St Martin’s, New Brunswick

As we were checking in to the RV Park Tom spotted a sign for a Pitch and Putt tournament the following day; so Adele signed up to play there and then. After we had hooked up RamblingRover she headed off to play a practice round on the course. Tournament day dawned bright and beautiful – so we were told – anyways the intrepid Adele nearly missed out as she was last to arrive on the first tee where 14 people were waiting for her to turn up at 10 am - she didn't realize this was a serious annual tournament; totaling 36 holes, 18 in the morning and another 18 after lunch. The scores were added up and much to her delighted surprise Adele won the Ladies trophy; that was a quick introduction to many people in the RV Park who hailed Adele for the next 4 days as Lady Champ! That night the Park had a fireworks display, Adele thought they were for her – they were to celebrate New Brunswick day which we think might be the first Monday in August (really it’s an excuse to have a long weekend in August). We were celebrating early.

The little town of St Martin’s has two covered bridges; another attraction is that the tide ebbs for miles out of the harbor at low tide, so much so that we never saw water in the harbor anytime we passed. A part of the development of the Fundy Trail starts in St Martin’s just past one of its two covered bridges so on Sunday we drove along the trail which has some beautiful views of the Bay of Fundy and an Interpretive Center from which we went down to the Salmon River and watched hundreds if not thousands of salmon swimming upstream, it was wonderful a wonderful sight to watch. The last time we saw so many salmon was when hanging over Salmon Weir Bridge in Galway, Ireland. The Bay of Fundy has many salmon hatcheries; it’s particularly suited for farming as the bay is washed out twice a day by the high tides. We went to Music on the Trail that afternoon featuring a very gifted fiddle player who, when he discovered we were Irish, played an Irish gig and Danny Boy especially for us. Once against we were very popular with people from the audience who came up to us after the concert to tell us of their Irish ancestry; we’re finding there are many of Irish descent in the Maritimes.

However, our lasting memory of St Martin’s will be that the GPS told us to turn right out of the RV Park following the directions we ended up on a logging road (this is a dirt road with lots of large stones and pots holes; we had to keep going for about 4 miles before we found a place to turn the RV, tow dolly and car. Our teeth rattled, so did the pots and pans, thankfully no damage as we had battened down the hatches as per usual before taking to the road. The back of the RV and the Bug looked like we had been off-roading; which we were. We passed the RV Park again, caught the freeway a half a mile on. An experience never to be forgotten; now we can laugh but at the time we were worried - perhaps no more Blogs!!