Monday July 19th

The journey continues! Left Quebec city on Sunday morning, picked up our hire car at the airport and headed north east along the southern shore of the St Lawrence River. Here ensued much discussion as I continued to exclaim about how huge the river is and Murray continued to point out that the blokes on the cruise on Saturday had called it the St Lawrence Seaway, so of course it is huge! Whatever it is properly called, it is enormous and each view across to the northern side provoked another exclamation to that effect.
At Riviere du Loup (Wolf River for all our monolingual friends!) we turned south east and began the journey towards New Brunswick, the border of which is just before Edmundston. Just after Edmundston the landscape changed as we entered the northern end of the Appalachian Mountains (I had no idea they continued this far north) and the surroundings became much more undulating and rocky, although not mountainous. Trees covered most of the area through which we were travelling so it was just a sea of different greens, with the occasional large river and lake - very beautiful.
We eventually made it to Woodstock, the oldest incorporated town in New Brunswick (1856), although it was actually founded in the 1780s. The town is at the junction of the St John and Meduxnekeag Rivers (I am sure you don't need to know that, I just love the name) and the bed and breakfast we stayed in was gorgeous - built in 1878 and restored by its present owners. Another of the old timber houses I keep being astounded by, as you can see here:

This morning we continued on through New Brunswick and travelled down to the coast of the Bay of Fundy at St. Andrews. This town is reputedly the oldest resort town in North America and was founded in 1783. More remarkable old wooden buildings - we just want to keep taking photographs! We also found some very nice coffee here - another major achievement. If you look carefully you can see me in the corner enjoying said coffee surrounded by said old wooden buildings:

The Bay of Fundy has the distinction of having the highest tides in the world, with the largest differences of 10 to 15 metres between high and low tides being at the eastern end of the Bay. At St Andrews the difference is between 7 and 8 metres and this photo Murray took of the wharf at low tide this morning shows this very graphically:

 

Next 'port' of call was St George, the 'Granite Town' into which we went to track the falls, gorge and fish ladder you can see here - very picturesque indeed.

From here we decided to go via Blacks Harbour because I pointed out to Murray that it is the home of the world's largest sardine industry and we thought we might be able to purchase some nice fresh sardines. Wrong! We found the processing plant but unlike many other things around, it wasn't picturesque, just large. We did however find a bargain 'case' of sardines in the local supermarket (along with a second hand knife and fork to eat them with) - just $10.95 for 18 cans. Murray is going to have such fun and here he is making a start on them when we stopped for lunch overlooking New River Beach:

Thought it time we made for St Martins, which we duly proceeded to do, arriving there about 4 oçlock. Found our bed and breakfast, checked in and met Barb and Mike so after moving our gear in we headed off for a look around. I had already taken some photos from our balcony to see if we could see the tide movement. Drove down to the harbour to see the fishing boats, and Murray discovered from some locals working on one of the boats that the lobster season is closed. Apart from the fishing boats, which are always gorgeous, we were entranced by the covered bridges, of which there are 73 still standing in New Brunswick.  Accoding to Barb they were also called 'Kissing Bridges' as that was the local lads took their girls for their first kiss, hoping, as Barb said, "that Daddy woudn't see them and shoot him". We aren't sure of the reason for the covering - Barb thinks it was to protect the bridge from ice. Anyway, here to finish off is a view of the harbour and the larger of the two covered bridges over the Irish River, with the pedestrian walkway with its 'windows' evident: