After the leak, the racoons, the miserable weather and traveling 166 miles at 50mph (Peggy’s top speed) we were ready to relax and recoup at the Beauport campsite just on the outskirts of Quebec. We arrived at tea time and made ourselves chilli con carne for tea and cracked open a couple of beers ready to unwind…just as the heavy metal started to blast out of the car of the camp opposite. Like most, we can deal with the occasional bout of loud music but death metal in French is just not our cup of tea. We put on the Ipod to try to drown out the din and enjoy our meal. we gave up after 5 minutes and decided that turning the engine on would A, mask the racket and B,warm up the van (the weather was still abissmal). That’s when we discovered that we had a flat battery!!!!!!!! We had left the lights on!!! Nightmare! So now what do we do?? We daren’t ask the death metal drunkards opposite, and there were French only speaking people all around! We walked the mile to the entrance gate where we knew the guy spoke English and asked there. “we are not okay to do this” was the response to can you jump start our battery please! Aaarrrggg! Its like English health and safety mentalitly all over again! “if something goes wrong we can have blame”! What could POSSIBLY go wrong???? So like idiots we had to call our roadside assistance…Good Sams! We make the call and wait listening to the now amalgamated French death metal, drunken French death metal singers AND a new house party that has started up at 70 decibells playing cheesy 80’s music! It was like ‘Shameless’ but french! And quite scary! After only half an hour the french speaking Good Sam arrived in the pouring rain and gave Peggy the kiss of life. I felt a lot safer knowing that we could escape at any time should the death metal get physical or should the house party decend upon the campsite! We dug out the earplugs (yes, showing our age, even upto 3 years ago we would have joined in one of the parties!!) and tried to get some sleep. The police stopped the house party finally at about 3am and we think the campers opposite may have killed each other so we got a good 8 hours in in the end.

The next morning we had an appointment with Nanna, Mum Lesley, Aunts, uncles and nephews all at once on skype so headed for the free wifi in the carpark. Had a lovely chat with them and then with Mum Janet about our recent adventures, gave them the guided tour of Peggy and heard all about their adventures back home.

Next it was time for the Benjo bus into Quebec. Quite randomly a toy shop in Quebec puts on a free bus from all of the camp grounds into Quebec, stopping at the Benjo shop of course! So we hopped on for a free ride. We got off at the other end with white finger from holding on to try and stay in our seats as it was the bumpiest ride ever! I dont know how the elderly couple at the front kept their teeth in it was so bad! Once we arrived and accidently found the local hooligan hangout we eventually got ourselves in the right direction and headed for vieux Quebec. Up 4 flights of stairs, very steep hilly streets and some kind of excavaton site we found ourselves on Rue St Jean. A very stylish french cobbled street with gorgeous boutique shops, cafes and restaurants.

We mooched around Quebec aimlessly instead of following the herd and saw street dancers, cobbled streets lined with artwork and restaurants with amazing decoration on the outside. One had huge tin flowers with fairy light tendrills hanging down, one with huge knife, forks and spoons holding amazing plant pots spilling flowers everywhere and even a wooden pilon covered in leather scales, flowers and wire lizards! Stupidly I had taken the memory card out of the camera to download our last images so had no way of taking any pictures! Gutted! We had exhausted our already shattered legs by 6 and the white knuckle ride back wasn’t until 7.30 so to kill time we decided to treat ourselves to a glass of wine and a nibble at a small bistro we had spotted back on Rue St Jean. The wines were all organic and unique and the food all sounded divine (as it would described to perfection in a french accent) and the idea of the whole place was so different that we lost track of the time and had to run down the afore mentioned excavation site, mountainous hills and 4 flights of stairs for the bus back!!

What an adventure already. We had decided that we were going to rough it for the night so found ourselves a dark carpark and settled in. The next morning we set off on the 180 mile drive to Tadoussac with a view to go whale watching on Monday as the forecast had promised us sunshine for the day-fingers crossed!

We drove the hwy 137 with the Lawrence river on our right and lakes and forest on the left. The mist hung in the trees and danced on the lakes, hugging the odd adrenaline junkie in a canoe dtermined to endure the weather! The bleakness showcased the colours of the forest rather than them being bleached by the sun; the black, silver and burnt umber trunks against the coppery sage, blues and vivid greens of the saturated foliage beside the silky grey rock was a beautiful sight and just how we had imagined Canada.

We crossed the Saguenay Fjord from Bae Ste Catherine to Tadoussac on a car ferry, the excitement of spotting a whale on the crossing ridiculous but there all the same. We drove up to our camp on the river edge and booked in for the first whale watching trip the next morning and prayed for a sunny day!

PS.

Will update pics once we have internet access!

See what happens next in our wedding travel adventure!