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There are many and various ways to start a cycling holiday, and pedalling into a hurricane is not one of them. ‘Heavy showers in the Bay area’ was what we’d been led to expect on the first afternoon of our 500-mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, but as we cycled down hill in to Pacifica, blinded by wind-driven rain, it began to seem that this might be a bit more than a heavy shower.

Then Simon punctured. And it began to get dark. So our intended destination of Montara lighthouse and its youth hostel went skittering away on the screaming wind and we booked a cheap motel in search of warmth and dryness.
Some start to the trip. Where was the balmy weather for which California is known? Actually it was several hundred miles south, around the San Diego area. San Francisco is more like London than Los Angeles when it comes to the weather - totally unpredictable. I’ve been there in June when the temperature struggled to reach 15 degrees, whilst in mid-February it’s been up at 25 degrees and I’ve cycled in shorts and t-shirt. A week after that it snowed.

By the following morning our ‘hurricane’ had blown itself out and we awoke to clear blue skies and warm spring sunshine. But before leaping onto our bikes to head on south there was breakfast to attend to. The one thing any cyclist in the States can seek comfort from is the thought that they will never be far from food - lots of it, instantly available, in endless varieties, and very reasonably priced.

Having fuelled the inner man we sketched out our route for the day. The aim was to get to Pigeon Point, where there was another lighthouse, which had been converted to a youth hotel. As it was an easy 40-mile ride away we were able to take our time and enjoy the first full day’s riding along the exhilarating switchback coastal roads. We passed the spectacular but unstable cliffs of the Devil’s Slide area which, thanks to the kind of rain we’d recently experienced and the close proximity of the San Andreas fault, are regularly falling into the sea, road and all, and by mid-afternoon Pigeon Point hove into view. Here we were able to see our first grey whales spouting their way north on their spring migration from Mexico’s Sea of Cortez to Alaska. They became a frequent sight as we made our way down the coast, and a few weeks later in Mexico I was to see the last of the whales leaving their winter refuge.

The weather was now becoming more appropriate to California, with mostly unbroken sunshine, but even so a ride of more than a few days requires quite a bit of planning ahead. Whilst daily distances are important, it’s even more vital to ensure that you’ll have somewhere to stay at the end of each day, especially when you’re travelling without a tent as we were. For this reason our daily mileages fluctuated wildly, from a mere 35 miles or so on easy days to over 70 when there was no accommodation at any point between start and finish.

Santa Cruz, day three’s stopover, was an easy ride and we cruised into town to watch the surfers in action at Steamer Lane. When I say ‘cruise’ I mean it too - there’s no other way to hit this easy-going town of students, surfers and relic hippies. Having said that, not all of the residents are totally mellow. Leaving the following day we were noticed by a local cyclist as we tried to make sense of our map. He offered to lead us out of town as ‘the route’s a bit confusing even if you live here’. How could we refuse? Five miles down the road I was beginning to wish we had. I suppose I should have suspected that a man dressed from head to toe in lycra, astride a lightweight road bike with tyres as thin as razor blades might set a stiff pace. It was all we could do to keep up on our laden-down mountain bikes as he blazed a trail and made pleasant conversation in return for which we replied with strained grunts and squeaks.

Monterey was our destination, and being ‘Steinbeck country’ it immediately conjured up images of the writer and his renegade cronies pulling scams and sinking beers on Cannery Row whilst fishing boats disgorged their catches at the quayside and sea lions honked just offshore. The boats and sea lions are still there, and so is Cannery Row, but with the exception of the sea lions the whole lot has gone upmarket and there’s no doubt that Steinbeck would have a few choice words to say about the money being raked in by the tourist industry on the back of his novels.
Far from being home to the hucksters and ne’er-do-wells of whom Steinbeck waxed lyrical, you need a fat wallet and smart pants to make the most of the place these days. The wallet will get you a meal in the over-priced restaurants, the smart pants will get you into spots such as the Ansel Adams Gallery on Seventeen Mile Drive (‘original’ prints a snip at only $12,000 each), where cycling shorts and t-shirts don’t go down a bundle. Fortunately the best attraction of all, Monterey Aquarium, has no problems with casual dress and this alone is worth a visit to the town - especially its sea otter tank.

Despite having sold its soul to tourism Monterey still manages to carry it off as a major tourist destination, although this is partly on account of the scenery just to the south.
Big Sur, the inspiring 90-mile stretch of coastline in question, was originally called ‘El Sur Grande’ (The Big South), a more fitting name for an area flanked on one side by the booming Pacific and on the other by the redwood forests of the Santa Lucia Mountains, which rise to almost 2,000 metres inland. The highway on which we were cycling took 18 years to construct using convict labour, and was opened in 1937. Most people travel it in cars, motorhomes or buses, but this way you barely get a glimpse of the real Big Sur - take my word for it, a bike may be harder work but it’s well worth the effort.

At Rocky Creek bridge I took a break for some tucker and to admire the coastline. Below in the glittering blue Pacific half a dozen dolphins were playing in the surf, skimming in just below the face of the breakers then flipping out over the crest as the wave broke. I was joined by another cyclist, Martin from Switzerland, other than my colleague Simon the first self-propelled traveller I’d seen since leaving San Francisco. He’d just ridden down from Alaska via Hawaii which made our wee trip seem very sad, although whilst I envied his journey I didn’t envy the amount of gear he was carrying.

That night the three of us enjoyed a few beers at one of the area’s few bars followed by a lie-in the next morning on our first ‘rest day’. Awaking to the sound of bird life and the wind through the redwoods, I reflected that the relative isolation and rural calm of Big Sur must promote a certain harmony and neighbourliness amongst the residents, only to discover later in the day that it seems to have had quite the opposite effect. As I returned to the motel in the early evening after watching whales off Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Beach, I found that the State Troopers were out in force and had a couple of people handcuffed and ready for a visit to the local jail. Apparently knives and shotguns had just been wielded during a fracas in the bar and the local constabulary were called in to help out. When we heard shouting and load oaths issuing from the same establishment later that night we locked the door and stuck our noses into our books rather than venturing out to mingle with the natives.

The best cycling of the entire trip was the leg from Big Sur to Hearst Castle - a 72-mile haul with several thousand feet of ascent and descent, which required an early start. And sure enough, within five minutes of leaving Big Sur village the rain started, which meant that not only were we soon pretty damp but much of this spectacular stretch of coastline was shrouded in mist. In a way this gave it ‘atmosphere’, but it would have been nice to have had less atmosphere and more sunshine.

The sun did eventually show itself in the early afternoon as we were approaching the biggest two climbs of the entire ride. We had a good excuse for a break on the first of these when a knackered old car broke down in front of us and a couple of pretty vacant California girls emerged from its interior looking useless. All we could offer was a push, which actually got their engine running again, and as we clambered back onto our bikes and continued to edge our way up the hillside they brapped past in a cloud of fumes on their way to Airheadville.

Our eventual destination for the day was San Simeon, which we reached at nightfall after having stopped off just outside town to wander amongst an elephant seal colony on one of the local beaches - big, fat, smelly and not the kind of creature you’d want to bump into on a midnight skinny dip.

The following day we paid a visit to Hearst Castle, the flamboyant former-home of newspaper magnate Randolph Hearst. Hearst was the inspiration for Orson Welles’ ‘Citizen Cane’, had an annual income greater than that of many small countries and was not averse to spending it. Much of his cash went on building and furnishing the castle, which, with it’s extravagant architecture and vast array of religious artwork and artefacts from medieval Europe is breathtaking, bewildering and, to be honest, rather tacky - although the two swimming pools are magnificent. The castle was also a watering hole for Hollywood stars who would motor up from LA, and even world statesmen such as Churchill were frequent visitors.

San Simeon itself also owes its existence to Hearst, having been built largely to import construction materials for the castle. The Hearst Castle is now owned by the US National Parks Service, and today the town’s mile-long stretch of motels rely for their living almost entirely on this bizarre monument to one man.

We left San Simeon the following day, and the sun was shining as we pulled into Cambria for some wheel repairs at the local bike shop. Setting off again we could feel that we were approaching Southern California. The appearance of palms, a warmth in the wind that we hadn’t felt further north, and an increasingly turquoise sea as LA edged ever nearer told us that we were now in the California of dreaming and songs. Unfortunately it doesn’t compare in terms of scenery and drama with the land to the north, and to be honest, we would have been better off finishing our ride at San Luis Obispo having, perhaps, begun north of San Francisco.

The surprising thing about our journey was that although most of it (the approach to LA excepted) provided riding varying from spectacular to relaxed we’d seen only three other pannier-laden cyclists on the entire route, two of these being a middle-aged English couple with Union Jacks fluttering from their frames. Why so few people should choose to discover California’s coast by bike is a mystery, but who’s complaining - it’s nice to keep the odd mystery under wraps.

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