Sunday 21 September 2025--Having been up the coast road as far as Hopewell already, we depart Alma inland, along 45 Road, which shortly turns into dirt and is slow going in a standard sedan. I'm hoping to see the Forty Five River Covered Bridge about eight miles along, but there is a road closure and detour, I suppose because the bridge is under repair. The detour takes us to a locality called New Ireland. The whole area we've been passing through is forested and sparsely populated, but St Agatha's Irish Catholic cemetery suggests it was not always so. We look through the stones, trying to glean what we can of the history of Irish immigration in this part of New Brunswick. Not much. The angle of the sun is good for photos. So it is, too, at Hillside Cemetery. This corner of the province is not as wild as the coastline we saw from the parkway the other day, but like that area, it seems to have a largely forgotten past. Old cemeteries are the only points of interest we can find on the map. At Prosser Brook, I see the name Mitton on several stones, likely cousins of mine. The Mittons were part of the influx of Yorkshire folk to the region, although my particular Mittons, at least, seem to have come later than the main migration in the 1770s. Jane Maria Mitton, born in Yorkshire in 1809, was my great-great-great grandmother. Her mother-in-law, my great-great-great-great grandmother Charlotte Letitia Thompson, was the daughter of one of the earlier Yorkshire arrivals.

Eventually we emerge into civilization in Salisbury, and make our way to Bouctouche, where we visit the Dune du Bouctouche. Here, a boardwalk winds along behind the beach, allowing the visitor to observe the dune and marsh without disturbing them. [I wrote more about it on 19 May 2022.] From there, we make our way to Shediac, where we are staying two nights.

I've passed through Shediac before, and have wanted to make a stay to try to get a better grasp of the zeitgeist. This is Acadian country, a part of the Maritimes dominated by francophone culture. There are some good restaurants here, most specializing in seafood. The one I'd scouted that looked to have a bar with a good choice of beers turns out not to be suitable. We end up in St Louis, a chain sports bar, not really the kind of place I want to hang out in when traveling, or any other time, for that matter. But it has some decent beer, and it's open later than anything else in town. Better than nothing.