Day 35. Looking at a full moon in a very dark sky

Written at 2100 in Carleton-sur-Mer, where we're camping on a spit of land right out in the bay.

I surfed up from sleep to the unmistakable sound of rain. Absolutely torrential rain drumming on Harvey's roof. When I looked over at Richard, we both grinned hugely. We were delighted NOT to have to jump up and plan the day's sight-seeing.

It was clearly a Sunday morning to zip the sleeping bag up tight, snuggle down, keep warm and listen to that cold old rain above our heads. With a slight sense of trepidation in case it made its way in - but phew, no leaks.

Tom couldn't quite believe his luck either when he emerged a little later. He was promptly supplied with a working computer, a big orange juice, a choc chip cookie, and parents not at all keen to get up and get going.

Eventually we got around to croissants and coffee. Eventually. at 11 am with the rain still bucketing down, our overnight stay ran out. It WAS a shame not to see Perce Rock in the sunshine again, but clearly this was a day to cover ground, and so we headed south again.

It's a lovely coast - the road runs high above the sea, sometimes with the railway line running alongside, through fishing villages, past small harbours, and the occasional metropolis that runs to a post office and a hardware store and suchlike essentials.

As it got close to 2pm we started remembering our previous Sunday lunch challenge - finding a place still open to serve us food. We pulled in at one likely looking country restaurant and the owner actually ran out to wave us off. Now we were seriously hungry.

And like an oasis in the desert, by the side of the road, there was a weatherbeaten shack - a "cantine". And it
specialised in "club homard" - lobster roll!

And as we pulled off and Tom cast his beady eye on the menu, he saw that it was good, and promptly ordered hot dog and fries. Perfect. Much much too calorific.

One more stop on our way today-  ordered by Richard just as I was sinking into a post-prandial snooze. It was time for some education, at the Museum of Acadian History, in the small but perfectly formed town of Bonaventure. I confess my ignorance, I had no idea that the French beat the Brits in their colonial ambitions for America - but the French colony of Acadia dates back to 1604, stretching through today's Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. And it was the perfidious English who laid waste to it, in what's called "The Great Disruption" of 1755. Probably correctly fearing that the Acadians would side with the French, the Redcoats forced around 10,000 into exile - there was a rather splendid small movie showing the burning and sacking, with spotlights coming on around us to highlight the stage props representing boats, the shore, the burning villages and so on. We tried not to open our mouths and reveal our traitorous accents.

When the English and French signed their peace treaty, the Acadians could return, but communities had sown the seeds of their culture in exile - notably, today, in Louisiana. We learned a lot, and even saw a printed proclamation from Queen Elizabeth dated as recently as 2003 declaring Britain's recognition of the sacking of the Acadians, and the rather pious hope as the document put it "that we have passed that dark place in our history". Well, this touring family certainly hopes so...

Around a hundred miles on from the rock of Perce, we arrived at the village of Carleton-sur-Mer. It's gorgeous, strung out along the coast, with a curving peninsula the perfect site for ... a campground. When we drove out to the end of the sand spit and inquired about places, our lack of a reservation raised eyebrows, but the friendly staff found us a spot "sans services" at the very end, on the beach, from where I am typing tonight looking at a big yellow moon above my computer screen.

We're still tired. But this is another very fine spot to be thankful for.