The next stage of the US mega-trip took me back up the East Coast and then inland to Albany and the Hudson Highlands. We drove north, past the Saratoga battlefields and then on to the mighty lakes which provide a crucial link in the chain of waterways that runs from Quebec to New York.

We then took a replica eighteenth-century batteau from Ticonderoga on LakeChamplain to Bolton Landing on Lake George. The start of the journey necessitated a rather long and uphill portage from the La Chute river to the banks of Lake George.

Six crew sweated and heaved the batteau wagon under the blazing sun to the crystal clear waters of Lake George, where bald-headed eagles and ospreys flew, and where raccoons stole our food.

We think that this is the first time that anyone has portaged a batteau between these lakes for 220 years.

Many of the soldiers’ journals from the 1770s remark on the beauty of this place, and now I know why.