I'm currently at Sandbach Services ...

... which seems to be something of my spiritual home when I'm in the UK.

This isn't it, of course. This is Newhaven Harbour, where I arrived late on Friday night and home of the famous interchange -
Yours Truly: "is that passport OK then?"
Immigration Official: "yes, it's fine"
Yours Truly: "good - I'll print out some more of them then when I return home"
 - and everything else that followed as sure as night follows day because Government Officials have totally  lost any sense of humour they might once have had, which is another sad sign of the times.

A stop at Coulsdon Services, brand-new on the M25, to have a wash and brush-up (yes, I'm funny like that) and then through the fog and mist to Hemel Hempstead and a handy lay-by on the A414.

Saturday morning saw me bright-eyed and bushy-tailed round at Trixi's. I haven't seen her since 1972 and doesn't Facebook have a lot to answer for? Back in those days she had gorgeous long hair right down to her waist but of course that was 40 years ago. Anyway, we caught up with old times, sang a few songs together and went for lunch at a neighbouring cafe. Ahhh - nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

In the evening I went to Hatfield to see how Katherine, Liz's daughter, was doing. I promised Liz that I would keep an eye on Kit and make sure that she was okay. Of course, it's not easy to do that with living in a different country but I do what I can. We ended up going for a meal and she filled me in on all of her latest doings.

Strawberry Moose was of course pleased to see his big sister, and they had a very long chat about their time in Canada together because, of course, he stayed on in 2010 after I came home.

From here I drove up the M1 in the driving wind and rain to another little hidey-hole I know off the A43 near Northampton - somewhere that has featured regularly on these pages. And not a wink of sleep did I have as the howling gale and torrential rain crashing down on the roof of Caliburn kept me awake all night.

I spent much of the day catching up on things that I needed to order on the internet. Yes, Roadchef Services really do come up trumps in this respect, and then up here to dig myself in while things sort themselves out. But it wasn't that easy. I hit something on the M6 and blew a tyre out. And when you have two fair tyres, one borderline, and one that needs replacing, you can bet your life that it was one of the good ones that went.

So tomorrow, add to my list of tasks the one about going to McGuiness's to see if they have a wheel and tyre, and if not, who might have some.

Well, Strawberry Moose had a good day today.

On the road between Port Hope Simpson and Mary's Harbour we encountered some more of his cousins. This time it was mother and daughter. And a short while later we encountered another juvenile. So he's having fun anyway, meeting up with all of his family and he's ever so excited about it all. Good old Strawberry Moose.

As for me, I've done nothing like as much as I hoped. But then again, I've been distracted. For a start I couldn't get out to see the Wunderstrand. Although it's just across the bay from Cartwright, it's actually a 10-mile walk followed by a 10-minute kayak journey (you need to carry your kayak the 10 miles, by the way), or else it's half an hour across the bay in a kayak (in a howling wind across freezing cold water) and of course regular readers of these columns know that I couldn't get warm again. You know that it's against the law to light a fire in a canoe - you cannot have your kayak and heat it.

There is however a certain spot where you can drive to and with a long telephoto lens and a little judicious crop and sharpen, you can make out the beach right away in the distance.

Of course a photo isn't the same as actually walking in the footsteps of Eirik the Red at the climax of his magnificent epic voyage to Vinland, but I suppose that it's the best that I can do.

Anyway, back on the Labrador Coastal Drive (as this bit of the Trans-Labrador Highway is called) the next stop was the most delightfully-named Pinsent's Arm, a small fishing village on the coast in a sheltered bay off the Atlantic. I always thought that the name was quite romantic.

I had to ask directions when I got to Charlottetown. I hailed a passing native
"Excuse me - can you tell me where I can find Pinsent's Arm?"
"Why yes alrighty" she burred (I just love the way they talk in Labrador). "It's over there in that bucket".

Pinsent's Arm has a population of 64 and they were all on the quayside waiting for me to arrive. One of the fishing smacks that operates out of here had just put in to port.
"What do you catch here now that the cod has finished? Shrimp like out of Cartwright?" I enquired.
"Why no" he replied. "We get them thar whelks and scallops".
But if they were whelks and scallops in those baskets they were unloading then I'm going to get my eyes tested as soon as I get back to Europe.

So  they pointed me out the way through the rubbish dump and local tip to the point where you can see the Atlantic through the cove - it's quite impressive.

I also made it to St Lewis - the farthest easternmost settlement on mainland America. And if ever I had to pick a place out here to settle it would be here - it is easily the prettiest place that I have ever visited on the North American continent.

It was a forgotten village - settled in the earlier days of white exploration and then forgotten. And when it was "rediscovered" in the 19th Century the person who discovered it (I can't remember who now) remarked on the "industry and divinity" of the inhabitants.

Its more modern claim to fame, as everyone will tell you, is that it was a station on the DEW line - the Distant Early Warning radar system installed by the Americans on Canadian soil to track and then shoot down the atomically-armed Russian bombers so that the nuclear fallout would be in Canada and not in the USA - but of course it wasn't, despite how romantic the legend sounds. It was actually a site on Pinetree - the forerunner of the DEW line but which operated on a much shorter-reach traditional radar system and with all the defects of a traditional system, and once the Russians mastered the art of low-flying, Pinetree's days were numbered.

And after that, with me not being halfway around where I wanted to go, and having found some playmates for His Nibs, I've had to lay up for the night in Mary's Harbour (spelt correctly - this is Canada not the USA).

I reckon I might just stay in the USA for good ...

... if I could keep on finding business opportunities such as this one. What a way to earn a living, hey?

But seriously - I can't live here. Driving through Buffalo earlier today and already in a bad humour (I've had a run-in with another security guard) I came across a woman in tears on the edge of the street, with a baby, and with all her possessions scattered around her. And it was in the driving, streaming rain too. Apparently the bailiffs had just been.

But Buffalo is a city that is already in my bad books, and has been for quite some time. In 1860-something a steamer launched in 1846 - one of the earliest lakers - sank in Lake Erie in a storm. A few years ago a couple of divers located it and it was raised from the sea bed and taken to Buffalo for restoration. However the mayor declared it an "eyesore" and called in the scrapmen, who promptly cut up this rare, if not unique historical artefact.

In 1813 the British burnt Buffalo to the ground during one of the American wars, and believe me, I was sorely tempted to make my own re-enaction of that historic event. There can't be any greater eyesore in any city anywhere in the whole world than the sight of a crying woman and her child out in the street in the middle of a rainstorm with nowhere to go and no-one offering any help. 10% of the American working population is out of work, there are thousands of jobs going every day, and there's no state aid for anyone.

And talking of that, just a short while later, I stopped to take a photo of an absolutely ancient Dodge Power Ranger plant mover used as a haulage truck in a boatyard. Fishing from the quay was an old guy. I got talking to him about things.
"Well", he said "I worked for 29 years as a shopping centre manager and I was laid off in the spring. I don't suppose I'll ever work again and I don't know what I'll do now. And in my spare time I was a bailiff for the sheriff's office but I had to give that up too. It was just so distressing turfing all of these people out into the street. It's the rich who are causing all of these problems in the USA - it's high time a few of them were turned out into the street and made to suffer".

I once heard someone say that the USA is a great place in which to succeed. Indeed it is, but it's a dreadful place to fail. If the USA has the highest standard of living in the world, then there must be some awfully rich people somewhere well-hidden, because all I ever seem to encounter are the poor. And there are plenty of them!

After that, there isn't an awful lot to say about my journey. I wasn't really in the mood for much. Yesterday I had a leisurely drive along the south coast of Lake Erie (not Lake Eric) as far as the town of Erie in Pennsylvania.

Today has been much-more hectic and apart from Buffalo I blagged my way in to see one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous houses currently under restoration after 65 years of neglect, I've been to Niagara Falls, I went to Fort Niagara - the site of a battle between the British and the French in 1759 where I saw the Toronto skyline across Lake Ontario - over 30 miles away, and I'm now in a small town called Ontario, in Upper New York State. Tomorrow I'm going to stay on the south side of the St Lawrence as far as I can until the last bridge across (round about Quebec I reckon) and then head north to Labrador.

And before I go, I would like to acknowledge something today that I found rather remarkable. If you have been following my adventures from previous voyages you will be well-aware that I have been extracting the urine from the United States over its self proclaimed status as "Land of the Free" as everywhere I have ever been to that has any kind of importance, it has been "Please Prepare Your Admission Money".

Today, having paid $5 for parking (and I don't have issues with that) and declining the boat trip of (gulp) $65, entrance to the park on foot for myself, Strawberry and the camera cost me absolutely nothing at all. Even one of the security men in the park agreed to have his photo taken with Strawberry Moose.

Furthermore, wandering over onto the Canadian side of the river to take a photo (the view is much more impressive from Canada by the way) I was allowed back into the USA for free, without paying the usual entrance fee.

Having given the USA a considerable amount of grief in the past over this, I am happy to record the event.

Up until about 21:00 this evening ...

... the weather was magnificent. In fact it was far too magnificent to work.

This morning we put up a small scaffolding at the southern end of the barn and while Terry was drilling and screwing into the wall for the mounting brackets I was sawing and cutting scaffolding pipe to make a framework to mount the solar panels that are on the roof of the Luton Transit and also the wind turbine that we took down from the north end of the barn.

But we were defeated by that most unusual phenomenon - overheating batteries. When they went flat in the Hitachi SDS drill (and what a good purchase that was!) they were too hot to take a charge. Mind you, it was only 37°C today - the hottest of the year.

Not to be outdone however we started on the guttering of the barn as you can see. I told Terry that there are four classes of people in France -
1) the peasants - the ones with the leaky roofs
2) the lower class - the ones with roofs that don't leak
3) the middle class - the ones with guttering on their barn ...
"What's the fourth class?" asked Terry
"The ones with drains to take away the water!"
But having seen how dry the house walls have become since I put guttering up, then my barn will have it too. I'm sick and tired of being up to my neck in mud. But I'll have to wait a bit for the drains though.

The chevrons are much too short for the roofing (I went for a long overhang) and so a fascia panel is out of the question but they did have at Brico Depot yesterday some galvanised straps with the facility for a sliding attachment. If you bend the straps so that the sliders are at about 60° there's still a good 9 inches or so on the straps and they fit nicely onto the chevrons and you can bolt the gutter mounts to them and they are then perfectly vertical.

We did what we could bearing in mind that we had no joints (moving the scaffolding out to give us clearance was fun) but by 15:00 it was no longer possible to work up there. The combination of a searing hot metal roof, blinding sunlight and tools too hot to touch made us call it a day.

I did a little some while later and then history was made by my not only having a solar shower  (and this LIDL garden shower thing needs some attention) but a solar shave as well. And no surprise - the water temperature was a phenomenal 46°C

We had a barbecue round at Clare's tonight. Esther hosted it and very kindly invited me, and of course Strawberry Moose met some of his admirers. James and Juliana drew some good pictures of him too.

But by 21:00 we were having thunder and lightning and we even had some rain. But nothing like as much as we need. And right now the sky is a clear cloudless starry night promising much more sun for tomorrow. I have to go to Commentry to look for joints and downpipe and thenit's a toss-up as to whether I come back to do the guttering or go for a swim.

We shall see.

His NIbs made some more new admirers today.

Yes, we did this furniture removal today and Strawberry Moose came along to take charge, supervise and in general look after the children while the adults did the work.

Of course this calls for a photo opportunity (have you ever known Strawberry Moose to miss out on one of those?) and here he is being feted by James, Samuel and Juliana while Liz, Esther and Lionel look on.

The furniture removal took most of the day, what with one thing and another, but we had a chance to meet up with Clare and Keith. And Clare very kindly donated to the cause a complete set of kitchen cooking knives that she had received as a free gift and which were surplus to requirements. That was really nice of her.

After the removal was over we went back to Liz and Terry's where we discussed plans for the forthcoming week and also to continue the discussions over our moneymaking activities. We're a long way from being destitute of course and we are all doing things to keep ticking over but you need to be proactive and take control of matters. Consequently on Monday we will be extracting the old caravan chassis from the wilderness around here, repairing it and loading Terry's small tractor onto it so that it is ready for work and then fitting the towbar off my old Transit onto Terry's van so that he can tow it about. Then Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday we will be fixing the pipes at the back of Terry's house, seeing as the scaffolding is up there.

 There are lots of other things too but if you plan to finish them all you need to make the start. And that's as good a place as any. Once those things are out of the way we can see where we are up to.

Friends Reunited

Strawberry got to see his Auntie Tracy this evening. In fact it's been quite some time since the two of them met - probably two years or so.

As predicted, cleaning this apartment is pretty hard work particularly when your heart isn't in it. But at least I've cleared away the forest of dead plants inside the apartment, made a start on the ones on the terrace, and I began some desultory cleaning.

But then of course the rest is history.

It didn't take me long to get discouraged so I rang up Tracy in Antwerpen to see if she fancied coming down for a coffee, but she wasn't feeling too well and so, any excuse to stop cleaning and tidying, I went up there.

We had a good chat, mostly about what's been happening to us since we both graduated from the OU, and then went out for a meal. And if there's one type of cooking that will run a good Indian close then it has to be Middle Eastern cooking and as luck would have it there is an Egyptian restaurant not too far from where she lives whose falafel and humous is second to none. And of course there has to be a big plate of fritjes to go with it. After all, this is Belgium and they invented the French Fry. There is of course all of the old jokes about this -
"Why are there no Belgian astronauts?"
"Because there are no fritkots on the moon"
"What do you call a German living in Belgium?"
"Fritz"
"Why are there potatoes in Belgium and oil in the Middle East?"
"Because the Belgians had first choice"
Yes, we know them all.

But I like Antwerpen - it's got much more going for it than Brussels. And had my work not have been so "irregular" I would have gladly bought a place here. In fact there is a suburb of Antwerpen specially named for me - it's called Weerde. I would have been very happy there, almost as happy as living in that Belgian town between Enghein and Ath.

It's called Silly.

Never one to miss out on a photo opportunity ....

...Strawberry Moose tagged himself along to Gilles' barbecue this evening. Of course he made plenty of friends, mostly of young ladies of the female sex, and was even taking part in the "jumping off the wall" game - to match the games of "hide and seek" that he played with students of Hatfield University the other week.

As for my part, I don't "do" social stuff but I force myself to go out - otherwise I'd never ever do anything. Terry and Liz are good company as are Bill and Gilles. Rebecca's mum is quite nice to talk to too, but after a while I long for the peace and quiet of my own four walls such as they are.

And talking of walls, I started the pointing today. Followers of my ravings from previous incarnations will know that my cementing is total carp, and so I didn't expect much from my efforts at pointing. But even though my technique improved dramatically, my target of Monday afternoon for this is hopelessly optimistic. There are holes in the existing cementing big enough to put your hand in and god knows what kind of livestock is lurking in there. One hole swallowed up an entire bucket of cement so after that I resorted to filling the big holes with gravel and then cementing them in, to bind everything together. I was interrupted by a rainstorm too at 17:30.

It's just as well that I'm pointing the wall as it is in desperate straights but finished by Monday? Not a chance.