A lovely and devastating novel

I've just read Chris Cleeve's "Little Bee" in the space of 24 hours. It's a story wound around two women - a Nigerian refugee in England, and a yuppie London mother - whose lives wind around each other. It's one of the most readable and moving novels I've read in ages. The story is tragic but some of the telling is wickedly funny. I don't think anybody could read it and fail to be angry about the inhuman treatment of refugees -especially girls - who wash up on our shores and in our detention centres. One of those books that's hard to shake out of your mind. Whew.

This is the author's website

http://www.chriscleave.com/

I am a Harvard Student

Over caffeinated. Over tired. Thrilled to be here. Lots to tell... SOON!

Day 59. Home to Harvard - and a new adventure.

From Maine to Massachusetts today, heading south on the motorway, somewhat freaked out by TRAFFIC, and the fact that Boston is the biggest city experience we've had in months...

You can tell from the photo that we're tired. It's been eight weeks, something like forty campsites, and more than 4,000 miles.

We're sleeping within four walls tonight in our new home in Harvard - new experiences round the corner for all of us - but the roadtrips will continue. And the roadtrip mentality!

Day 58. Ellsworth, Maine. Heading South

It's just past eleven. We have just pulled over in the small town of Ellsworth, and found nirvana.

This is The Maine Grind. It's a coffee shop with lattes (check), mango smoothies (check says Tom!), big leather sofas (check), power strips plugged into the sockets (check) and oh heaven oh heaven oh heaven THE NEW YORK TIMES.

A girl could be very, very happy indeed.

Home tomorrow night. xx

Day 58. The Top Ten

THE TOP TEN THINGS ABOUT RV LIFE




Home sweet home wherever you are

Everything you need is along for the ride.

How little you need.

How little ties you down.

Raising the blinds to a different view each morning.

Opening the door to woods, fields or waves.

So many new impressions in such little time.

Setting off for the next place.

Being on the road.

Being on the road together.





Sent from my iPad

Day 56. Acadia National Park

About which I wrote a sparkling, revealing, witty journal entry - and wiped it out.

Anyhow. Tom had a great morning flirting with six year old Sophie from Chicago.

Then we set off for a day of hiking and biking round southwest Acadia.... First the Ship's Walk which the ranger tells me was taken by President Obama only two weeks ago ("you'll be walking in His Footsteps" he said, drily).  Gorgeous views, dramatic waves, lots of good places for a Commander in Chief to pause and reflect, lots of good places for me to sit staring vacantly and happily into space.

We cycled onto the fishing village of Bass Harbour, where the smallest had chocolate sundae, and the rest enjoyed tall cold glasses of Summer Ale.  Looking out at the view, you really start to see how this is one of those memorable family summer destinations...

And we're now running out of computer battery.... just to say we ended the day with a scramble from sea level to the top of Flying Mountain... all in 15 minutes... for a glorious view over the islands and Somers Sound, which I now read is the only fjord on the eastern seaboard. Impressed? We were.

Boston in three days!  

Day 55. Back in the U.S.A.

Now if I was Born in the U.S.A., I wouldn't be on tenterhooks at IMMIGRATION. But I'm not, so I am. We crossed over this morning at Calais (which northerners it seems call Callous). We were an object of great interest - arriving in a vehicle nobody seemed to have ever seen before, and presenting two kinds of visa, Mine and Theirs. So we were pulled over, beckoned out of the RV, and sent for Interview.

Luckily for me, my officer was a very mellow Czech American, who'd stuck a photo of his little boy on his locker right behind his desk, so we had a great conversation about how brilliant it is when kids are rising TWO (Helen, you were with me in spirit). Richard was being dealt with in a separate room but came out legal. Tom's visa didn't quite figure on the computer, but my man worked us around that. And perhaps luckily for all of us, a van outside was on fire, so there was a level of distraction. My man had warned me that it was illegal to bring in tomatoes, apples, potatoes or alcohol - all of which, of course, we had on board - but in the event, he wished me good luck for Harvard and off we tootled in Harvey.

There's a main road and a coast road that head south through this more remote bit of Maine (Down East, as they call it). We chose the coast road, and it was a bit of an eye-opener: life seemed somewhat depressed, with a lot of small businesses shut down, and the road falling into potholes for miles at a time. We spotted a burg called Whitneyville and took photos in your honour Jon.

And we did get lucky stopping at a very cheery town called Machias, which not only provided Excellent Lobster Roll courtesy of Helen's Restaurant (the only eaterie we could see in a very long stretch), but a gee-whiz oldfashioned funfair right across the street.

But it was around 5pm by the time we reached our destination - Acadia National Park, the celebrated getaway on Mount Desert Island. We hit the causeway together with more traffic than we'd seen in a long time. We got over our shock by stopping immediately for icecreams (mine was called Black Bear: raspberry, chocolate, swirls of pure sugar....). Then headed on down to the Seawall campground. Apart from the weekend of Fourth of July in Lake Champlain, this was our only advance booking, and a good job that was, since everything is FULL.

We'd heard so much about the natural beauty of Acadia, that it was something of a shock to realise how surburban it is, B&Bs and cafes and shops jostling for space with some very chi-chi residences. But the further down you drive, the less tame it gets. Seawall is on what they call the Quiet Side of Acadia - as opposed to the posh Bar Harbour side. Being a National Park campground, we were back on the familiar territory of generous loops set among the woods, not so spacious as most, but hey we're on an island, so We once pulled past the ranks of RVs and into C10 slot, we were very grateful to be here.

It's Saturday night, four days till we're "home".

Day 54. Last night in Canada.

We're spending it within sight of the U.S. - the coast of Maine is two miles away across the water. We are parked in the overflow spot of the Passamaquody Ocean campground, with nothing but the bay in front of us, and the small but perfectly formed historic town of St. Andrews stretching behind us.  Town motto? "It's life, only better"!

We were up bright and early at 0630 to catch the ferry from Digby to St John. Goodbye Nova Scotia - a truly lovely land - which has everything from dramatic wilderness to cosy beach life, and a rich history which we're only just beginning to understand.

It was a three hour crossing. No whales to report, but I enjoyed standing at the rail daydreaming. Richard caught up on his blog. And Tom was thrilled to find the latest "Shrek" being screened in the lounge.

We didn't know what to expect of our final stretch of New Brunswick, and pulled in on a whim to the New Beach River Provincial Park, expecting a few benches by a car park. It had everything the three of us wanted - dramatic views over bays and islands, a great big beach, picnic benches in the trees, and a playground with small boys just waiting for a playmate. So worth the seven dollar entrance fee, which I think I could say of all the small parks we've been in - so much thought has gone into providing the basics for a great day out, while simultaneously creating miniature nature reserves.

We stayed a lot longer than we meant to while I nearly froze to death insisting the water was quite swimmable, and all of us built a sand Heffalump pit for Tom, then of course had to wait for the tide to
come and fill it.

I reckon we were lucky to get the overflow spot here. The campground has 113 actual sites and they all - on this August Friday night - look full to bursting. We may not be plugged into all the services, but it feels pretty
peaceful out here on a limb, with nobody parked up against us.

For the first time I think in a fortnight we got the bikes off the back, and cycled back along Water Street into
town (an entire half mile), to sit on the deck of a jolly pub, watch the famous fast tide ebb away in front of our eyes,  and eat too much, by way of formal farewell and thankyou to Canada.

Day 53. In which the intrepid travellers did NOTHING.

Astonishing that we've got to day 53 before a day of absolute lazing about, but that's exactly what it was. We had the luxury of a day in hand, having found our intended ferry sailing fully booked (so we're now crossing the water tomorrow,  Friday 13th,  instead, and have till Wednesday to get to Boston....)

We left the lovely Whale Cove Campground a shade before noon,  motored east on Digby Neck, and pulled off on a little road recommended by Gloria, a road that ran out at the aptly named Sandy Cove. We pretty much had it to ourselves at first, and spent a few happy hours reading, building sandcastles, and turning pink. It was obviously a locals' beach, and as the afternoon wore on, there was a steady trickle of people bringing their dogs or children down for a run around, and quite a lot of village gossip floating around our heads.

At the entrance to the cove, one bit of local lore stood out - by way of a notice about Jerome, a sailor who was found abandoned on this beach in the mid-1800s, having had surgery to amputate both his legs below the knees. A ship had been observed pulling in during the night, and was gone by dawn. "Jerome" is the only word ever spoken by the unfortunate sailor, who lived in the care of Sandy Cove residents for a further forty years. The speculation is that he was an Italian, but nobody actually knows. The one rock on the wide cove is named Jerome's Rock to mark the strange turn of affairs in an otherwise sleepy village.

We made our way tonight to Digby Campground, solely for the reason that it's five minutes to the Digby-Saint John ferry, and we have to be in the queue at 0700 tomorrow morning. 

We walked into town for an indifferent meal at the Captain's Cabin: the first supper of which I could truthfully say, I can do better. Richard made up for it by acquiring a new friend. It was good to have a look at the harbour, and stretch our legs, and tonight will be an early one, in readiness for The Voyage tomorrow.

Day 52. Thar she blows.

We woke up in Whale Cove Campground on Digby Neck, Nova Scotia. Which meant there was only one thing to do with the day.

We booked with Ocean Explorations just across the ferry on Long Island, and went out in an inflatable Zodiac with Tom Goodwin, who was the first to offer whale-watching here, has decades of experience, but was admirably low key and somewhat wry.  (He had us all suited up in Guantanamo-style jumpsuits, but observed an hour later when we were some way from shore that in fifty degree water, you have only a 50:50 chance of surviving 15 minutes, and "the suits are to get the bodies back". ) Anyhow... jumping was far from our minds, as we were cruising way out under a hot blue sky, and we SAW whales.

They were humpback whales, first one, then two swimming side by side, then just as we were preparing to come back in, a last lone humpback which seemed able to dive for nine or ten minutes between appearances. I've been whale-watching before, but never so close to the water, able to see the whale's smooth back, the contours of its dorsal fin, and when it dives, that long roll forward until the tail clears the water right in front of you.

It was very calm way out there, with only about a dozen of us on the boat, perched on the sides of the inflatable. I really enjoyed the moments when the whales dived down, and we were all still, all watching, all listening, just scanning the wide blue sea to the horizon.

Back on land, I really felt the need to stretch and exercise somehow, and we took off down a small trail further along the island to Digby Neck's famous Balancing Rock - a column of basalt that really looks as if it shouldn't still be there. It took a good walk through the woods, then 233 steps down the side of the cliff to reach it.

That felt enough of a workout to justify supper, and we took the enthusiastic recommendation of our jolly campground hosts Gloria and Vaughn, and turned up at Lavina's Catch Cafe at the end of Long Island. Where Richard and I, having admired marine life for much of the day, proceeded to dismember more of it.

The ferries between the chain of islands here run to a strict timetable, and we made it to ours for the 20.00 sailing back to Digby Neck. Once again, the chap waving us aboard wanted to know all about the RV, and Richard invited him in to have a look.  We swapped life experiences as much as you can in three minutes, and he then got us invited up to the tiny bridge, where we squeezed in and talked to the captain as he steered the ferry across. It's only a five minute ride, but the currents are incredible, running both ways in the narrow passage, at around 8 or 9 knots (apparently among the fastest in the world). As Tom asked serious questions about radar, I just enjoyed being up high, and watching a couple of harbour porpoise dancing in our wake.


Home to Whale Cove campground a little sunburnt, full of lobster, and ready for the Family Movie experience of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" before Tom collapsed in bed, and we retreated to the master bedroom for the serious business of blogging. Goodnight all.

Day 51. I'm terrified of rollercoasters.

But I've been on one FOUR times in succession today... shamed by my seven year old who watched my striken face with absolute glee as we crawled up the first hill before it was up and over.  I'd forgotten I could scream that loud.

All part of the fun at the coolest amusement park of the holiday. It's called Upper Clements, the rollercoaster is a vintage wooden twister that hurtles through the trees, and it's probably the last one I'll dare to go on for a long time!

And if you look closely at this one, you can just make out Richard in brown and Tom in blue beside him. They achieved a grand total of SIX rollercoaster runs. Hats off to them.

Day 50. Parkers Cove, Nova Scotia.

From coast to coast today. Woke up in the south at Ovens Park, and writing this in the north at Parkers' Cove. Only a few days left in Nova Scotia.

Before we left, Richard felt the urge to make money by panning for gold on the campsite beach. We rented three pans and three trowels, and all had a go. It says quite a lot about our approach to life that Tom soon wandered off to look for monster seaweed; I sluiced away vigorously on a "nuggets or nothing" principle; and Richard steadily accumulated a mist of tiny gold particles across the bottom of his pan. But we still have to go back to work (eventually...)

We said goodbye reluctantly to the waterfront towns around Lunenberg: they seemed the perfect place to live, if only we could sail.  These were also communities with roots: we passed a lot of churches, and cemeteries dedicated to the "pioneers" and "settlers" who came here from Germany, France, or Britain.

Between north and south there were a lot of trees, basically. And one of my favourite signs so far, on the side of a Gospel Tent: "Jesus told us We Must Be Saved... Every night (except Saturdays)".  By the time we reached Annapolis Royal on the north side, we felt caffeine and calorie deprived, and were easily persuaded to pull off the road by a sign that said "German Bakery and Cafe".  After our raspberry strudel/ blueberry tart / pink chocolate cookie, we disappeared into the seventeen acre Historic Gardens next door for a good hour. The gardens themselves were beautifully landscaped, and at the back, there was a little gate which you could unlatch to walk out over the rise of the old Acadian dykes which had reclaimed much of the local marshland from the sea.

Day 49. Ovens Park, Lunenberg Harbour.

Sunday 8th August - in ten days we'll be heading "home" to Cambridge Massachusetts.

We felt so relaxed yesterday arriving here at another low-key end-of-the-earth campground, that we immediately booked a second night. So we woke up this morning with no deadlines and no mileage to make. Bliss.

The boys made French toast while I went up to the swimming pool and got in twenty lengths. Freezing but invigorating, and something I haven't done for too long. I took Tom up after breakfast, leaving Richard looking relaxed with a coffee in a camp chair, soaking up the sun.

Then we all set out on the campground trail around the cliff tops, with steep stairwells giving us access to a couple of the famous "ovens", the deep sea caves where the waves crackle and boom at high tide.

It's such a back of beyond place that its history is remarkable. This was the site of a gold rush, a boom which created an instant town of 1,000 souls. Six years later the boom was over and the town was gone. But it was strange to think of prospectors camped out along the cliffs and by the caves, clinging onto patches of ground which might yield miracles, but probably didn't.

After the trail, we had a lazy lunch at the campground cafe, the "Miner Diner". Then we moved house from site 412 in the field to site 115, more of a "wuthering heights" spot overlooking the cliffs. The usual trade off - this time we're not plugged into electricity and water, so the price drops significantly, but it's much more memorable being out on the edge.

We spent the afternoon in Lunenberg, finding out why it's a World Heritage site. It's somewhere I fell in love with via guide book while planning the trip - and it lives up to its billing. The design is just as it was when refugee German Protestants arrived here in the mid-eighteenth century. The settlers were professionals, and they were proud of their creation. Their generous wooden homes are anything but plain - there seems to have been a competitive "carpenter gothic" culture. There are delicately painted eaves, "wedding cake" dormers, "widows walk" balconies, and creative flower gardens. Though it could be twee, and it is a tourist favourite, it still feels like a healthy, lively community.

The best building of all is the literally fantastic Lunenberg Academy which sits on top of the hill - an astonishing massive architectural fantasy, which is still today the town's elementary school. We had a happy hour wondering outside it, Tom enjoying the playground, while I looked at old tombstones in the tree-filled graveyard spread below. Many of the names were German, and some of the tombstones were marked "Master Mariner" or even "Burial at Sea", really reflecting the town's heritage. And there's something profound which I can't really articulate about the school - a place for the future - overlooking a garden of the past. Somehow very soothing.



For a couple of hours during the afternoon the sky turned black, and we dodged into the nearest likely shelter, which was the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. Tom loved the aquarium, where we met lobster and salmon and rays and eels - and we all learned a great deal more about the whaling trade. The museum's descriptive panels were surprisingly neutral - but then I thought about how much this town, and Nova Scotia, must have benefited hugely in times past from slaughtering whales just as it benefits hugely from the "whale-watching" business today. One caption noted that whale hunting continued off this coast up until 1972.

A very convivial supper, a slightly dazed stroll back through town to Harvey's carpark, and home to our campsite on the cliff again, with the wind blowing hard, and the waves frothing around below our bedroom window.

Tomorrow we're on the road again, north for the ferry to New Brunswick, then to Maine, and so Boston beckons.

Day 48. On the Road again: lighthouses to Lunenberg.

Goodbye Nancy and thankyou - for everything, including leading us to the very edge of Halifax and waving us off! We hope to return the favour, or at least cook supper for you in Massachusetts!

Tonight we're in Ovens Park, Ovens actually meaning sea caves, which run around the base of the cliffs on which we're happily camped.

This is the south shore of Nova Scotia, and it's gorgeous. Candy-striped lighthouses, tiny fishing coves, primary coloured boats bobbing just so against the deep blue water. So picture-postcard that it's actually hard to take pictures - every one a cliche - but I think we've now accepted that snap-happy tourism IS our way of life...

We were going to skip Peggy's Cove because it's where everybody goes. (That strange snobbery, you know, where everyone ELSE is a tourist but you're an independent traveller.) But Nancy said we just had to see it, and she was right. It's filled with gaggles of visitors snapping identical pictures of the octagonal lighthouse, trekking between faded fishing shacks. But it is really memorable.

The lighthouse stands guard over a massive spread of sheets of granite rock, with waves breaking into huge high showers of spray. We had a lot of fun, plus excellent lattes on the way back to the carpark with the most courteous attendants yet ("Welcome to Peggy's Cove,and do feel free to stay all day"). Hoorah.

Then a lovely lovely drive all around the wiggles and curves of the coast, something like Cornwall meets the Greek Islands...seeing the boats coming back from lobster fishing, and wondering who lives in those pretty clapboard houses with vast porches presiding over long velvet lawns by the sea. (We did find another couple who live in a GMC, dropping by at King Neptune's Campground to say hello to Bill and Neetsa,  friends of Paul and Nancy's - I love the fact that just turning up in Harvey made us Part Of The Family.)

Just when we were getting seriously hungry, we came to the Trellis restaurant at Hubbards, and some of the BEST grub. R and I both had smoked salmon quiche with asparagus and goat cheese, which came with a salad (some magic combination of spinach, strawberries, asiago cheese, and poppy seed dressing), then shared an obscenely enormous piece of gingerbread with cream on top. Tom was so defeated by his big bowl of homemade mac and cheese, that he lay down and snoozed in the RV as we took off again.

We were going to drive straight to the campsite but were seduced by the town of Mahone Bay. It's famous for the first view you get, of three church steeples in a row. When we'd driven past those, and past the quaint marina, and craned our necks to look at the fascinating rooflines and woodwork of the 18th century houses on Main Street, we were finally captured by the multicoloured frontage of Dad's Icecream, and forced to pull over. We had a minor shopping frenzy too (Mum and Margaret should be pleased), and somehow it was after five when we left.

We left the UNESCO world heritage site of Lunenberg for tomorrow (so many sights, feeling dizzy), and drove on to this tiny campsite at the end of a lot of woods and water. I'm ignoring the strains of "Live Music!!" which are drifting over, having failed to realise that was one of the attractions, but you can't have everything...After a 99 mile drive today, it feels just right to be here, and I am resolved to persuade Mum and Dad that they should fly to Halifax next summer so they can blog their own lighthouse views... and Mum, the quilt pic was for you ! xx

Day 47 Halifax, Nova Scotia: happy house-guests

We woke up in a bed with blankets, in a room with curtains, in a house with foundations - very strange. We made ourselves at home - Paul and Nancy basically said, here's the key, we've got things to do, make yourself welcome - the perfect hosts.

So I spent the morning putting through four loads of laundry, while looking over the Harvard Course Catalogue online, blogging and reading a proper newspaper (the Globe and Mail). Tom had a morning of LEGO. And Richard had the small task of lying flat on his back under Harvey, covering himself with oil and sweat while replacing dodgy joints and axles.

And we had a bonus afternoon in Halifax, which does seem to be a very good size for a city. It's walkable, green, historic, and somewhat funky round the edges. Our unexpected visit has coincided with the International Buskers Festival, so there's free entertainment on the waterfront (juggling, gymnastics, Houdini-like escapes, and a lot of student banter).

Plus we got to visit the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic - which is packed full of exhibits from full size sailboats to Cunard memorabilia (Samuel Cunard being a Nova Scotia native). There are two stand out exhibitions, which make you realise that this is a city which went through hell a century ago.

First - April 1912. When the Titanic went down on its maiden voyage from southampton to New York, Halifax was the nearest city able to send out ships to find the survivors. And to pick up the hundreds of bodies floating on the water, and bring them back to land for Christian burial. The exhibition is small, but poignant. The first thing you see is a deckchair, sitting behind glass, one of the few surviving originals. Tucked into a corner, there's a big book which logs all the passengers by class, and notes who survived, and you realise that of course it was largely First Class passengers who made it to the lifeboats.

As if it wasn't enough for Halifax to take on the grim task of burying the bodies ("the church bells rang for days"), then came December 1917, when two ships collided in the harbour, one carrying tons of TNT, and the truly massive explosion wiped out much of the city in an instant. 1700 people died. That night, a ferocious blizzard came over, and many who'd survived the blast then froze. It's all brought home in a short film (made 1991 I think) with the frail voices of a few of the survivors. And I was really moved by a cabinet that displayed two little leather satchels. They were the book bags of two brothers. There were three, and a few moments latter, there were only two - the surviving boys think they were protected from the blast by the padding of their satchels on their backs.

Terribly sobering I know, but the museum also did a great job of illuminating all sorts of maritime themes - in quite a small space we had a sentimental look at the history of the great cruiseliners (memories of the QEII and QMII), a tour of shipwreck archeology, and a thoroughly gruesome rendition of What They Did to Pirates as well...

Oh, and Tom thoroughly enjoyed being attacked by a giant Kraken.

Back outside in the blazing heat (must have been 90 degrees), we saw more busking (man somersaults off ladders, leaps through ring of fire etc), and then Nancy came down to join us for a jolly supper at Saltys bistro on the harbour.

The Listers were all pretty much ready for bed after that, and Nancy persuaded us to take a final tour around the Halifax docks. Which revealed to us the Friday night Classic Car Club rendezvous (Corvettes! Mustangs! Hotrods!) right by all the shipping-and-loading activity... and a movie scene being filmed in a very posh street where we caught a glimpse of a grand house covered top to toe in Christmas lights, and about a dozen attendant trailers.... all somewhat surreal, in keeping with our entire existence in Halifax.