffs. One had a silver flash of fish in its mouth. The pebbles were hot from the sun and I lay back and dozed while Philippa swam and Tom discovered a real actual dinosaur skeleton. It was a rare and beautiful place. Higher up on the grassy slope of the headland there were big piles of stones which must have been something to do with the original small settlement. It would have been a peaceful place to live that's for sure.

The walk back was hard work but felt quicker somehow. On a new route, your brain is always wondering whether you are nearly there and what's round the corner. On the way back it seems to just relax and let you get there, ticking off the big rock with the moss or the dead tree as you pass. There was one strange thing though. At one point we came across a long dead tree which had split and fallen across the path and which hadn't been there on the way down. Embedded in it was a rusty old spade and lying on the trunk, the broken spade handle. It too was rusted and pitted iron, with an ancient weather-worn wooden handle. It almost looked as if the tree had fallen with the spade stuck in it, snapping the handle off as it did so. It was a very strange sight and we couldn't work it out.

Despite the plentiful evidence of moose we never did see one but it was a great walk and we pulled some ice-creams out of Harvey's freezer in the dusty car park.

We drove back through the early evening sunshine, enjoying the fact that as it is now Sunday night, we seem to be sharing the park with far fewer people. We hardly saw another car, just a group of bikers by the roadside, one of whom gave us an enormous grin as we passed. Bikers seem to notice Harvey.

Back at the campside we backed into our spot overlooking the sea, with the lowering sun creating a brilliant strip of golden light across the waves. We saw the tail end of some dolphins vanishing around the point and whale spouts off in the distance - fin whales coming up from the deep. We couldn't quite see the whales though the people next to us did. We also saw lots of seals swimming together just offshore. I don't think I have ever seen them swimming in groups like that before but there were several groups of five to ten, all swimming in the same direction across our bay, rolling in the waves and looking over to us from time to time.

Tom went to bed very late after we all watched the sublime "Up", with its story of love and adventure. I pulled him out of his covers so we could all see the stars outside. The air was clear and the sky was a pricked with a million tiny lights. Days don't get much better than this.

Corney Brook day 2- Happy Birthday Helen!

2010-08-02T09:57:00.000-07:00

(Sorry not to call you sis - there is no signal here!)

The sun took a while to climb over the mountain next to us this morning but when it did, it was like having a warm spotlight turned on our breakfast table. Outside, it was a cool crisp morning and we set out for the Skyline trailhead a few miles further up the road as it twists higher into the mountains. The parking area was already filling up as we arrived and the excitement cooled a little as we realised that this was not going to be the solitary wilderness walk we might have hoped for. It sets out on a well maintained flat gravel path through dead and dying spruce and fir trees, killed off by Spruce-fir budworm which arrived in the 1980s. There are also a lot of stunted birch trees which grew up in their place, and were set upon by the moose which find them delicious. Consequently moose began to thrive in Cape Breton after being hunted to extinction here in the 1920s. Looking at the chattering crowds ahead of us though it seemed unlikely that we would see any wildlife at all.

Eventually the path became a boardwalk over boggy land and took us to a high ridge with a sweeping view down to the sea and back along the coast. The sky was blue over the sea and boats almost too small to see were dragging big Vs through the waves. There were benches set out for whale watching so we sat and scanned for a while and saw an eagle far below us soaring along the coastline, its wings almost completely motionless. No whales though.

At this point most people went back the way they had come but we took the fork which heads up the coast a little way before turning back to trailhead, making for a much longer walk. This trail was just a track and much quieter. Almost immediately we felt to be in wilderness, with all kinds of birdsong around us and a sense of deep stillness in the woods.

There were lots of little animal pathways crossing the trail and we got Tom to look out for them. He spotted one track leading into the scrub and I said to Philippa that it smelt kind of moosey; a musty, horsey sort of aroma. The track had a neat pile of moose droppings on it and a little way along it I was sure I could see some shed antlers lying on the ground. I walked a few feet up the track and realised that the "antlers" were just a tree stump. I looked up and to my left.

Fifteen feet away from me, perfectly motionless was a huge bull moose, with great scooped antlers. His back was at least as tall as me. We both froze but a moment later the moose carried on grazing. I beckoned to Philippa and Tom and we all watched this massive creature wander slowly in front of us. He was so close to the path, yet invisible from it. It was a truly special moment and not a little unnerving. I hadn't expected it to be so big. Moose have very bad eyesight and we stayed very still so if it was aware of us, it didn't show it.

OK that was it. We didn't really need to see anything else; our day was made. We walked on to a spot overlooking the sea for lunch and made up bad moose puns. What does a moose have for breakfast? Moosley. How do moose keep in touch? Text moosages. Favourite entertainment? Moosic. Favourite fascist dictator? Mooselini. And so on. It was all very amoosing.

As we walked, Philippa spotted a woodpecker attacking branch by the path with great gusto and seemingly oblivious to us.

A little further on the trees thinned out and we were in a wide meadow full of tall grasses and further over, perhaps a hundred feet away, there was another massive bull moose.

He was chomping away at the birch leaves and checking us out, moving steadily towards us. Having a full grown bull moose wander over in your direction puts you in your place a bit sharpish.

They are extrordinarily outsized creatures with too-long legs and a ridiculously long head and those surreal, furry antlers. Every so often he would raise his head up and slowly look left and right, giving us the full view of his magnificent rack. OK, yep we understand. We got out of his way. He knew who was boss and crossed the track right where we had just been. Phew. The guy in the picture walking with his wife and a couple of grandchildren watched that moose with us. As we re-joined the main track he was talking to a loud group of beefy hikers, each with a carefully cut "hiking stick". He was saying that we had just seen a bull moose ten minutes back down the trail and they all looked distinctly uncomfortable - even irritated. It was an unwelcome complication to their plans. "Yes well", one said "we'll do the boardwalk and then make a decision at the other end". On they marched, shouting at each other, a little bubble of incomprehension.

Back at the campsite in the mid afternoon we broke out books and swim gear and headed for the beach. There is not a scrap of litter on it, no plastic, no rusting lumps of iron, no foamy crud at the shoreline. Philippa and I sat on warm rocks and lazed in the sunshine while Tom acted out some seven-year-old adventure mission involving sticks and pebbles and a weathered tree stump. It was glorious. Later we walked up the headland to look for whales. We saw loads and loads of course, far too many to count and really I am bored talking about it.

A guy on an unusual motorcycle and sidecar pulled up in our site, his son on the back and wife in the sidecar. He lifted his goggles and asked about Harv. "Its fantastic-looking" he said in an accent I couldn't quite place. It turned out he was originally from Bridport in Dorset and still had a rich Dorset accent, though he had been in Nova Scotia for more than twenty years where he worked at the Caterpillar factory. He clearly appreciated interesting transport and showed me over his bike - a Russian model made in 2006 to a 1950s design that had barely changed. "Best bike I have ever owned - I can get every part from a supplier in Ontario." We admired each others machinery and then he fired his up, clicked it into reverse and sped away, with all of us waving.

In a tight rocky cove below, the waves crashed against the rocks sending brilliant white spray over a squealing Tom. Later while manoevering a large rock he got a squished finger and howled, poor lad. There was blood all over it, but we washed it off in the icy river and with promises of chocolate, all was well. He went to bed with a fat finger but still excited about his day.

Philippa and I are going out for a look at the stars before bed. With so little light pollution we should be able to see loads. Perhaps the whole cosmoose.

Corney Brook campground Cape Breton Highlands, NS.

2010-08-02T09:55:00.000-07:00

This is a magical little place; a grassy campsite just off the beach with twenty sites. There's no electricity or water, just a place to park with a picnic bench, sheer mountains on one side and a wild sea crashing over big round rocks on the other.

Cape Breton is right at the top of Nova Scotia, and the National Park encompasses some of the last wilderness in the province. It's mountainous and craggy around the edges, boggy in the centre. Within one minute of crossing into the park we saw a glossy little black bear right next to us on the road. He snuffled about in the undergrowth completely unconcerned. Tom watched it wide eyed through the window - he was no more than ten feet away from the bear. It seemed to bode well for the next few days.

Philippa couldn't wait to get out of the campground this morning, but I insisted on having a little blow on the beach first. The sun was warming things up through the clouds and we strolled along a ramshackle breakwater which was slowly sliding into the sea. A small fishing boat had untied from it and was taking some kids and their bikes across to Cheticamp Island. Their yellow lifejackets were very bright in the milky mist and they laughed and waved to us.

Harv sprang a leak in last night's driving rain and I can't quite figure out where the water is getting in. There was no damage done, but an irritating drip was coming in behind our bed. I'll have to get on the roof and have a look but the forcast is good and we have places to go, so later.

Soon enough we were heading up the west coast of Cape Breton. The villages here have Scottish roots; place names are in English and Gaelic, and the Gaelic version is sometimes an entirely different name. There are signs advertising celidhs and the names on mailboxes are almost invariably Scots. You see the flag of St Andrew flapping alongside the Canadian maple leaf. North of Margaree Harbour though the village names reflect a different heritage: Belle Cote and Grand Etang are full of LeBlancs and Doucets. This is Acadia again and people are speaking French.

At Cheticamp we stopped for lunch at a terrific little cafe which advertised lobster specials and wifi. A perfect combination. P and I both had variations of lobster salad and it was succulent and delicious. "All Aboard" is owned by a lobster fisherman and run by his wife and gaining quite a reputation. There was an article pinned up on the wall about a couple from Atlanta Georgia who fly up every year and go straight there from the airport.

Cheticamp also had a well stocked Coop and a fabulous boulangerie which smelt of the bread they made in the back. We got blueberry turnovers, a raspberry stick, croissants and a cranberry cake. The one thing we couldn't find was a fish shop despite driving back through the town again, so Philippa ran back into the coop in the end. We are not expecting much in the way of grocery stores in the next few days so its nice to have a full fridge.

The Cape Breton Highlands National Park is a short drive north and was instantly exciting. The road is a theme park ride, climbing steep ridges and instantly hurling you back down to the sea. The beach has two peat-stained rivers emptying into it and its pebbles shelve steeply into the breakers.

We watched a fiery orange sunset as the day cooled. Its great being out in the wilds again and tomorrow we hope to do a hike which the Park Service says offers the chance of seeing moose, bear, whales and eagles. Now that's just showing off.

Port Hood, Nova Scotia. Mile 2833

2010-07-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

Its been a damp grey overcast wet blanket of a day. A day for staying in and having tea and crumpets in front of a crackling log fire. A day for watching old movies on the telly or reading a new book. For us though it was a day to drive to Cape Breton.

We woke to rain crashing down and wind howling around the roof, catching on something and making flute noises. Any thoughts we might have had about perhaps playing on the beach for a bit or going on a hike were washed out. We might as well use the day to head north and aim for the Cape Breton Highlands National Park at the tip of Nova Scotia. After all, how often are we going to come back here? After a few days of pleasant scenery P and I are hankering for something a bit more dramatic, something more challenging. I may well live to regret saying that but the next few days promise brighter weather and it would be nice to be somewhere spectacular when it strikes.

We unhooked the electric power and the water, found Tom one of the held-back new books from yesterday and squelched out of the campground. Nova Scotia was hunkering down and there was virtually no traffic on Route 6 which skirts the north coast. The next village along, River John, looked like an eighteenth century painting with a tiny main street lined with little buildings in clapboard and brick, one with a flat false front. We pushed on through Seafoam and Toney River to Pictou. The town is apparently famous for its fish and chips, though the Nova Scotia tourist board does a good job of making sure every community in the province is famous for something. "Come and see our state of the art Civic Centre!" boasts one entry in the guide.

Pictou feels like a small town in Scotland, complete with a tourist shop devoted to Tartan paraphanalia. This though is where "New Scotland" began, with the arrival of thirty three families and twenty five single men in the "Hector" in 1733. Thousands more Scots eventually followed. A fine replica of the leaky old Hector sits at a dock in Pictou, and we hoped to visit it, but the museum was "closed until further notice" which seemd a bit sad and somewhat final. We read the plaque though and also found an interesting granite memorial to Canada's only regiment composed of black soldiers. They were grudgingly allowed to sign up for the First World War and sent to south central France to chop wood for the supply trains. They were disbanded soon after the war, but the memorial was rather good with photos of some of those who served and tributes to them.

Pictou was once clearly a prosperous place with mansions built up the hill, side-on to the street so they could face down to the harbour. Some that we saw though were looking faded and weather beaten, the Victorian stone buildings were dour in the drizzle and a factory of some sort across the water was belching foul smelling steam.

But there were no less than three fish and chip shops to choose from and we piled in to Murphy's for platefuls of thoroughly delicious battered haddock and double fried fries. The second fying gives them the crispness you see. Its one of the many vital life lessons I learned in my summer job at a tourist cafe in Cheddar Gorge. Another one was "people think its funny if the ice-cream machine sprays you with vanilla, but not if it sprays them with it".

From Pictou we took the Trans-Canada Highway towards Cape Breton, stopping at a WalMart outside Antigonish for some supplies and to let Tom spend his pocket money on a little lego kit he has been saving for. Fish and chips and new lego; this has been an excellent day for T.

Back to the fast road with a view ahead of wooded hillsides, not too steep yet but the road got loopier and curvier the further north we went until we crossed the causeway to the island of Cape Breton. At the inevitable, and superb, tourist office the efficient Annette pointed us in the direction of the nearest campsite and even booked it for us.

It was a half hour drive along the coast with a long stretch by the water, which surprisingly we haven't seen much of today; its either been too misty or obscured by trees. At Port Hope we found the campsite and a rather boggy spot to park surrounded rather too closely by tatty trailers. Hmm. Its only a night though and with the blinds down we could be anywhere. There was a community lobster supper going on at the sports hall at the end of the car park when we arrived which is high on my to-do list here. But to be honest we were all too full from lunch and when I poked my head around the door it didn't seem particularly inviting. So we cooked for ourselves, watched a movie together and are now listening to the wind howl around us. Its cosy, but it would be nice to get outside tomorrow.

Brule Point, Nova Scotia. Mile 2694

2010-07-28T18:56:00.000-07:00

We are on the Brule peninsula, which is a left turn when you get to the middle of nowhere. We've had a day of odd little places and roads which didn't get to where we thought they would but none the worse for that. Its been the perfect English summer's day, breezy but with temperatures in the low eighties and no humidity. When its good, the weather here is really very good. We don't need the heater at night and we don't need airconditioning during the day; the air is fresh and cool.

Tom made us eggs this morning and then had an hour in the pool before we we drove on to find a bookshop. Amy's used bookstore just up the road was a dimly lit warren of musty volumes stacked floor to ceiling. The guy behind the counter (Amy?) said there were three hundred and fifty thousand books and he seemed to have a pretty good idea what most of them were. Tom delivered his precise literary requirements and Amy came back with a stack of Magic Tree House books, all of which Tom had already read unfortunately.

So, next stop the mall down the road and a modern bookshop which had EVERYTHING I WANT MUM - LOOK! And indeed it had. P and I got a book each and Tom came out with five: "This is the best day ever!!!!"

Right. Onward, down rolling Route 6 in the sunshine. Nova Scotia houses tend to be white and often have have tall narrow gables which we haven't seen before. Er, quite unlike the ones in the picture actually. We passed smaller, older cottages with mean little windows to keep out the wind, and big farmhouses with little spires on the roofs, handsome barns and glossy brown cattle in the fields. This is what's called the Northumberland coast on the north east side of Nova Scotia, so its also called the sunrise coast.

Eventually we came to Pugwash and really, we had to stop. The main street was about a quarter of a mile long and had a single cafe which was the absolute definition of what a small town cafe should be. It had wifi, second hand books, a cheery owner and an interesting menu. P and I had lobster rolls with lemon and dill and we all whiled away a happy hour on the terrace outside.

The other interesting feature of Pugwash, is that it sprang a movement which shared the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize. Now that made you blink didn't it. Yup, millionaire industrialist Cyrus Eaton convened a "Thinkers Conference" there in 1957 founding the Pugwash Movement synonymous with global disarmament. It was later being given the Nobel gong with Joseph Rotblat. Well fancy that. Our interests were a little more mundane. We fancied a swim at a sandy beach.

The cafe's owner told us about a great beach "three miles north - its in a provincial park, a big open area, you can't miss it". We set off, passing road signs written in Gaelic and English, but five miles later had seen nothing even remotely like the place he described.

One of the guides said that Fox Harbour also had a lovely sandy beach so at the sign for Fox Harbour we turned left on a narrow road which, several miles later turned into a gravel track between seaside cottages. Eventually it stopped in someone's drive. Philippa went out to see where on earth we were while I tried to turn around in the single track country lane. I don't recommend it in a 26 foot motorhome. A charming older gent Philippa met at the end of the road said he would lead us to the beach "Did you turn left at the cottage?" he asked. We must have passed at least thirty cottage by this stage so it seemed like pretty good odds that we had. "I'll take you back to it". We followed him back to the only junction and the only part of the road which in fact did not have a cottage on it. We all got out and chatted and he pointed out a field gate which he said we could walk around and to down to the beach. "Its no problem" he said "Its my land". He was brown as a nut and somewhat deaf, and we chatted outside what must have been his mobile home, where he had waved us in to park. He said his name was Clarence Myers. "We're all English around here" He said. "There's a lot of Jamesons". We weren't quite sure what to make of that comment but he was a lovely chap and said we would be welcome to stay the night where we were.

We would have done too, but for the fact that the place was swarming with the most viscious mosquitos we have encountered on this trip. As we chatted three of them lined up and bit me through my tee-shirt, and we were both amassing bites all over our legs. Eventually we made a run for the rocky beach. They followed us there too until we doused ourselves with deet and P and T ran off into the shallow sea.

On the way back to Harvey they found us again and we decided to press on rather than stay and be trapped inside for the rest of the evening. Clarence was nowhere to be seen. We never did find the sandy beach mentioned in the guide.

In the golden light of the late afternoon we rolled through Wallace and Malagash and Tatamagoush ending up at the grassy campsite on the end of the peninsula. At sunset, three seals were settling down for the night on a sandbar just offshore. We are settling down for the night on ours too.

Amherst, Nova Scotia. Mile 2619

2010-07-27T18:15:00.000-07:00

Nova Scotia. Its a place which always sounded impossibly far away to me as a kid; only slightly south of the North Pole, treeless and windswept with a population of about nine if you included the huskies. I was therefore hugely put out to discover that it is on about the same latitude as Marseille for goodness sake. Really how can that be? Its green and lush and the people are charming and so probably, are their huskies (I'm sticking with that one).

We struggled with the time difference this morning as Tom got up and started clattering about. Hearing our groans he came to tell us that it was "EIGHT o'clock - look it says so on my clock". Seven year olds don't really understand that in your head its still seven... The same beefy clouds were still patrolling the otherwise bright blue sky in a menacing sort of way but there was no rain so we went to explore Kiboughdshgjhawaggggghh.

First stop, the bog. And quite a bog it is, rising in the middle to over six meters and gradually eating away at the forest around it. A grey wooden boardwalk runs across it through green and red mosses, blueberry bushes, orchids and carnivorous pitcher plants. They eat insects of course but I always half hope to see a moose leg or something sticking out of one. We saw moose prints and that was as close to widlife as we got, but that wasn't the point really. The bog had an other-worldly feel to it like a single giant organism sitting quietly in the midst of coast and forest.

From there we went to the park's other main attraction. Kelly's beach was described in the Frommers as the best beach experience in Eastern Canada, but curiously it didn't mention the jellyfish which render the sea a no-go area for much of the summer and were floating about in the surf. It was a nice enough sandy beach I suppose but it did make me wonder how many Eastern Canadian beaches the author had actually been to.

Rather meanly the Park insists you are out by noon, or pay another $20, even if you have also paid a further $30 to camp there. They are not cheap. We lingered obstinately and left sometime in the early afternoon back on the anonymous road which cuts straight through New Brunswick's eastern flank. I'm sure New Brunswick has its moments, but we didn't really find them and to be fair we didn't really look, but instead pressed on to the land of the husky and the nine people and the midnight sun and, oh never mind. Nova Scotia is still pretty special. We crossed the border to find an immaculate tourist information place with a forest-load of pamphlets and a lady playing the bagpipes outside. Well you can't have everything I suppose. It was nice to feel wanted though and we had ice-creams on a bench in the sunshine and mapped out our next few days.

The Loch Lomond campground was just down the road and for $28 we have lekky and water and about a bit and a half of wifi. Tomorrow I'm going to find those huskies.

Kouchibouguac National Park. Mile 2517

2010-07-27T16:57:00.001-07:00

Kouchibouguac is pronounced Koochy-BOO-goowak according to our guidebook, but when the cheery ranger at the entrance said it, it sounded more like he was coughing up a nail. Anyway, its a national park about halfway down the East Coast of New Brunswick and we didn't think we would get this far today. It was a big drive by our modest standards, getting on for two hundred miles and we didn't really get started until lunchtime.

Its been a blustery old day with dramatic clouds filling the sky, dumping some rain and melting away into the blue all within the space of ten minutes. On the other side of the lagoon from this morning's campground and behind the town there was a wooded ridge rising steeply to eighteen hundred feet, with a little Oratory on top.

When we first looked up at it, the sky was clear and we set out for the top in Harv. As we drove the clouds descended, the rain fell and we were soon crawling up a punishingly steep, damp road in low gear. The road was built by a man who promised God he would do so if his wife recovered from an illness, and she did. But he wasn't about to do any of that fancy "levelling out" business which so many new fangled road builders tend to do today. Even the car park at the top was a dramatic slope and we let Harvey cool off while we went to see the Oratory.

Originally it was a small stone church, built in 1935 with rocks carried up by the people of Carleton-sur-mer as an act of devotion. Later on a new bigger roof was added to protect the original chapel and add some more space. It was lovely inside; very simple but with modern stained glass windows in soft colours which picked out other houses of worship including Ely cathedral - "the ship of the fens" - near my old stamping ground in Cambridge.

There was a photo exhibition about some of the people who had lived in the area; black and white pictures of smiling, weatherbeaten faces. One man leaning self-consciously against his truck, another on the bridge of his fishing boat in 1940 and frowning at the camera. One shot was of a four masted clipper which usually carried goods between Europe and Asia and was "a rare sight in Carleton"

Outside there was a series of information boards with a very honest and frank synopsis of the history of the area, in the way that such things never usually are. Thus the arrival of the much heralded Jacques Cartier in 1554 was described as a disaster for the indigenous people. The French naval forces were "hopelessly inadequate" in the face of the British advance in the late eighteenth century. It was a fascinating read and you wonder what it was like to live here in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It would have been a mix of disposessed Mic-Mac (who I now see are spelt Mi'kmaq) Indians, French speaking Acadians who were returning to their former homeland after being booted out by the Brits; Scots and Irish settlers who had no love for the English but who had almost certainly moved into former Acadian farms, and then Americans loyal to the Crown who fled the US War of Independence and as a reward for their loyalty were given the best tracts of land by the British government. Talk about simmering resentment. They must have all hated each other. You can imagine visitors being taken aside at the pub and being told "probably best to not talk politics...".

Interestingly there is a sense of the different loyalties today. As you drive past the houses they almost all have flags, but not the same one. In one stretch there were lots of Acadian flags, one house had a French flag, then a house plastered with Canadian flags, the next had the stars and stripes flying outside, others had regional flags which I couldn't identify. There are still some differences being worked out here.

Driving back down the sheer slope of the mountain was as nail biting as driving up and at one point as I shifted into low gear the speedo cable said "that's it" and quit. So we will rely on Google for mileages from here on. We stopped for lunch at one of the wayside halts that Parks Canada does so well. Soup on the stove and a playground outside which Tom hurled himself at. We waited patiently until he had finished.

At Campbellton, which is where the south side of the Gaspe peninsula begins, we missed a turning and found ourselves bumping through the residential streets of a native community. "First Nation" people as they are called here. The faces were rounder and browner and the street signs were in the language of the Mi'kmaqs. In some ways its a miracle they are still here, but they are.

We turned right onto the road we had missed and were soon crossing a handsome iron bridge into a different country. Well that's how it felt anyway. All the shop signs were in English and the street names were Scottish - Aberdeen, Andrew, Argyll. We had left Quebec and arrived in New Brunswick, though with no fanfare - not even a sign to tell us that, and there was a sense that our trip had just become somehow slightly less exotic. Interestingly there is an hour's time difference here, though we are no further out in the Atlantic, so for a while we will be just four hours different from the UK.

The road was smooth and fast and we hummed along it. Philippa and Tom played battleship in the back and Tom won more prizes which Kristin had so sweetly wrapped for him along with the games before we left. Thanks again Kristin! This feels like a strangely empty neck of the woods and we didn't see houses or any real signs of communities for great stretches. There are towns here of course, but you really can't see them from Highway 11. Bathurst and Miramichi came and went, as did the big blustery skies. Occasionally we would get a sudden, brief handful of rain flung at us but for most of the journey the rain seemed to have happened ten minutes before we got there and the road was steaming in the sunshine. We did get hit by one downpour and a river of water flowed across the road before the rain stopped instantly and the wipers were squeaking across the windscreen.

In the early evening we reached Kouchibouguac and were trying to get a handle on the ranger's accent. Its supposed to be a pretty special place, so we will find out about that tomorrow.

Carleton-sur-Mer. Mile 2330

2010-07-25T19:40:00.000-07:00

The rain was hammering on the roof when we woke this morning and a blustery offshore wind was blowing old Harvey around a bit too. Brilliant. Philippa and I grinned at each other knowing we had the perfect excuse to stay in bed with cups of tea and books; being cozy while the storm whipped around us. Tom was pretty pleased too as the campsite wifi was up and running so he could spend some quality time with Lunar Jim.

Eventually we hauled ourselves up with the rain still pouring outside. Harv seems pretty watertight these days. There were a couple of small leaks when I first drove down from Michigan, but I seem to have fixed them and all is snug. Outside, the view stopped at the end of the campsight; a thick grey wall of cloud was sitting on our ridge. It was a shame in some ways as Perce is so very pretty and it would have been nice to walk across to its famous rock, but on days like this you might as well eat up some miles. We ate up some croissants first though, and discovered that the browner on our original microwave (which is brilliant by the way) is perfect for warming croissants.

Its interesting reading the GMC Owners Handbook about the microwave which was still relatively new technology back in '78. Several pages are devoted to its operation, and they were clearly a bit concerned about what microwaves could actually do, so they included the advice that its use is recorded in a log book which should be kept somewhere nearby. Dutifully I anotated "croissant warming, 2 minutes, Philippa in charge." in the vellum covered ringbinder we keep in a time-locked safe in the kitchen cabinet. Its a complete history of our microwave usage and I am thinking of having it published.

Stuffed with croissant and coffee we reluctantly fired up and skidded our way along the steep gravel track out of the campsite. Coming down the ridge and finally ducking under the cloud we could see the ocean; white caps running at the shore on churning grey waves. The stiff wind blew us around a bit and the rain was relentless. Tom settled in for a long day of books and dvds and Philippa and I watched the rain streaked world go by.

The south coast is clearly more heavily populated than the north. One hamlet wishes you au revoir on a cheery sign and almost immediately another sign is welcoming you to the next place. There are neatly clipped lawns and familiar signs on still-small shops; Sears, Subway, Radio Shack. There are signs for bus terminuses (termini..?) and small train stations. The line runs roughly parallel with the road, crossing and recrossing it. We are moving into English speaking areas, populated at some point by Scots and Irish and Loyalists to the English crown. Once the French speaking Acadians had been booted out of course.

In Shigawake, "the land of the rising sun" according to the sign, the rain stopped and the sun, indeed, came out. The sea had calmed down and was all tame and sparkly in the sunshine. We failed to get lunch at a big restaurant by the road - the owner actually came out to tell us that they had just closed which was nice of him. But a little further on in St Godefroi there was a "Cantine" by the roadside serving terrific lobster club sandwiches. Our resident gourmet went for the Hot Dog option, which I had to repeat several times to the girl at the counter until she said "AAh! Ut deug!" I hadn't wanted to say that, thinking it would sound too much like an Englishman hamming up a French accent, but when in Rome I suppose...

Just as Tom was settling into Monsters Inc and P was preparing to drift off, I pulled off the road in Bonaventure and frog-marched them into the Museum of Acadia. To be honest, I've always been a bit hazy about who the Acadians actually were. Well now I know. From 1604 they started arriving in this area as the vangard of French territorial ambition. But a hundred and fifty years later the Brits decided they wanted it, and without all those people speaking French thank you very much. So the Acadians were unceremoniously uprooted and driven out. Some were deported back to France, others fled inland or to the US and some shacked up with the local Mic-mac Indians. Once peace was restored with the French in the 1760s many Acadians started returning but others stayed in the new communities they had established in Lousiana, Alabama and even Texas. Bonaventure is very proud of its heritage and most windows had the Acadian flag - a French tricolour with a gold star. Its a handsome place with a fine church in the traditional Gaspe style.

There are still some Mic-Macs left too. In Marie there was a little market devoted to native crafts and a gas station with a roof in the shape of a teepee. And so to Carleton-Sur-Mer. Its a gentle sort of place curving around a lagoon, with the requisite tall-steepled church. The campground is on a spit on the other side of the lagoon, with a fat little lighthouse on the end. We cycled to it after supper and then watched the sunset. Its hard to believe that the day started with a storm.

Perce, QC. Mile 2210

2010-07-24T19:02:00.000-07:00

Up at the crack of about seven thirty again this morning for another attempt to harrass whales. Inevitably Tom slept in and we felt bad about waking him. Not quite bad enough to let him keep sleeping though. Due to the complete and utter lack of whales yesterday we were on the standby list for another go this morning and we drove the half an hour to the south side of the park only to discover that the boat was full and "perhaps later". No. Time to move on.

Before we left I heard the captain delivering his background briefing again and he used the same words he gave us: "the whales are very far out at the moment which can be frustrating". Translation, they are so far out that we can't find them. I just looked at their website and in the fourteen trips they did in the third week of July, they only spotted one blue whale and six minkes, so I think even if we had gone, the chances are pretty good that we would have come back frustrated. ONE DAY though, I will see a Blue Whale. They are the largest creatures on earth, after all.

Never mind. It gave us the chance to linger on the coast road to Gaspe a little bit and enjoy the little houses and the blue sea and the rolling hillsides. Its all quite Scotland, though with brilliant sunshine. Its all the more peaceful because the people here are spread so thinly. You can stop at a gorgeous stretch of beach and there are perhaps five other people on it. If you pull into a picnic area, there will be picnic benches available. What tourists there are seem to be local - we never hear English spoken around us. People check out our DC license plate and stop to stare at our unusual vehicle.

The town of Gaspe is a tidy but functional kind of place. Plenty of gas stations and supermarkets and fishing supply stores, but there is a smart little street running through downtown which was mostly built by the same family and has been restored and prettifed. We found the inevitable coffee and wifi place at the Cafe Des Artistes where we downloaded blogs and uploaded caffeine. At a big supermarket on the edge of town we re-stocked the fridge and drove on to find a lunchspot further up the coast. By a narrow spit with a clear river tumbling out into the sea we had sandwiches and plums and lemonade. Tom, who had woken up a bit by now ran off into the sea and swam with little waves breaking over his head. P and I looked on with the air of people who certainly could do that if we felt like it.

On to Perce. This was perhaps the loveliest bit of coastline yet, with golden sandbars giving way to rich green marshland - some of the most important marshes in North America says Mr Michelin. Fir and pine strees framed the views across sparkling blue water and over to rocky headlands. Brightly painted cottages were scattered along the shoreline. It was a grand drive and the view down to Perce and the "pierced rock" which gives it its name was breathtaking. The town itself was amazingly busy with crowds ambling along the pavements and touristy shops lining the main street. It was a bit of a jolt to suddenly re-enter the world of summer holidays and if Perce wasn't so lovely I think we might have been tempted to drive on. But it is lovely, with carefully painted and preserved timber framed houses by the harbour and That Rock looming like a beached ocean liner just offshore. You can walk to it when the tide is out.

We had supper in a rather fine establishment on the wharf. Given the numbers of people trolling about, we had booked and were offered either five or eight thirty, so it was busy. We were there at five, admiring the polished wood and crisp tablecloths. It rather fancies itself does the Maison du Pecheurs and we were looked after by an amusingly abrupt waitress who clearly had little time for us at first. She asked if we wanted an aperitif and, with our wedding anniversary in mind I was reckless enough to ask if they did champagne by the glass. She gave an incredulous snort and went on to the next table. That was the last we saw of her for a bit. Eventually though she deigned to return and we lowered ourselves even further beneath contempt by asking whether they served frites with the children's menu. A curt "non" and there was an unspoken suggestion hovering in the air that we should get our coats. We redeemed ourselves slightly by ordering fish for Tom and the table d'ote for us. It came with seaweed soup which they are rather proud of but which Tom said was "hmm yes, a mixture of pea and mushroom. Its OK" Thank goodness the waitress didn't hear or we would have been slung out.

She warmed up in the end thanks to effusive "mercis" from Tom and a "magnifique" about his rather fine chocolate mousse. The ice was broken, she smiled, we smiled and it was a nice evening. We promenaded on the promenade and watched a couple of fishermen pulling in mackerel after mackerel, before heading back to Harvey and our busy campsite. We are on a ridge overlooking Perce and a little unnerved to hear low voices around us following our three nights in silent Forillon. After more than a month of heading north we are finally beginning our journey south and it feels somehow like going back to the real world even though we still have many more out of the way places to come.

Still in Forillon!

2010-07-24T07:47:00.000-07:00

Our day began at 7.18am with a text message buzzing into my phone from my Mother in England wishing us a happy wedding anniversary. Thank you! It was. We had to be up early anyway as we had booked places on a whalewatching tour. The area is a bit of a whale smorgasbord apparently and several species hang around the tip of the penisula on an all you can eat binge. One which is spottable is the Blue Whale, which I would give someone's eye teeth to see. Possibly even mine. Every time I say "Blue Whale" Tom says "its the largest animal on earth", and so it is.

We drove round to the south side of the peninsula about half an hour away. Just outside the campground I spotted a small black bear by the roadside. It gave me a hard look for a moment and then ambled off into the undergrowth. But still, a bear!

At the jetty in Grande Graves we donned yellow oilskins and boarded our open boat. There is only one boat allowed to operate here because we are still in the park, and that means no crowds, but it also means there are no other boats to act as spotters... The sky was deep blue and the sun would have been scorching but for a steady wind, which created quite a swell once were in the open ocean. It was probably no more bumpy than usual out there but it felt pretty heroic pounding up and down through six foot troughs creating explosions of brilliant white spray.

On the way out we saw the dorsal fins of a couple of porpoises, and sadly that was as close to whales as we got. For two and a half hours we crashed about scanning the horizon and spotting some frisky dolphins, but the whales had either eaten their fill and gone home to slump in front of the telly, or were further out than we were. The captain offered us a freebie on another trip though so we will try to go tomorrow. I'm still hoping to see a Blue Whale. Its the largest animal on earth.

It has been such a pretty day though. The sea is a deep blue and the high piney ridges are a vivid green, stopping abruptly at a wall of sandy coloured cliff. We drove a little further down the coast had tuna sandwiches and hardboiled eggs on a pebbly beach and then broke out the bikes.

We were aiming for the tip of the peninsula, where the international bit of the Appalachian Trail starts. There was a bike trail along a stony track which was punishingly steep in places. We could see seals in the water below as we sweated and strained. When we saw the track suddenly soar skyward - an impossible wall of gravel - we left the bikes and walked. On the top was a white lighthouse with a red cap and a stone marker which appeared to be the start of the trail but was irritatingly vague about it "the trail which starts here in Forillon" I wanted it to say "here at this spot where you are standing".

The marker itself didn't mention the Trail and had one of those slogans on it which are designed by committee and don't quite work. It said something like "Foward to 2000". Hmm. Not the greatest shelf life for that one. Great view though and a nice exhibition in the old foghorn station. I tell you, I have learned more about foghorns on this trip...

Going back seemed, irritatingly, to have just as much uphill as the way there. Tom ended up in the ditch at one point adding yet more abrasions to his scabbed little boy knees. We deserved the icecreams we pulled from Harvey's freezer when we got back.

So back to the campsite for books and tea in the last of the afternoon sunshine. After supper we walked back along the shoreline, a big peach coloured moon rising at the end of the peninsula in a pinky blue sky. Tom scampered about doing "magic tricks" with cunningly hidden rocks that he cunningly hid right in front of us. A couple of seals wallowed about offshore, birds floated or pretended to be part of a rock.

As we were coming back we noticed odd splashes in the water, as though someone was throwing handfulls of sand. They were shoals of little fish either being chased by something or acting out some kind of smelty exuberance. Several distinct groups swished and swirled just a few feet from the shoreline and when they got close you could see them leaping out of the water. Some had gone too far and were flickering and gasping on the beach just beyond the waves. I threw a load of them back in, doing my bit for wildlife preservation. I have my fingers crossed that tomorrow we will spot something bigger - like a Blue Whale. Its the largest animal on earth you know.

Forillon

2010-07-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

It was nice to wake up knowing we didn't have to go anywhere today. I think a month of constant driving and hiking and biking and exploring has left me somewhat drained. Its been great but I needed a day off. The weather report was less than promising so that also gave us an excuse to lope about and not do too much. Tom and Philippa went for a swim in the sea after breakfast because apparently they were born without nerve endings. I chose the warmer option of washing up and welcomed them back a short time later. Philippa was bright red and in the last stages of lockjaw while Tom, wrapped in a towel and walking slowly, simply looked as if he had been gravely mislead.

Once restored to normal core temperature T and I buried our noses in books for the rest of the morning, but Philippa was clearly itching to get out into Forillon. So after a lunch of shrimp sandwiches we drove a few miles down the coast to Cap de Bon Ami and set out on the track to the lookout tower on the ridge above.

It was a long steep climb through sparse woodland with breathtaking views along the coast and little yellow plums to keep us going. Everybody we met on the trail nodded, smiled and bonjoured us. I thought I saw a bear footprint in a mud patch, P said it was a dog or something. She thought she heard a bear crashing through the trees; I said only if it had wings. The clouds kept threatening to rain on us but never did and an hour later we were at the foot of a tall wooden lookout tower. Tom has been counting the number of stair-type steps we have climbed since Quebec City and reached two thousand on the second flight of stairs up the tower. We thought that was probably a good point at which to stop the counting game...

The tower is perched quite precariously on top of a narrow ridge and it feels like climbing into a cloud. The view is 360 degrees: along the north coast, round the tip of the penisula and then back along the south coast of Gaspe where we will head over the next few days. Harvey looked like a seventies matchbox model several hundred feet below.

Going down was easier and we passed a couple of Ruffled Grouse on the way down. We had stranded them on separate sides of the path and they were very ruffled, calling rather pathetically to each other. Eventually one bridged the vast divide, walking like a chicken, and harmony was restored.

At the start of the walk was a grassy area where you could watch the birds flying from the cliffs and big doggy seal-heads periscoping up through the waves, which we did for a bit. We were all pretty much exhausted though and dragged ourselves back to Harv and the campsite. As Philippa put it; "I am ready for either tea or beer". Eventually we had both.

Parc de Forillon, QC. Mile 2099

2010-07-24T07:40:00.001-07:00

We've reached the end of Canada. Well almost. Just a few miles further east is "Lands End"; the very tip of the Gaspe peninsula. We can see it from our campsite, a formidable wall of sheer cliffs plunging into the Atlantic. Thats the way for a peninsula to end, not with a gradual, grassy descent into marshland and oblivion but with a bold show of rocky defiance.

Its nice to be able to see the sea from inside The RV. This morning it was just over the brow of the hill and the other side of two rows of campers. It was a pleasant spot though and we had breakfast in peaceful sunshine. We weren't far from the road but there was hardly any traffic and it was still and quiet. The breeze barely fluttered the leaves of the trees around us which were used to much more. We've noticed a little bird which seems to be wherever we stop. We haven't seen it but it has a very particular song which echoes a line of opera. I can't remember the opera but the tune was lifted for a Cornetto ice-cream ad on the telly in the late seventies. "Just one Cornetto, give it to me" and if you ever saw it, you will know the tune. The bird does it exactly but plays with the syncopation; "just one cornetto-to-to, give it to me, me-me-me meee meee". He was tweeting away as we had eggs courtesy of Tom, who learned about frying them this morning.

The Appalachian Trail starts in Forillon and runs through Grand Vallee, so we walked on it into the village which was a couple of miles away, staying mostly on the rocky beach, strewn with dried seaweed, crab carcasses, rusted ironwork and tree trunks softened and bleached by years of sea and sun. Not a pretty beach but an interesting one and Tom was amazed by the number of Precious Gems he was able to find. "Omygosh! Here's ANOTHER ONE!!!!" Soon my pocket was heavy with little clinking pieces of green, blue and amber. Past the church and round a headland we cut in to the village to look for lunch. The ladies at the empty information centre seemed glad of the interruption and waxed lyrical about the Auberge at the other end of the village. We set out to the white clapboard building set above the road by the harbour and sat in the corner of the terrace.

P and I feasted on trout with shrimp sauce and perfectly steamed vegetables, while T had a rich home-made spaghetti bolognase. There was wine, there was chocolate and banana cake for pudding and there was a pleasantly small bill. I think we could have easily spent the afternoon there doing not very much; watching a local teenager drive endlessly up to the harbour and back in what must have been a newly purchased ten year old Honda Civic in dusty bubblegum pink. With his baseball cap, baggy T-shirt, shades and mate in the passenger seat he was clearly in cruising mode, and longing for an audience.

We tore ourselves away, feeling blurry from the sunshine and the wine. Tom of course was completely recharged. Possibly he is solar powered. We stuck to the pavement on the way back, climbing the headland we had skirted on the beach, until we came to a Laitierre with a fifties plastic ice-cream cone on its roof. The lady was tickled by how thrilled Tom was to be there, and laughed when she saw his face as he received an ice-cream tricked out to be a clown. Her shop backed onto the beach and had an official Appalachian Trail marker post (number 130 I think), so we went back down to the shoreline where Tom insisted we play hide and seek in the rocks until we got back to Harvey.

Forillon was a drive of about an hour and a half on a rollercoaster of a road, climbing steeply, plunging dramatically and turning tightly. There were, thankfully, no loop-the-loops. I had expected the settlements to become even smaller, but actually they got bigger. This stretch of coastline is the main focus of the fishing industry and the towns were more sprawling than anything we have been in for a while - but still small towns nonetheless. The docks were lined with blank-sided canneries and processing plants, big trawlers sat in the harbours.

A few people had told us that Forillon national park was lovely but expensive and if you camp it works out at about $50 a night - which is a lot, but you get what you pay for and locations don't get much lovelier than this. The beach is a couple of hundred yards away, a glassy sea breaking onto the roundest softest pebbles. We had supper looking out across the bay and then played on the beach for a bit. Tom of course had to go in - up to his knees anyway. We walked back under a pink sky to the the usual accompanyment: "Just one cornetto-to-to-to".

Grand Vallee Quebec. Mile 2043

2010-07-21T07:04:00.000-07:00

We made it. I woke up in the wee small hours this morning wondering what running out of petrol would actually BE like and how long it would take to hitch out and back, and what's the French for jerry can. Can you still say "jerry can"? or is that in some way regarded as a grave slight against our Teutonic neighbours and an unneccessary reference to past unpleasantnesses? OK, reserve petrol container.

The bottom line though was that we were up a mountain and heading for sea level. So one way or another there would be more down than up to deal with. That meant coasting. And that is what we did for roughly 14 of the 16.8 miles we had to cover between campground and main road. We barrelled down that gravel road like a runaway train, sending small animals skittering for cover and spooking a couple of wide-eyed drivers coming the other way with dust billowing in our wake. A few miles from the sea we hit tarmac and poor old Harvey had a respite from the juddering and thumping which, we found later, had neatly emptied a new jar of marmalade all over the fridge.

We rolled to a stop at the T-junction in Mont St Pierre where we we had been assured we would find petrol. "Not here" said the lady in the tourist info place, but 5k further on. Well, we had come this far and Harvey seemed to be feeling decidedly upbeat about the amount of fuel in the reserve tank so on we went and found a little gas station with a scratchy radio playing pop by the pumps, where I put in 135 litres of fuel for $155. There was still room in the tank but the gas station was so small that I was holding people up so I decided to stop there, which means I still don't really know how much fuel we had left. But put it this way, I hope that's as empty as Harv's tanks ever get and as Carl so wisely noted in his comment on the last entry, Harv had probably way more gas than I thought.

The road along the northern tip of the Gaspe hugs the shoreline and passes through occasional villages, which are no more than a few houses strung along the roadside. In one we stopped at an internet cafe to look for a laundromat (failed) and update the blogs (succeeded) and see if there are any more Jack Stalwart books in the series because there really must be I have read them all but I think he goes to Egypt but I'm not sure, but can we see if there are any (yes Tom, there are). The "cafe" felt like half of someone's kitchen, which is probably what it was. It had three computers and an actual kitchen at the back. It was manned by a lad with long ginger hair dressed in black who practiced long, prog-rock guitar riffs on his (unlplugged) Fender while we tapped away. He leapt up to get us coffee though and it was a useful hour.

Further on up the coast we stopped at Gina's Restaurant right on the beach and sat on the sunny terrace feeling pleased with ourselves. We were the only customers and the guy who seemed to be running the place single handed could not have been more friendly, bustling to get us a table out of the wind and putting an umbrella over us. P and I had Coquille St Jacques and T had garlic shrimp and all was right with the world.

From there, the road ran alongide steep black basalt cliffs and then looped and climbed steeply over high ridges. The sea was deep blue and proper Atlantic now with thick rolling waves that meant business. This is about as far North as we will go on this trip and it felt like it somehow; empty and quiet with a sense that the next stop north is the Arctic.

We pulled off the road to climb a lighthouse and emerged wobbly-kneed onto its outside platform with a skinny guard-rail and a bullying wind. Tom was all for running around it but we were all for going back in. There was also a little museum which a smiling teenager opened for us. At the back it had two vast compressed air tanks and the engines that filled them. The lad said they were for the "fog 'orns" They had to be monitored day and night when the fog closed in so two lighthouse keepers had to be stationed there. There is a little automatic light now and the days of the lighthouse keeper are over.

Onwards again toward the park at Forillon where we will be tomorrow. The lady in Mont St Pierre had suggested the campsite at Grand Vallee was nice and as we crested a hill and looked down into the town, with its crisp white church, epiceries and poissonerie, it seemed like a good place to stop. We bought more lobster, crab cakes and shrimp at the immaculate little fish shop, though I passed on the shrimp sausages. We loaded up at the grocery, cleaned up the marmalade explosion and drove on a couple of K to the campsite which slopes down to a rocky beach. It also had a laundromat so Philippa hauled our reeking bag over to it and came back some time later with clothes that we can wear without offending the animals. Supper was lobster and corn on the cob outside in late afternoon sunshine and a busy breeze.

We strolled down to the beach, balancing on the jagged slate. Tom amused a fisherman by getting his feet soaked by a breaking wave, and then going back for more. We found pieces of broken dinner plate which definitely came from shipwrecks and real actual emeralds and sapphires, all of which Tom is putting in his museum. We stayed on the beach to watch the sun shimmer and vanish below the blue horizon and made our way back. I'm really very glad we didn't run out of petrol.

Gaspese day 2

2010-07-20T08:29:00.002-07:00

We've all just watched the wonderful Ratatouille on the DVD and are feeling pleasantly weary after a big walk today. Tom fell asleep as he was saying goodnight and Philippa and I are not far behind him. Its pitch dark outside and utterly silent and we are feeling very snug. Not smug though as I am still all too aware that we still have to drive out of this park tomorrow and the petrol fairy has not paid us a visit. Anyway we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Or possibly splutter and stall before we even get to it.

But that's enough metaphore tweaking. Today we conquered the second highest peak in Quebec! All 1286 meters of it, which is about, oh I don't know, 4000 feet in the old money. Mont. Jacques Cartier is home to a dwindling group of Caribou in the only remaining herd south of the St Lawrence, The park is doing its best to look after them. To get to the trailhead you have to take a shuttle bus and there are stern warnings about staying on the trail and not bothering the animals should you see them. You also have to be heading back down by 2.00pm to ensure that the caribou have the rest of the afternoon to feed without being distracted by a lot of people dressed in anoraks.

Its a stiff climb of about 4 kilometers each way, with a couple more thrown in for side trips. Once through the treeline we were walking through tundra; scattered grey rocks painted with pink and green lichens. After an hour or so of walking, a clump of camera toting walkers ahead of us suggested that the beasts had been spotted, and there they were, plodding about on the slopes, not particularly bothered about us.

These caribou have evolved with much smaller horns than those further north to allow them to move through the forests more easily and their annual migraton is about three hundred meters - from one kind of forest, to another. If I was one of those Arctic caribou I think I'd be asking myself how come I have to migrate hundreds of miles when I could simply move south and play on the same mountain all year. It was a little sad to see them, as despite all efforts their numbers are still falling. There were only a handful of new calves this year.

We had our sandwiches on the summit looking across the velvety green Chic-Choc mountains and watching serious looking big grey clouds sweep over us. It stayed bright though and the wind had dropped to a refreshing breeze.

Walking down was hard work as the rocks underfoot were loose and often wet and slippery and our legs were tired. As ever though, Tom seemed to pick up extra energy on the way - I am sure he has some way to leach it out of me and Philippa. We took the shuttle bus back to our campsite and had big steaks (me and him) and veggie burgers (herself) and felt generally pleased with ourselves. Tomorrow we need a laundromat, a grocery store and above all, a petrol station.

Gaspese National Park, Mile 1986

2010-07-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

We are deep in the heart of Gaspese National park - probably about as remote as we are going to get on this trip. But right now I have no idea whether we can actually drive out from here.

When we left the highway at St Anne and turned towards the park, we had what appeared to be half a tank of petrol - or 25 gallons. Now for the first half a tank old Harv is the cheery optimist. "Don't you worry your little head" says the gauge, "you have more than enough. Accelerate a little harder if you like". When it hits halfway though Harv turns all nervous. "hmmm... actually its not looking so good, in fact I'm suddenly going to put the gauge down to a quarter tank." Then when I fill it up, actually there are twenty gallons still in there. So as I pass the last petrol station in St Anne, I am pondering Harv's psyche but the satnav is saying that the park is only three miles further on. So, no need to stop then.

Three miles further on we reach a sign which says the park is another 15K, 10 miles. Yup that's still fine. Then we find the unmanned entry booth at the park entrance, put the money in an envelope and drive on...to a sign which says the main building is another 21k through the park. Hmm... probably still ok.

We get to the main building and discover that our campsite is, er, another 42 kilometers further into the park along a gravel road. At this point the fuel gauge is hovering just under a quarter full, but it has taken us the best part of an hour to get here and it is now 5 o'clock. From the campsite it is another 25k to get out of the park and into a town with petrol. So, just how accurate us the gauge at this point? I guess we will find out, We press on along a wide gravel road which climbs steeply for several miles. It has recently rained and at times Harvey's front wheel drive struggles for traction. Of course rally driving up hill in 12,000lb motorhome is not exactly the best way of maximising the gas mileage, so about a quarter of the way to the campground the low fuel light comes on.

I grip the wheel a little more tightly and switch to the reserve which has about seven gallons or so in it. Every time we get to the top of a hill I select neutral and we coast as far as we can down the other side throwing up great clouds of dust behind us and praying that there are no sudden potholes. By far the smoothest bit of road is right in the very middle of it but thankfully we only meet one other car on the whole trip. Finally, and with no small amount of relief, we reach the Jacques Cartier campsite deep in the park. There are no services of any kind and we have exactly half the reserve tank with which to drive the remaining 25k back to civilisation. Failing that I guess Philippa gets on her bike and cycles the last bit with a fuel container. I would of course - be happy to, but the old back is playing up a bit...

Having so little fuel also means we can't run the generator to recharge the batteries and as we are here for two nights that means being a bit careful with lights and no hot showers. This is though, not a bad place to be stranded. Its utterly peaceful and we look over a line of steep mountains, one of which we hope to climb tomorrow. There are moose, caribou and bears, though as ever we have yet to see any of these things in the fur.

Other than a nagging sense that this could all end rather suddenly and inconveniently, it has been a lovely day. We woke up in our field in Matane being rocked quite violently by a howling wind. The sun was blazing away in a blue sky though and after Tom made us scrambled eggs, we pulled back onto the coast road and headed into town.

The middle of Matane is actually very pleasant with brightly painted shops and clapboard houses. It has a fish ladder behind the town hall and we paid our $3 to have a look. We couldn't actually see any fish jumping but they have a glassed in section of the ladder which serves as a sort of holding pen until they open up a gate to let them continue upstream. There were five or six big silver salmon - one was getting on for three feet- gulping away in the strong current and staring through the glass at us, probably wondering how the heck they'd ended up in a dead end. The ladder bypasses a large weir and a nice young lad explained to us in broken English that the salmon tend to climb it at night when there are fewer predators and the water is colder.

Stopping only for the quickest of cappucinos in a dark little cafe with a heavily tattood waiter, we left Matane and continued up the coast. Gaspe is begining to get a bit more mountainous, the green hills up the spine of the peninsula begining to rise up on our right. The road climbed and fell more steeply and the wind was blowing us around a bit.

Outside St Anne we turned up a fearfully steep road to a windmill farm which has one of the largest turbines in the country. Its not the usual propellor type, but cylindrical, and disappointingly motionless when we got to it, though it was surrounded by dozens of the three blade type all humming away.

An older guy in the car park gave us a leaflet about tours and said "I luff yer moteur-herm". Peter Sellers was right on the money with his Clouseau accent. I had to work out the French for "1978" and was rather pleased with myself for remembering dix-neuf-soixant-dix-huit. He raised his eyebrows and nodded. Harv gets the best reaction from older people. I remember a chap somewhere in northern New York State, nodding slowly as he watched us go by from his car and then giving me a beaming smile. You could see that he Got It. Younger people are more "what the...?"

We tried and failed to eat at one of the roadside seafood shacks that we kept passing over the last few days but now were either closed or non existant. So in a poissonerie in St Anne I bought a little steamed lobster (nine bucks!). The lady broke it up for me and back in Harvey I excavated it on a plate aong with some avocado and smoked prawns that Philippa got a few days ago. With some bread, mayonnaise and white wine we had a really good lunch parked by the sea.

On the other side of the road was a big stone church and the bells suddenly started clanging as a christening party left by a side door. The ladies held onto their hats in the wind and everyone clustered around a baby carrier.

Over in the mountains we could see big flat-bottomed rain clouds and we pulled out of the car park and headed towards them. Now we are in those mountains and wondering whether we have the fuel to get out of them again...

Matane, Quebec. Mile 1875

2010-07-17T20:11:00.000-07:00

Its cool outside and the breeze blowing in off the sea has been rattling our skylight. We have just poured Tom into bed. We all watched Apollo 13 on Harv's DVD and about two thirds through we realised that Tom was flat out, his sweaty little head squished into the cushion. He had been gripped by the film and kept shushing me and Philippa, but at some point as Tom Hanks was fighting fatigue, Tom Lister succumbed to it. He woke up as we were putting his bed together and immediately put his finger to his lips and said "no talking". I don't think he realised the movie had finished.

Its a been the perfect summer's day. Bright and breezy with scudding clouds and white topped waves on a blue sea. Strictly speaking this is still the St. Lawrence river at this stage and somewhere beyond the horizon is its north bank, but it feels more like the ocean now with big tides, and harbours with shrimp and lobster boats. It could be Cornwall, though with far fewer people. There is very much an ends of the earth feel to the Gaspe; small wooden houses hunkered down against the weather, no-frills towns with hardware stores and machine shops. Matane, where we are now is one of them, but it did have a smashing fish restaurant right on the beach. We sat outside braving the wind and watching the sun make a date with the horizon. Local beer, local shrimp and scallops and big slices of the fluffiest and richest lemon cake. Really rather good.

The driving up here has been perfect for old Harv who was built to cruise at somewhere between 55 and 65. The roads are smooth and wide, rising and falling gently as they hug the coastline. Every so often a white lighthouse with a red cap appears on a distant promentory. There are small squat farmhouses on one side of the road backing on to green fields. On the other, just off the beach, tiny fishermen's cottages made of weathered grey timber.

At St Flavie we stopped to see a procession of wood and concrete people emerging from the sea. Around eighty of them in fact, erected by local artist Marcel Gagnon. Some are on little log rafts which float when the tide comes in. They were eerie and somewhat disquieting figures and had that celtic look about the faces. There was an explanation but it was written in "modern art", and thus, impossible to understand by anyone speaking English.

Further on we stopped at the Jardins de Metis and were immediately transported back to some leafy corner of an English country garden. This part of Gaspe has a unique microclimate which allows all manner of English plants to be grown and the gardens had been beautifully set out.

The land was bought in 1886 by a Lord Mount Stephen to use as a fishing retreat, but he eventually turned it over to his neice Elsie Stephen Reford in 1926 who over thirty three years, planted more than three thousand varieties of plants. A path winds around the gardens, through little valleys splashed with brilliant colours, along streams and over wooden bridges, through crabapple orchards and herb gardens. Tom rubbed mint leaves and rosemary and lemon-basil to get the smells onto his fingers.

At the end of the trail was a sculpture garden which rivalled the Chelsea Flower show. One piece was a recreation of a first world war trench, complete with little birch fences draped with barbed wire, but most were more whimsical; giant ladders leaned against trees little seats at the top, planters on wheels which you could move into place like pieces of a quilt (Tom's favourite). There were nets which you could lie on to smell the herbs beneath you and a swing which triggered the distribution of seeds. Tom did a lot of seed distribution...

My favourite was a room full of a thousand potatoes, which is the average Canadian family's annual consumption apparently. They'd been linked together with electrical wire to create a charge which intermittently triggers little electronic buzzers. Entering a room and being buzzed at by a thousand spuds is a hoot let me tell you.

There were sheds too (a British entry) each of which was painted a different colour. One was filled with jars of honey and through a gap in the boards you could see the wildflowers which made it. Another had logs turning into charcoal, another one seemed to be propagating light bulbs. The last was all white and inside it was a table, some paper, a pen and some push-pins, so you could make a picture and pin it aon the wall. Tom did dragons and signed his name.

There were long and incomprehensible explanations written in Modern Art: "Described as an epithet which conveys micro-climatic processes and spatial sensations as linked..." etc etc. I think its OK to sometimes just say "I thought this was sort of fun..."

It was a terrific place though and we found we had somehow spent more than three hours there. Should you find yourself on the north coast of the Gaspe peninsula, go and see it.

The last of the light has finally gone from the sky and we can see perhaps five lights as we look up and down the coast through Harvey's back window. Up into the wilderness of Gaspese tomorrow.

Le Bic day 2

2010-07-17T18:41:00.001-07:00

Half the campers in this little park had gone by the time we drew back the curtains this morning. Motorhomes are few and far between but it seems that the Canadians do love their camping trailers - and the bigger the better. The men also seem to love being stripped to the waist while they plug in the water and electricity and get out the barbecue, even in a cold wind.

It was a porridge sort of morning with grey skies and a half-hearted rain pattering on Harvey's roof. So we had porridge and then donned raincoats feeling somewhat resigned to the day. We cycled up the steep road out of the campsite and then hit the bike trails which criss-cross the park and all of a sudden we were out in the wilderness. The bike path tunneled through damp, dark woods and then ran alongside fields of wildflowers. There were dog roses and yellow daisies, foxgloves and lupins.

We followed the coastline, the tide was way out and big rocks were marooned in glistening grey sand; ochre coloured seaweed steaming as the temperature rose.

We stopped at a slate beach and poked about, finding soft bleached driftwood and shrimp flickering about in rockpools. The rain picked up and we sheltered under some fir trees and found wild strawberries.

The coastline feels familiar somehow, with its warm brackish smell, slippery bladerack seaweed and grey waters. It reminds me of childhood holidays.

When the rain passed we got back on the bikes and pedalled on. Tom's new bike has gears but he can only change them in one direction as the selector is very stiff, so he tends to stay in first, pedalling furiously for a bit, freewheeling, and then pedalling like a demon again. Eventually we came to another beach with a Lord of the Rings mist hovering ghostlike over it, and a ship sounding a booming foghorn somewhere unseen. It was a magical place and between the foghorn blasts it was almost completely silent, except for the seawead popping and crackling around us, seabirds twittering and splashing at the shoreline.

The water was grey and almost completely flat, merging seamlessly into the mist. For a moment we though we saw seals, but actually we never did.

Heading back, we found a big patch of wild raspberries and we all dived in. By the time we got back the sun was if not exactly out, at least somewhere in the vicinity and it was getting humid. We cooled off with an icecream on the bench next to Harvey having cycled about fifteen miles through this haunting landscape.

Parc Du Bic Mile 1795

2010-07-17T18:40:00.000-07:00

What a contrast. This morning just outside Quebec City, we woke with sunlight was pouring under our blinds and by breakfast time it was too hot to sit outside. Now at the gateway to the Gaspe Peninsula it is cool - chilly even - with clouds like furrowed brows in the evening sky.

Its been a day of organisation. Philippa and I realised last night that with the extra days in Montreal we couldn't really do the whole route we had planned. Something had to give. So we sat down and worked out where we wanted to spend our remaining month. We re-arranged a couple of bookings to give ourselves a bit more time here in Gaspe and some more time on the Bay of Fundy too. After all, how can you not spend time in somewhere called Fundy?

Tom and P splashed about in the campsite pool, staying cool, while I used the campsite wifi to change our reservations in Maine's Acadia National Park to give us a bit more time to get there. The Obamas are there at the moment, but somehow I think it unlikely that the First Family is holed up in an elderly motorhome.

The campsite was a funny little place. Some people had bought their own plots and installed patios and swing seats. It was all immaculate. One end bordered a lake, but there was no access to it from the campground, as if the real outdoors was a little too unruly to be allowed to intrude.

Back onto 20. We'd decided that we would head straight up to Gaspe on a fast road rather than stopping to smell the roses. That way we get more time in the parks at Gaspese and Forillon on the wild edge of the peninsula. We shot up to Rivieres du Loup, a workaday place surrounded by agricultural machine shops, gas stations and blank faced supermarkets. The main street was pleasant enough though and we walked up it trying to find somewhere to eat that wasn't either empty or closed. We eventually found a sandwich place and discovered that Quebec is about to enjoy a three day weekend, so Philippa spent half an hour on the phone booking the next few night's campgrounds.

Eight miles north of town the freeway came to an end, shrinking to a smaller road. We found ourselves in a procession of trucks carrying lumber, steel castings, tractors. Two enormous snout-nosed trucks came barrelling down the road, wide-load warning flags flapping, hauling new grain silos like giant missiles on shiny trailers. There were no effete grocery delivery vans or department store transporters here. They would have been beaten up. We coasted through intensely green farmland with wonderful splashes of colour; a purple blur of lupins beside a sunny field of mustard. The air was ripe with manure. Tom protested and he was even more indignant when Philippa bought some strawberries "fresh from the farm". "What!" he said. "They were growing in MANURE?!!"

We are tracing the edge of the St Lawrence River which gets wider and wider to the point where it becomes an Atlantic inlet. Gaspese was settled first by the "Amerindians" as they are called here, then by the Vikings. Later it was opened up by Italian explorers, then Basque and Breton fishermen who Jacques Cartier met in 1534 when he "discovered" Canada in that self-important way of so many foreign explorers who assume that as they didn't know about a place before, no-one did. Anyway he claimed it in the name of the King of France. And the rest, as they say, is an essay question. We aren't really in Gaspese proper yet, but already the peninsula looks different. The churches have elaborate slim towers coated in some kind of shiny metal. Some look almost Italianate with fancy brickwork and slim, elegant windows. The older wooden houses have steeply pitched roofs which flare out at the bottom and are often brightly painted; duck-egg blue, oxblood, peppermint.

We've seen the first hints of a coastal economy too. There are occasional signs by the road offering lobster and crab, and at least one "Poissonniere" in every village. One had three, narrow, grey-painted smoke sheds. When I stopped for petrol Philippa nipped off to one of these places where she got some fish and smoked shrimp. She said they were difficult to light.

In Trois Pistols we rounded a corner and there was a familiar shark-nosed shape parked in a driveway, It was another GMC in silver and purple. We seem to have spent most of the day in Harvey and I guess we broke our rule about not driving for more than three hours in any one day, but now we have more time to enjoy the best of the peninsula. This park is right on the edge of the estuary and tomorrow we will go walking and look for seals and moose, though the forecast is looking distinctly Atlanticky...

Baumont - not Brossard! Mile 1637

2010-07-14T21:22:00.000-07:00

We are just East of Quebec City, a few miles on from Levis where we stayed a few days ago, and its good to be in new territory again.

When we woke up in Brossard this morning, an enormous motorhome had pulled in alongside us and its owner was in pottering mode. He was a distinguished looking fellow in his sixties, tall, tanned and lean with crisp white hair. When I went out to also do some pottering he came over and we exchanged pleasantries in French until he realised that he had used up the limit of my vocabulary and switched to English. His name was Robert and when I asked him where he lived he jerked a thumb in the direction of his coach "here!". He explained that he and his wife live in it year round; spending summers in Quebec (where he is from) and then in October driving down to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico for the winter. He has been doing that circuit for five years. He was interested in Harv, and was very surprised when I told him that our little bus was built in 1978.

Today was really about picking up Philippa's passport, but it wouldn't be ready until three so we took her hire car up to Parc Du Mont Royale - a large wooded hill which overlooks the city. You can drive most of the way up and we did, though we walked up through the trees from the car park to an open square in front of a small ornamental summer house. It was a grand spot with lots of people all smiling at the view down over the city. Right, tourism over. Next stop, a good lunch.

Where Quebec City feels compact and self-contained Montreal is a sprawling city of neighbourhoods. Our dinner spot last night had a slightly edgy feel to it, with run down buildings in amongst new developments. But we came down the hill today into what's described as the French quarter. Frankly its been hard remembering that we are not actually IN France most of the time, and the bistro we poured ourselves into certainly did not feel to be in the same continent as say, Dallas.

Tom had crevette, P and I ordered from the menu of the day with starters and main courses and a carafe of chilled rose and we were very happy that we had the extra few days in Montreal. Wot luck we said. It was a great way to end our time here, and end it we could because just down the street Philippa's passport and new visa were waiting. It took six days longer than intended but now she can be a full fledged student.

We bolted back to Brossard and packed up Harv. PT gave me the address of the car rental place in Drummondsville so she could drive off and return the hire car before being charged an extra day. Tom sat in the back of the RV playing with lego and I pulled out of the Brossard campsite, for what really should be the last time. Thanks M. Plouffe, and farewell to a smiling Robert and his wife who waved us off.

It was an uneventful hour's drive to Drummondsville where Philippa had had time to get a load of groceries by the time we picked her up. Then two more hours on Highway 20 through flat, open countryside, past the great iron bridge to Quebec City, past the turnoff to Levis and to the campsite where we are now. We got the last space.

Still in Brossard...

2010-07-14T20:36:00.000-07:00

OK, D-Day mark two for Philippa who was out the door at 0630 to catch the 45 express into Montreal and have her second visa appointment. Tom and I snored. When we eventually rolled out of our beds and had porridge, and consulted about what to do it was already mid-morning. So we decided to pursue a cultural option and headed for La Ronde, Montreal's historic amusement park. Tom was completely determined to go on the terrifying rollercoasters you can see from the road. He is a bit of a fiend for rollercoasters, dragging P and me onto a loop-the-loop coaster in Florida when he was five ("lets do it again") and then persuading the ticket guy that he was tall enough to go on a frankly terrifying ride of death in Minnesota last year. I had to go with him and I had visibly aged by the time we came down. Thankf, I mean unfortunately, he wasn't tall enough for the most extreme rides at La Ronde which is a real shame as I was really looking forward to them... But we found plenty of others - until the rain came and they closed everything down for a bit.

But an unfeasably large ice-cream soon turned things around

And of course, we had a good day anyway.

It was a lot of fun having this great little guy to myself and we did his favourite rides over and over again. Philippa meanwhile stayed in Montreal hoping they might get her visa finished the same day (they didn't) and otherwise having a generally girly day with a haircut and a bit of light shopping, while T and I ate bad food and rode on log flumes. We eventually bolted back to Brossard and T and I changed into our nicer clothes to meet Philippa in the Big City for dinner. We'd decided that as we were forced to have more time in Montreal we might as well make the most of it.

Cleverly I took the number 6 bus instead of the 45 Express, falling for the sign which said "Victoria bus station" on the front and the irritated acknowledgement of the driver that that was indeed where he was going. What they meant by "Victoria" though was actually that eventually the bus would arrive at a metro stop where you could take a train to Victoria, about eight stops away. So we did this and our twenty minute journey took an hour but PT, looking all sleek with bundles of bags, was waiting in a lovely restaurant. We played at being city slickers until we caught the bus back to our car park in Brossard.

Brossard again. Mile 1448

2010-07-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

A glorious sunlit morning and all the more glorious for having no commitments. T and P headed off for the pool while I went into maintenance mode. I adjusted the gears and brakes on my bike for the first time so that now all of them actually work. I also decided to check out Harvey's plumbing once again. I thought I had fixed the shower leak but I had my doubts, so out with the bathroom cabinet and sure enough there was a tiny drip from one of the new joints. I tightened it and ta-da, it was fixed. Again. For now. It would have been nice if that was the only Harvey-related maintenance concern, but you will have to read on for that...

One stop back up the motorway there was a trail to a massive waterfall we had seen from the road. A churning, angry-looking explosion of muddy water pounding over black rocks. We loaded up and drove back to the park and got the bikes out. The cycle path cut steeply up and down through the trees before arriving at a narrow suspension bridge two people wide. Daylight between the wooden boards revealed glimpses of the brown river three hundred feet below. Above the waterfall was a smooth v-shaped wier with water pouring over it like molten glass before shattering on top of rocky cliffs. We cycled and walked all round the trail and found the turbine house which was disappointingly idle. We had lunch overlooking the falls in one direction and the St Lawrence with the hazy outline of Quebec City in the other. OK Time to move on.

We had to go back to Montreal for Philippa's second visa appointment so we joined Interstate 20 and began the flat, straight journey south west. Philippa sat in the back, head nodding over an Obama biography. Tom sat in the front with me, losing his own battle with sleep. I set the cruise at 60 and became a passenger too.

After about an hour and a half there was a sudden strange vibration that was impossible to drive through. I slowed down and it stopped. I speeded up and it was there again. It felt to me like a bearing was on the way out, or a wheel had come loose, but it was strange that it had happened all at once. I steered for the exit and we joined a small road into farmland, There was a sign up ahead of us "Mechanique, vehicules poids-lourd". Amazingly we had pulled off the highway and found a truck mechanic. We circled around the back of what looked like a large hanger, dogs barking and running around us. A clearly mystified mechanic emerged wiping his hands on a rag and looking at us doubtfully.

Now at any other time this had the potential to be merely an irritating delay but this was the one day when it could really mess things up. Philippa had to be at the US Consulate at 7.30 am the next morning. We made a contingency plan. Our satnav showed there was a car rental place in Drummondsville about nine miles away, so Philippa went off to the truckers cafe next door to see what she could organise, while I tried to overcome the language barrier with Monsier le Mechanique. He was a wiry little man with thick glasses and he spoke only French but it was like no French I had ever heard. He would fire off a string of phrases which might as well have been Pashto or Afrikaans, and I would reply along the lines of "Hortense est dans le jardin" and we would look blankly at each other for a bit before we resorted to charades. That did the trick and he had me drive over his inspection pit where they raised up old Harv on one side, wiggled the wheels, took them off, checked the bearings and spoke a bit more Hausa.

They could see nothing wong. "Rien?". "Ranggg". So, off for a test drive with the other mechanique, a big round man with a blue boiler suit and a comfortable face. I drove Harvey up to highway speeds, drove fast round corners and...nothing, Pas de problem, rien. My companion rang his sister who spoke good English and she asked if I wanted all the other wheels checked (it was now 5 o'clock). I said yes please, and the mechanic gave an easy shrug and a nod so we drove back and they checked everything out. Once again, no problems, all the bearings were good, the tyres were fine and the requisite number of wheels were in place.

All I could do was thank them for their help and pay them for their time. They wished me a cheery "bongvyaaj", and no sooner had I pulled round to the front than Philippa appeared in a rental car. She had got a cab to Drummondsville with the help of the girl in the trucker's cafe, and got a car. I had no idea if Harv would get to Montreal at this stage so we set off in convoy.

Harv motored along as normal on the highway for the next hour, with no hint of any problems. I really don't know what it was. The road had been through a bad stretch with all kinds of bumps and undulations and it might even have been some errant rumble strip that had been set into the road in the wrong place. But who knows. Maybe its something about Montreal...

On the outskirts of the city we hit some weather straight out of the Old Testament. Wind raced across a flat plain, bending trees over in its path before it smacked into us and pushed Harvey over to the verge a couple of times. Then we found ourselves in the middle of the black sky that had loomed up beside us. Buckets of water smashed into the windscreen and lighting forked all around. It was a dramatic twenty minutes and a relief to find the familiar little carpark in Brossard. That was really enough excitement for one day.

Quebec City

2010-07-11T20:16:00.000-07:00

Up and at 'em this morning, ready for our day in the big city. The KOA provided a minibus with a jovial Quebecois to drive us across the bridge into the city. He bantered with us in French and English as we got on and it struck me how strange the local French accent is. We are used to the French of Northern France which is all spoken at the front of the mouth in a way which leaves you with pursed lips if you try to do it. Here, they chew on the language with their back teeth. Its a bit like listening to someone being strangled. It sounds to me almost as if this is a second language that everyone has been forced to learn. It isn't of course, but I can't take my ears off it.

It was an interesting drive into Quebec, on roads lined with immaculate little houses, with manicured lawns and colourful flowerbeds. No paint dares to flake from a windowsill here; no weed has the courage to poke through the crazy paving. Honestly they were spookily well kept. It was like a show-street for a new development.

Quebec has upper and lower sections and we stepped out near the top into baking heat, and made our way up to the Citadel which stands guard over the river. It was actually built by us Brits as protection against marauding Americans. It never saw action - perhaps because it was generally agreed to be impregnable. Not to us though. We paid twenty bucks and we were in. And what's more we got there just as they were changing the guard, so we got to see bearskinned soldiers marching about the parade ground with the ceremonial goat looking on. When we left, so did the outgoing guard unit. They had changed into their civies and there was a column of second-hand cars each with a solitary squaddie in it heading out of the citadel,. The goat was in a trailer at the back of the line.

We walked down to the lower part of the city which had smaller buildings lining narrow streets and was clearly a big slum once upon a time. Now though it is all chi-chi and bijou and full of artists and galleries and tourists and buskers. Once free of the crowds we looked for a place for lunch and found a perfect little roadside terrace with a fantastic menu. The maitre d' brought out some little amuse bouches of black pudding blended with chives on pieces of crispbread which I thought were delicious and Tom ate doubtfully. But really, that was a taste of things to come (which I suppose is the point in fact). Our lunches were sublime and P and I kept grinning at each other across the table. She had a sort of egg souffle with thyme, spinach and cheeses and I had a warm salad with the tenderest pork medallions in a red wine reduction. Tom wolfed down duck ravioli with bacon and bechemel sauce. That's how to eat. Everything was fresh and beautifully presented and not too big, and as ever our waitress was attentive and chatty. We ran out of excuses to stay and eventually tore ourselves away, down to the harbour.

The St Lawrence is a big brawny river here and it was flecked with sails for as far as you could see. Powerboats roared and bumped between them and fat motor cruisers, cruised. We watched ten or so boats - mostly yachts - ride the big lock down from the harbour to the river a few feet below. What a grand city this is, and all the best ones have some kind of close relationship with water.

At one point we came across a terrific mural encapsulating much of the history of Montreal. I could describe it, but here are some pictures. Then I won't have to.

We hopped on a car ferry which takes less than ten minutes to cross over to Levis, but it was the best view of old Quebec towering over us on the hill. After climbing some steep wooden steps up to the village we stopped for a break in a playground for The Dynamo (and his mum) while I found an epicerie with ice-lollies.

Levis is a really pretty little place with more perfect houses facing cross the river to the city, and a big church on the hill behind them covered in little spires.

We caught the ferry back feeling a bit too hot but with a cool breeze across the water. We rode Quebec's little funicular up the the upper part of the city. A funicular is what you get when you cross a train with an elevator I think. At the top there was a street performer doing a series of bike tricks and some nice gags with hapless members of the audience - he noticed a bald man was leaving and threw him a terrible woollen wig; "you forgot this!". Further along there were others of the "sprayed to look like a statue" variety and Tom was fascinated. A girl in a wonderful bronze costume beckoned him over to look in her donations box and when he did, the box squirted him. He shrieked, completely delighted.

So, back on the bus, across river for the fourth time today and Tom made the most of the evening sunshine in the little KOA swimming pool. We had supper outside just before the mosquitos came out and so to bed. What a terrific day. Back to Montreal tomorrow for another visit to the visa people and then we will wave goodbye to cities for a while.

Levis, south of Quebec City. Mile 1298

2010-07-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

Yes - we have internet again! I rang Mrs Verizon yesterday who looked at her big map of coverage and said there was no 3G in Quebec, so we have been unable to use our phones to get online. Here at the KOA though, wifi is dribbling out of a server somewhere and the computer is able to suck up just enough to publish these blogs.

We saw our first "Beware Moose" sign today - a moose silhouette on a yellow diamond. Its interesting how each state chooses to illustrate these warnings. The deer on the signs in Virginia are lithe little things, clearly in mid leap. In New York state they were sturdy bucks with muscular rumps, and here in Quebec they are more like reindeer on a 1930s Christmas card; leaping with long curving front legs and a big rack of antlers. The moose was much more sedate, plodding slowly across the road. Actually the best sign here is the one for a "technology park" which has a microscope, the whirling orbit of a neutron and a couple of cogs meshing together. It suggests that the site is home to a frenetic team of white-coated scientists working around the clock to design a nuclear powered personal hovercraft. Or something.

After yesterday's rain the grey skies were beginning to be streaked with blue when we got up. It was cool and damp outside but as the morning wore on, the sun began to win the battle and we set out to see something of the park. The road through it is a little frustrating; lined with a forest so dense its hard to get a view. We turned off to Lake Edouard though and were rewarded with a jewel of a lake, a long strip of beach and even a place to buy food. It was becoming popular too so we put up our chairs and settled in for a relaxing day in the sun. After 636 pages I finally finished the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I had a moment of near panic just before the end when I realised that having followed these characters day in and day out for the past couple of weeks they were about to vanish. Its an extraordinary book, written with huge depth and imagination. I shall miss it.

Tom was happy though as it meant I could devote more time to throwing him into the lake which he insisted I do many times over. And so another afternoon was whiled away and before we all got too scorched we went on a little walk through the woods with our junior ranger taking us from one checkpoint to another telling us about aspects of forest life which he read from a leaflet. The mosquitoes were out in force after yesterdays rain so we looked like a troup of morris dancers as we walked, slapping away at our ankles.

Pink and happy we hopped back into a hot Harvey for a charge up the motorway to Qebec City. Levis is just the other side of the river from Quebec and took about 2 hours to get to. T and P played dinosaur top trumps in the back and I watched gauges and played with the cruise control. The KOA is just off the highway (as usual..) and extremely well organised (as usual...), though the wifi is distinctly 20 watt (as usual). Philippa said the girls at the check-in desk really liked old Harv and said we didn't need a pass to open the barrier as they would always wave us through. They also ordered a pizza for us to be delivered at the site. Very civilised. T tore off around the site after supper and is now applied to his bunk like thick molasses. We will get up early tomorrow (er, for us) and get a bus into Quebec. That means I had better get to bed.