HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (10) - MENDOCINO MORNING

NOVEMBER 05

Almost accidentally, we’d managed to choose almost the perfect little hotel for ourselves in Mendocino, and, after enjoying a great meal in one of the local restaurants, we’d had a pretty good night’s sleep, and, with the prospect of breakfast being delivered to our room “between 8.45 and 9.00am”, I decided to get up early and go for a walk along the headlands.

Gathering together my camera stuff, I left the hotel as quietly I could and ventured out into the peaceful morning air and was blown away by how beautiful it all was. People quite rightly rave about Big Sur and the coastline south of San Francisco, but the road north is just as breathtaking, and Mendocino is such a pretty little town, the very one that used to double as Cabot Cove in “Murder, She Wrote”, that I’m amazed that no-one’s managed to come along and ruin it just yet.

The only reason I knew about the place was because I first visited Mendocino as a guest of the late Nancy and George Swift on my very first trip to the States way back in 1996. They were the parents of a friend of mine in the UK and took me in for a few nights when I was traveling “all alone” down the West Coast for the first time, and they made me very welcome, and introduced me to this splendid little town in which they lived. In fact, Nancy then traveled with me around California for a week and made that trip far more enjoyable than it might otherwise have been, with us returning to the coast, with all the delights of water beds, Whale Festivals, the rarest of rare  steaks, and the delights of Wondermash (long story) awaiting me.

Nancy and George are both long gone, now, and it did seem as if it might have been slightly crass to “name drop” them whilst there, or try to seek out their beautiful former home, but I’m so very glad that I met them because, nearly two decades on, they were able to give me this peaceful and beautiful hour on the headlands

Because, nearly twenty years later I woke up and, knowing that breakfast was still several hours away, headed off out into the early morning light to walk through the town and along the headlands as the sun was coming up behind the mountains, and the birds were twittering, and the waves were crashing, and take a few pictures of the town and its surroundings during that very well named “Golden Hour” around sunrise.

There was just something about the deep shadows and the low light that made the buildings look even more beautiful than they usually did. Ten minutes later and the view from the same spot might just look flat and ordinary again, and it might be far, far too bright to pick out any real details, but, for those moments on that Wednesday morning, so far away from the bangs, crackles and whistles of Bonfire Night at home, it was a lovely place to be.

The breakfast when I got back was pretty special, too.