BIG SUR

Ah, yes! The two lane blacktop is all well and good, but what you really want to do, if you’re ever fortunate enough to find yourself driving around California, is to open the windows (or put down the top if you’re in a convertible) and drive down the Pacific Coast Highway with the breeze and the sea-salt in your hair, and there really seems to be no better place to do that, if you’ve got a few hours to spare, than “Big Sur”.

“Big Sur”, a 70 mile (or so) stretch of spectacular coastline which may (or may not) be named after the Big Sur river which finally opens into the Pacific Ocean at one point along its length (which came first, the naming of the river or the region?), and which has now probably featured in more American movies and car commercials than you can shake a fist at. Once again the public at large becomes over-familiar with the image of a place even if they remain unfamiliar with it in reality, as the place itself still manages to take your breath away as you drive along its length, with each twist and turn of that fragile ribbon of highway, as it barely clings on to the crumbling coastline, making you want to pull over and stop for a while and just drink in the view.

I’m not kidding, either, when I mention that it is a “crumbling coastline”. One of the volunteer Park Rangers at Point Lobos State Park did make some comment about thinking that the road had “reopened” after some “repair work” when we mentioned our plans for the rest of that day. Strangely, it had never even crossed my mind that it might have been closed, but that would really have put the kibosh on it...

It is a short drive, in terms of U.S.A. journeys generally, and the number of miles actually travelled, but it is still likely to take up much of a day to cover the fairly short distance down the coast from  Monterey to Hearst Castle, not least because the twists and turns that the miracle of engineering that is the coast road mean that you are often unlikely to progress at more than thirty miles an hour anyway as you brake in to yet another bend.

But when there’s so much to make you stop and goggle, from the scenery to the wildlife and the impressive bridges which have been built to make the highway even remotely possible, why would you want to hurry anyway?

And that’s not even taking into account the various other reasons that might cause you to stop. Paying an entry fee into any of the four or five State Parks along the route (although there may be more - I forget how many, but we may have missed one or two along the way) will cover your entrance fee for all of them that day and so, if looking at giant sequioa redwood trees is your “thing”, or waterfalls, or whale-watching, then you might find yourself pulling in to one of those for a while, too.

Or somewhere like “Nepenthe”… How could I forget “Nepenthe”…? That oasis of calm, once bought by Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, which is now a high quality restaurant upstairs and a rather impressive alfresco coffee house and snack lunch cafeteria on the lower level, both of which have the most spectacular views in the most peaceful of settings, all of which waits to be “discovered” about thirty miles along the route southbound.

I overheard one of my fellow customers bragging that he lived just down the coast (lucky devil!) and had “the same view, just thirty miles from here…” which, as you can imagine, I poured silent scorn upon as I sat down and drank my drink and drank in the ambience along with it.

I did not lean across and say “Then it’s not the same view, is it then…?” as making a “scene” would have really spoiled the mood, and, to be honest, when you’ve found somewhere so very perfect for you, you really don’t want to risk getting thrown out of there, do you? Especially as our food hadn’t arrived yet, because I haven’t yet mentioned the small but very important factette that they did serve up some of the most incredible burgers that I have ever tasted, which is rather wonderful if you like that sort of thing, but probably less persuasive if that’s not your particular bag.

It was a long, long day, and one which ultimately led to us arriving at our destination at sunset rather than at the more acceptable hour which we had expected to, but it was well, well worth the trip and whilst “getting there” might be half of the fun when travelling, that rather spectacular time of arrival was well worth the journey.

If only they had rented me a convertible…