Now Liz, who reads this blog ...

... saw my photo of Pictou last night and asked me what the place was like and how it looked in broad daylight. And the answer to that is "no idea". I came here the first time in 2003 and it was absolutely p155ing down so I didn't stay long. And today, as if in keeping with some kind of tradition, it was likewise p155ing it down. And how.

But this time I'm made of more sterner stuff and went for a nosey, getting thoroughly drenched in the process.

Now for those of you familiar with North American history, you will know that Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts is significant as it was there that the Pilgrim Fathers landed in late 1620 in the Mayflower. And Pictou has a similar kind of significance for Canada as it was here in 1773 that a group of Scots landed in the Hector and laid the foundations for Nova Scotia - or New Scotland. Look at any of the graves of people who were born in this area during the following few years - there are dozens of people called Hector.

And after that it was a drive to Springhill to do something else that I ... errrr ... overlooked when I was here before. I didn't visit the Anne Murray Museum this time (so I didn't meet Anne Murray this time like I did the last time) and I didn't have time to visit the mining museum even though it was open today - but instead I tracked down the monument to the hundreds of miners who died in the dozens of mining explosions and collapses in the shameful situation that passed for coal-mining here from about 1820 until just a few years ago. If you know the song Springhill Mining Disaster - made famous by U2 - then that is about one of the explosions here.

Next stop was Amherst to look for something interesting and really I must have been asleep the two times I've passed through here and not noticed anything worth photographing because there's tons of stuff and its a beautiful town. I was having health issues both of the times I came here and that's my excuse.

When I was here in 2003 I went to visit Fort Beausejour - the final bastion of the French army in Canada - where they hung on grimly to a toehold at the head of the Bay of Fundy. And having done some research in the intervening years I tracked down the site of Fort Lawrence - the British fort about 5 miles away that invested it in a seige, and I found that as well. From up on the heights I noticed what looked like early Acadian dykes across the Tantramarre marshes and so I had a wander out across the flats and, lo and behold, indeed they were. And a helpful lady put me in the right direction to go to see the remains of the world's first attempt at making a ship railway - and that was at Tidnish (I was on the wrong side of the isthmus).

Now I'm in a motel at Indian Point, near Port Elgin, and I'm in New Brunswick. Just down the road here are the remains of an old French fort that I want to visit, and then a couple of miles further on is a railway bridge - now long-since abandoned - across a harbour and the claim to fame of that is that it pivoted to allow ships to pass and the pivot mechanism was cranked by hand - so much for modern technology in the 1890s.

Finally there's the world's longest bridge across iced-up waters and I saw that in 2003 but taking a photo of that with a compact digital was ... errr ... interesting so I'm going to do it again. I hope that it's still standing - I don't seem to have much luck with bridges over iced-up waters - and that's effectively my tourism over.