we need to talk about Donald

"We can't talk about it to them anymore"

Gayle is quite shocked to discover that when she asks the folk we are staying with about their president and whether they know anyone who voted for him, the answer has invariably been yes.  As to the whys and wherefores, well, there seem to be lots of reasons.

But the striking aspect of the current political situation here is that people feel they can't talk about the subject to Trump supporters.  "They won't listen" or "They won't admit he's an idiot". If there's no dialogue, then there's no reasoning.  It bodes ill for the future.  And what seems to disturb most people about Trump, aside from the abhorrent possibility of a nuclear war with another country, is the effect his style of leadership has had on the US itself.  They worry that his bullying, nasty, brutish, mean outbursts have given voice to a previously silent minority who now feel emboldened to say and act in a similar way.  He's given voice to the racists and reactionaries.  

Kelly, one of our Warm Showers hosts, tells us that now, when someone in a car does something stupid on the road, she automatically thinks: Trump supporter.

We've seen only one pro-Trump sign whilst cycling in New England these past two weeks.  But there are plenty of "rednecks" knocking about the backroads in their pickups.  In one town I was cut up by a pickup that had overtaken me.  It got stuck at lights and as I rolled up on the inside of the lane I looked in the window at the driver as I passed.  He had a beard.  I wasn't thinking Hipster.  He had denim overalls.  I was thinking Hillbilly.  Gayle followed behind and heard him say "What're you looking at?"  What's he going to do, I wondered when she told me this, shoot me?

Another time, another place.  We are on a bike trail outside Keene and an older couple stop to chat to us, ask us where we're going.  Mexico, we say.  The man is interested in our route.  We start to explain that we want to go down the eastern seaboard, through North Carolina and on to Cuba first.  The wife interrupts. "You want to be careful there, they'll lock you up and throw away the keys." In North Carolina? "Do you mean Cuba?" Gayle asks. They don't lock British tourists up in Cuba, I assure her. "They must be Americans then" she harrumphs. Or do you mean Guantanamo? I ask.  "Well, they all deserve to be locked up, they do" she shoots back.  If that's so, why didn't any of them get a trial? I ask.  "Have a safe trip" she hisses back, before striding away.  Her husband is still standing there, mute, stunned by what has just happened.  We are shocked and angry too.  What was just a normal pleasant conversation between strangers has just exploded into an angry exchange, because of one stupid thing said.  We shrug.  Trump supporter, is all we think.

serendipidity #10

It's dawning on us that New Hampshire is hilly.  Tough on our legs, but good for the views.  We are in an area full of (relatively) old and very pretty villages.  Most of the land has been reclaimed by the forest.  We are wondering what to do.  Our aim is to be on Long Island with Gayle's old friend Karen for Thanksgiving.  That gives us a month and when we plan our route we realise we have plenty of time, too much time.  So we want to look for an airbnb place to take a pause.  Happily, even the small villages appear to have a library.

Hancock, New Hampshire

 After a long lunch in the sunshine we spend some time finding a place to stay.  We decide on a place in Peterborough with great reviews, and just before we book a couple of nights we notice there is a good discount for a longer stay.  So we book for the week.  Coming out of the library we joke about being disappointed by the lack of interest from local residents - so spoiled have we been by people's spontaneous generosity.  And then Glenn walks by.

He nods hello, we nod back.  He stops to ask us where we're heading.  Our usual shrug and 'camp in the woods' routine.  He suggests, but with the offer of a get-out clause, that we might like to join him at his cabin in the woods, just around the lake.  But he warns us, it's remote and there are no facilities.  Maybe he's conscious of how unusual it sounds and how we might be viewing him and his offer.  But we don't think he's a weirdo.  And maybe we're swayed by his rugged film actor good looks and blue eyes. We accept.  He gives us directions to a house up a long dirt road - he'll catch us up in his pick up.  At the house we meet his boss and friend, Paul, the owner of the big house.  Glenn explains they met as park rangers out west in California.  This is a new venture - a holiday chalet - and Glenn is caretaker.  His deal is he gets to live in a cabin out in the woods.  Paul is very nice and with him are a couple of other guys.  One of them, Uncle Dan, looks spaced out.  Glenn assures us he's okay - just war damaged.  

Glenn's cabin is exactly as he described, although there is a pit toilet and some view through the trees.  We have cycled a good distance down a rough track.  Glenn has a gas stove and a wood fire pit and a very simple one-room cabin.  We sit around the camp fire and share our dinner and drink beer.  Glenn's had a varied, unusual life.  We suspect his friend Paul is helping out folks who need a hand.  We sleep under a mosquito net next to the cabin.  In the morning Glenn asks us if we saw the bears. He's kidding, right?  No, no, he's not.  One of the neighbours has a camera on his house which recently picked up a whole family of them padding around.  Bears!!!

with Glenn

After breakfast up at the big house, where we can take a shower, we say farewell to Glenn and Uncle Dan.  And back on the road we go.

serendipidity #9

Deceived by the benign and gentle (i.e. flat) Rail Trail we continue south west out of Concord and immediately struggle uphill along quiet empty roads.  The land is sparsely inhabited here, the road wends up and around small hills with steep inclines.  It suddenly does remind us of England.  Apart from the anti-Hillary Clinton poster nailed to someon's fence.  

And then two big ugly dogs come pelting out from a farmyard, jumping out into the road.  I take evasive action, getting off the bike and putting it between me and them.  Gayle is somewhere behind.  I shout out, in alarm.  No way am I getting back on my bike to let them chase me.  Thankfully a car comes along and the dogs retreat to let it pass.  The farmer appears at the same time as Gayle to call them off.  He apologises - the dogs have electronic collars to keep them inside the property boundary - but the dogs have got too excited.  Scared, angry and now full of adrenaline, I pull up at the next village and insist on a rest at a little shaded seat next to a library.

"If you're tired, grouchy and irritable, take a seat. In memory of John Swindehurst from his family."

We decide to have an early lunch and spend a bit of time in the library.  As we are wheeling our bikes to some sunny patch of grass a friendly man appears and begins too chat.  I lose control of my bike and it falls dragging me to the floor.  I'm totally fed up.  Inside the library we find calm and tranquility and a librarian who is played by Mia Farrow.  We hear her chatting to the locals who come in.  She is super-friendly and we decide that it must be a criteria for the job for all librarians.

Virgina Woolf maybe?

And then the friendly man is back, this time accompanied by his wife.  Bill and Anne live just opposite and they have come to invite us to dinner and to stay the night.  We are delighted by such an offer and spend a lovely evening becoming friends.  They are an active outdoors couple and spent many summers canoeing and camping out on lakes, was it up in Maine?  I can't remember. Bill later sends us a recipe for campfire bread.  Fed and watered royally we sleep like babies and say our farewells after a hearty breakfast.  Anne and Bill are considering a road trip out west next summer so there's a chance we may meet them again somewhere.

Anne and Bill

there's bears in them there woods

one panel in the History of Americans

We ride down the Vermont side of the Connecticut River before crossing to stop at Dartmouth College and take a look at the Orozco murals in the library there.  After this surprising little cultural gem we shuffle south east along the Northern Rail Trail which takes us through the woods and past several beautiful lakes towards Concord. As always, we camp in the woods. 

one of several covered bridges we see

it's mid-October and still very warm

It's only on our last day of the rail-trail that we pass a cyclist going the other way and, as is typical, he wants to chat.  He tells us that only the other day he saw a bear cross the trail. Glad we didn't meet him, or the bear, on our first day - I'd have been terrified and Gayle would've been unbearably excited..... At the end of the trail we stop for the night with Warm Showers host Charlie and his family and share a great Sunday dinner with them. 
 

the trail was busier on Sunday

In Concord we are visiting an old friend of my parents.  Lois lives in sheltered housing.  We stop to ask a taxi driver directions.  He's not got an American accent - probably migrated here as an adult.  He asks us where we're heading.  Mexico, we say.  He looks amazed and impressed and before we know it he's holding out a twenty dollar bill to us.  Here. take it.  We quickly say thank you but insist we don't need any money.  Wow, what a gesture.  


Lois is in fine spirits when we reach her, despite being under medical supervision with suspected pneumonia.  She is convinced she will be 'released' shortly and chats merrily away.  And that evening we stay with a young couple on the south edge of the city.  Kelly and Joel had a sign in their back garden warning about dangerous squirrels.  But then they told us a bear had been spotted helping itself to a bird feeder just down the street.  Bears, bears, bears.......

with Lois

serendipidity #8

a very typical white-washed village church

Riding around the northern edges of Mount Washington we get the full-on Fall Colors.  The trees are aflame, we have no doubt.  The cycling is fine on the roads, despite the possibility of being flattened by incautious Leaf-Peepers. 

Early on Gayle gets an unusual puncture - a long screw that goes in clean down the middle of her rear tyre and pierces the other side of the tube.  Two holes to fix, later.  The weather has settled down and as we climb around the foothills of the White Mountains we are offered great views.  

We finally stop at a large crossroads with a closed-up tourist office and a steam engine parked up on the grass verge.   After cooking dinner at a picnic bench we sneak into a little triangle of trees between slip road and the lights, and it turns out to  be a very peaceful sleep.

Next day we are treated to the wonderful Franconia State Park and the National Forest Park which has a bike trail running the whole way, taking us up to the pass, and then down a track snaking alongside the main highway down the valley.  It's a fantastic morning, and when we get to the bottom of the descent at Woodstock, we pause for lunch and then decide to go back up to another pass.  

At the pass we cross the Appalachian Trail and descend into another forrested valley before traversing southwards.  There are houses and farms dotted either side of the roads and when it gets dark we just climb up a steep bank and pitch the tent in the woods.  It's someone's land, but it's not fenced.  In amongst the big trees are stone walls - signs of the old farmsteads before they were reclaimed by the forest.

Next morning we descend into a wide valley running north-south.  The mist is sitting low and takes a while to burn off.  We are getting used to the sight of white picket fences and white clapboard houses with long verandahs.  The villages are well-kept and pretty but there's not much sign of life.  The road southwards is following the Connecticut River and we stay on the smaller road on the eastern shore.  

At Orford we stop for lunch at a village store.  Next door is the tiniest library we've ever seen.  It's open in the afternoon and as soon as the librarian arrives we are in there to get online and use the facilities.  It's a simple two room building and the librarian comes over to chat.  Laina's from California.  We end up staying all afternoon, catching up on messgaes and checking our onward route and contacting Warm Showers hosts.  When Laina asks us where we're staying tonight we just shrug and say we're going to camp in the trees down the road.  She's having none of it.  She invites us to stay at her's.  The only problem is that she has her book club this evening.  Never mind, she says, go anyway, the door's open, take a shower, I'll phone my husband and tell him you're coming.  

After the inevitable final climb up their road we arrive at Laina and Carey's
fabulous 17th century farmhouse.  It's been adapted, renovated, but it's still essentially the original structure.  Laina's husband, the local high school head teacher, looks a bit spaced out when we get there but soon warms up to these two strangers who've just disrupted his quiet Thursday evening.  We have a lovely evening and get more time to chat with Laina the following morning.  She explains that when they were doing their Peace Corps they received a great deal of kindness from people.  We reap this kindness again.  

with Laina

 Having just met more lovely people we find ourselves saying goodbye too quickly.

in the Maine

Yes, it's Donald Trump

In one good day's ride I calculate that we can do a circuit from Poland to Hebron to Paris to Norway to Sweden to Fryeburg to Denmark to Naples and back to Poland in under 100 miles.  You may think I'm barking mad, unless you know the area east of the White Mountains in Maine.  However, I'm not the navigator and this whimsy must be forgotten because we do have somewhere to go.  Besides, Fred has given us some suggestions for routes into the White Mountains and now we are faced with

Fred

several options the usual Monster of Indecision resurfaces.

We had a great evening staying with Fred, our Warm Showers host.  He lives with his artist wife in a house they built in the woods on an old farm plot that has returned to the forest.  To reach it we turned down a track past the original farmhouse out on the road, crossed a brook, and there in dark stained wood was a modern wooden house.  Fred had a friend visiting when we arrived and the friend told us what an inspired decision it was by Fred to lay down a polished concrete floor as the foundation for the house.  "It holds the warmth in the winter and keeps cool in the summer."  The friend has come looking for a specific type of wood.  Fred, it turns out, is a retired forrester, a man who knows everything about wood.  He tells us about his recent bike tour with his daughter and possible future ones, predicated by weird things he hears or reads about.  The Darvaza gas crater of Turkmenistan would be such an attraction.  We sleep soundly in their little cabin over the brow, looking out over a wild woodland water.  Fred's friend told us that all the forest of New England is secondary or even tertiary forest, quite different to that discovered by the first European settlers. The trees would have been taller, wider apart, with a large canopy.  Eventually most of the forest was cleared for farming, which turned out to be lousy, so when the settlers headed west in search of better land, the forest grew back.
 

the cabin in the backwoods

Don & Martha on their doorstep

Don & Martha are also surrounded by trees, in some sort of self-sustainng sylvan hideaway.  Don is a vet and together they are trying to live The Good Life, with a large kitchen garden.  We park our bikes with the chickens and take shelter from the rain in their Settler's Log Cabin.  From their wood burning stove Don has rigged a hot water heating system.  Out in the yard is as nice a pit toilet as one could hope to find.  And I'm not joking.  When we arrive, after one helluva long climb along a dirt road, they are picking fruit from their trees - it's harvest time.  When we tell them our proposed route Don suggests that he contact some good friends further along who might host us.  He thinks there'll be more rain coming too.  He phones Wendy & Ray who say yes, come on along to their house.  And so we do. 

Wendy with her two enormous dogs

Ray & Wendy also, surprise, surprise, live in the trees, just outside of Bethel.  Bethel is a pretty little town with an art cinema with nice toilets.  It is duly noted on our map of touring facilities.  To get to their house we head up a wide valley dotted with farmsteads, then turn down a track and into the woods.  There are two enormous dogs to greet us.  Enormous, I tell you.  Ray and Wendy generously invite us in to their home.  Any friend of Don and Martha's etc etc.  Such kindness.  Don knows them because he has had to help their dogs who'd been sticking their faces into porcupines.  (Don had shown us his quill collection.)
They've just got back from a visit to Ladakh looking at the work of a charity run by a friend - it's clearly been an enriching experience for them.  More rain so they invite us to stay an extra night.  As they're both working we cook tea, and, despite a blackout, it turns out fine.  

We've only been in the States just over a week and already we've been spoiled with such great hospitality.

the real American experience

Turning off the main road at the BFI (big effing Indian - it's a huge cheesy statue of a Native American) we take the back road into Freeport.  A few Canadians had mentioned Freeport to us. I'd come across it in Richard Ford's Independence Day.  It is the home of LL Bean's.  For those not in the know, LL Bean's is an old-fashioned outdoor shop selling clothing, footwear and equipment.  What's made them famous is their lifetime guarantee of quality.  That's it.   Peter in Nova Scotia told us that on one trip into the US he took an old pair of boots he'd had for over 20 years - ones he'd worn building houses.  They were worn out.  The shop replaced them for him with a brand new pair. 

We're looking for replacement down jackets and we park up our bikes and take it in turns to shop.  Not only is there a huge LL Bean store that is open 24 hours every day of the year, but a collection of other brand outdoor shops and a whole lot more other stuff.  The town is full of bargain hunting shoppers.  No-one is leaving empty-handed.  Remembering Peter's tip, I go and checkout LL Bean's outlet store and soon find myself wading through racks of badly-sorted end-of-line or returned clothes.  i find a jacket and join the queue at the till.  Then I notice a few feathers fluttering to the floor.  The jacket is torn.  I go back and have to take one in a different colour - a colour I can't quite define.  Gayle is also successful finding a replacement.  We bundle our old jackets up and leave them on a bench - uncomfortable with just shoving them into a litter bin.  And we ride out of there in low sunshine through trees full of autumnal colours.  So many shades of orange and yellow, too many to name.

 "So what colour would you say my new jacket is?" I ask Gayle.  She mulls it over briefly.  "Diarrhoea Green." comes her assessment. 

applied math with Nola and Rick

Rick tells us it's about twenty miles to Freeport, up the coast.   But we use kilometres.  We cycle about 14 km an hour on a good day.  

1 mile = 1.6 km  How long will it take us to get to Freeport, without breaks?

The weather forecast is promising. Tomorrow it will be cloudy and around 68°F.  But we don't use Fahrenheit.  We use Centigrade.

To convert Fahrenheit to Centigrade deduct 32, divide by 9 and multiply by 5.

So should we wear shorts and t-shirts when we set off on our bikes?

There is plenty of choice of bread in the supermarket.  But we've noticed that some of the cheap loaves have too much sugar.  A cheap loaf coasts about $2 whereas a good multigrain loaf might cost $4.29.  

$1 = £0.75  (good grief, it was about 80 pence a year ago......)  How much more will we spend, in pence, on a loaf of bread to avoid the overly sweet stuff?

Nola wants to know roughly how much weight all our baggage is on our bikes.  We're not certain - it varies depending on how much food and water we're carrying, but we think it's about 30 kilos.  But in the US they don't use kilos.

1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds  How much weight will I have if we eat the 1 kg of porridge oats and 500 gm of pasta I'm carrying.  Give the answer in pounds for Nola.

When you have completed the math assignment turn over the page and complete the discussion paper "Donald and Me: how will the president change your life?"  Don't forget to include your fully-annotated references.

a poor man's dinner

"What you should do is forget Canada."  It sounds like a stereotypical American response, but Nola is really only trying to help me get started with the blog again.  I'm stuck in Iceland and complaining about not getting enough time to catch up.  Nola's advice has the ring of a teacher who has dealt with many a student who has got behind with their coursework.  This isn't surprising because she is a math teacher "or maths as you English like to say it!" with many years of experience.  She's counting down the years to retirement (only four more) so that she and her husband Rick can head off to travel the World, or at least the States.

Portland harbour

Rick is a retired fireman and he warmly welcomes us into their home in Portland, Maine.  It's a modest wooden house on a quiet street.  The garage next door is not modest - three storeys in fact - but that, if you'll excuse the pun, is another story.  When Gayle asked Canadians about the States many of them replied that it was similar to Canada but "there is more of everything".  We're amazed at the number of vehicles they have, but as Rick explains, they'll keep a car "until it dies".  So, in addition to their tandem, their normal bikes, recumbent trikes and Harley Davidson, there is also a pick-up, two run-around cars, one of which is an electric hybrid, plus the piece de resistance - a mobile home that really does fit the definition (but not the garage).  This is by no means unusual here, as we discover later.  Rick shows us around the RV which is nicknamed The Bus, for obvious reasons.  He and Nola plan to get plenty of mileage with it when she stops teaching.

They're a lovely couple who engage us in plenty of disparate but interesting conversations and we feel right at home with them.  It's the north American way - everyone is so natural and easy to get along with - that we almost take it for granted now.  Their large garage roof is covered in solar panels and they're able to bank energy credit from the output and help subsidise their neighbour's electricity bill too.

on the waterfront

Portland is a relatively small city and easy to get around.  The late summer heat continues into October and we have a sunny day to explore the downtown and get ourselves tuned in to the USA.  The city's waterfront has a touristy boardwalk with a range of restaurants and the day we're here there's a cruise ship in.  But it all seems quite low-key and relaxed.  

relaxed locals

unleashing the beasts

In the morning Gayle mentions lobster to Rick.  We thought the season had passed (it had in Canada, where there are more limits on lobster fishing), but Rick is eager for us to try it and, despite not liking it himself, he offers to cook some for us.  Nola's pleased, as it's a real treat.  She tells us they never eat it in a restaurant because, apart from the mechanics of eating it, it's usually overpriced.  She is telling us this whilst simultaneously demonstrating and instructing us in the best way to dismantle the creature and extract the flesh.  The four young blackish monsters Rick put, writhing, into the steaming pot, are now bright red and inert.  


Back in the day, lobster was seen as a low-value catch, and eaten ony by those too poor to be able to afford fish.  Ruth and Gordon told us that his ageing relatives in New Brunswick would recount how they were so poor, all they ate was lobster.  And they would plough lobster into the fields to fertilise the soil.  How times change.  The meat is undeniably tasty.

teaching another skill

We are then overindulged by our hosts, who confess to having a chocolate vice. Gayle's is ice-cream, and as they've just stocked up on a deal at the local supermarket, they are able to treat us to a 'tasting session'.  Nola has a connection to Ben & Jerry's as the co-founders started out in her university town in Vermont.  It strikes me as a tenuous link but a marvellous excuse.  We indulge.

After a wonderfiul relaxing start to our journey through America, we are bound to actually start the journey.  Rick and Nola share their knowledge of our proposed route plans, advising us on busy roads and things to look out for.  Their words "Maine is hilly" echoes that of our Quebecois hosts who warned us about the Charlevoix region north of Quebec City.  We have been warned!

welcome to Trumpland

There's no shouting, there's no guns. Just some very polite crew members directing us off the boat and into the arms of the smiling female border patrol.   It's the stuff of fantasy.  Of course it's fantasy.  "Into the arms".  Who are you kidding?  But they are really polite and friendly - unlike the regular immigration officers I've come across on my previous two visits.  The critical question comes - how long do we wish to stay in the US?  Six months, we chorus.  We have the visa in our passports, we know we can stay six months, but we also know that it's at the discretion of the immigration officer at the border. I've coached Gayle not to mention a) Cuba b) all the friends we hope to visit c) Trump.  The border patrol officer looks us over in a pleasant, interested fashion, the way the other passengers on the car deck have.  What does she see? A middle-aged white couple on bikes with a lot of luggage.  Do we look respectable? tick. Do we look islamic? cross. Do we look wealthy enough to stay in the U.S. for six months? hmmm..... 
We are referred to the office staff who need to do 'a couple more things' i.e. check our fingerprints and facial recognition - the US government took this data when we went to the embassy for the visa interview back in March.  The man processing us now asks us more questions.  
Why six months? becasue we travel real slow..... So that we can cycle to the Mexican border.  
Where will we go? who knows, we keep changing our minds Down the east coast and then over to Texas and New Mexico.  
What will we do when we run out of funds? weep Teach English in another country like Viet Nam or China. 
From where will we travel back to the UK? who knows?? From Mexico.  
Is there any reason why he shouldn't grant us a six month stay? well, we really don't like your president.....  Umm, no.
We watch avidly as he finds a blank page and stamps our passports.  We get the six months. 
We are in.

south shore

escape from the unusual

Gramp's Camp

Not a single scouse accent to be heard in Liverpool.  No Beatles reference points.  No football stadiums.  There is the Mersey River (not the River Mersey). When we reach our Warm Showers hosts they're not in.  We look around the back and see the cabin "Gramp's Camp" in the garden.  There's a note from Peter and Debbie welcoming us.  There's also a notice about house rules, including "No peeing from the doorway".  When Peter arrives he explains.  They have lots of grandchildren - 15 at last count - but they all live in the States.  He thought that if he built the cabin they'd be more likely to come and visit.  He and Debbie welcome us and show us around their large kitchen garden out back.  "Watch out for the electric fence" Peter jokes, pointing out the wire that runs around the back of the house. "It's to keep the raccoons out."  Over the back door grows a large grapevine.  One morning Peter got up and found two raccoons hanging off the vine and plucking the grapes one at at time, like idle Romans after dinner.  He tried to shoo them away but they were obstinate little buggers.  The electric wire keeps them away.

We have a pleasant and interesting evening chatting and a comfy night in the cabin.  Over breakfast Peter and Debbie warn us about an incoming storm.  They invite us to stay another night.  We are very happy to do so but feel a little awkward on two

Peter and Debbie had built their own home

counts: the first is that they put on their profile that they prefer to be a stopping point along the way rather than a destination and second, we know that Garry and Corinna are coming to stay because Peter told us.  But then we're quite good at dealing with awkwardness.  We stay.  Garry and Corinna arrive.  It rains.  We feel bad because we've got the cabin.  But not too bad.  Thankfully, after dinner, Peter and Debbie offer them their spare room.  They also invite some friends around to meet us.  One asks us "So tell us what it's like to have sharia law in the UK".  We laugh in his face.  He clearly spends too much time on the internet and not enough in the real world.  The next day the rain continues and we stay another night.  Peter works in his garage where all his woodworking equipment is.  He shows us the canoe he built with his own hands.  It is the wonderful work of a skilled craftsman.  Corinna looks worn out - when we met them on the ferry they were talking about taking it easy but in fact they still seem to be going at it hammer and tong.  We wonder how often they take a break off the bikes.

Onwards we go along the coast to the pretty town of Shelburne where we have more lovely Warm Showers hosts.  Peter confesses, when Lorelei, his wife, is out of earshot, that he signed up to Warm Showers by mistake.  He plans to do a cycle trip and wanted to find out more about this hosting site he'd heard about.  Then he received a request from someone to stay.  We camp in their garden but they invite us to join their family dinner, which gives us an opportunity to talk more into the evening.  

The weather has now returned to the benevolent sunshine we have come to expect.  Happily there are few mosquitoes now that it's getting cooler at night so we are happy to camp.  Sticking to the main highway has meant that we can cycle quicker in order to crack on towards Yarborough.  We make a minor detour over to Cape Sable Island - a large sandspit of a place covered in houses but with some rather lovely sandy beaches too.  And at this time of year there are only a few dog-walkers about.  Near to some woods we come across a pile of carrots.  These have been dumped by someone for the deer to feed on.  It's a cynical trick.  The wild deer get used to being fed, and then when the hunting season opens they appear like sitting ducks.

We are hoping to catch a ferry to Maine from Yarborough but have miscalculated our distances.  So when we hit the highway and see the signs we get a bit of a shock.  Needless to say, there's a headwind on this day, of all days.  We hit the pedals hard and, unusually for us, ride in tandem.  We eat up the kilometres.  The truth is that we have been riding relatively short distances lately - around 50 to 60 kilometres a day - choosing to have good breaks and long lunches.  Gayle has even been tempted into the sea.  We want to make the most of the good weather and as we have decided to save some time by cutting directly across to the US from here, we feel quite relaxed.


Down at the waterside, late afternoon, we find the ticket office for the ferry to Portland and get tickets for the next morning.  The ferry is run by an American company and is heavily subsidised by the Canadian government.  This annoys a lot of Canadians.  We cycle back into the town and take our time looking for a good camping spot - not too far away because we need to get there early - but not too close in an area where we might be found by locals.  We have already cooked our tea down by the tourist information office and as its beginning to get darker earlier so when we spot a little patch of grass alongside a fence between two commercial properties we dive straight in.  There's already a heavy dew.  We cover our headtorches to dim the light and have a cosy read before sleep.  Just another day on the road.  Our last day in Canada.