West Coast 2018

The Big Sur! It’s a famous stretch of road which hugs the cliff along a very remote coastline. The Big Sur itself is a river – which neither surges nor is big. Nevertheless the scenery is exceptionally dramatic with magnificent waterfalls, immense bridges and winding roads that are carved into the hillside. None of which I was able to do justice with the camera on my phone. The day was, unsurprisingly hilly but we made the 60 miles we had expected to quite easily and ended up at a small campsite with no tap water or electricity- Kirk Creek. We had by this time adopted Spencer – a 27 year old aerospace engineer from Oregan. Given that the campsite was by the sea we went for a swim – the water was still hideously cold but had the added quality of being filled with dense seaweed – we were daunted and enjoyed our (brief) dip, following it up with washing off the seaweed in the creek.

Today was one of those days that feels like several days rolled into one – for the best reasons, not just an epic riding day.More thanks to extra Whale watching trip We only covered 44 miles (from Santa Cruse to Monterey) but there is much to report. We stopped at Moss Landing as per usual for some breakfast (although given that it was 11.07 they had stopped serving it – I had a flashback to that movie when the guy threatens the staff at gunpoint because they wouldn’t serve him breakfast at a couple of minutes past 11am a I resisted the urge to reenact the scene and had a burger instead). The stop was well worth it – we saw two sea otters playing in the harbour (sea otters are a fair bit larger than normal otters but equally playful). ) We couldn’t resist the motorbike sculpture on the roadside a little further on… The ride was very flat and passed through clearly very productive land – but we were surprised by the amount of labour that was required to till and harve