EXPLORE THE BEST IN THE WEST
Escape the winter blues and ride California’s Pacific Coast Highway
There are surfers paddling out through the waves below me. The sky is a brilliant blue, the road I’m parked beside is baking and my Z1000SX is pinking quietly after a fabulous ride. This is California in a nutshell. It’s a sun-kissed biking paradise, with Highway One – the Pacific Coast Highway – capturing everything that’s great about this most extreme of the States. California’s full of surprises – and it had caught me out at the start of my ride on PCH. I rolled the bike out of the garage of my AirBnB into a chilly mist so solid I could barely see the other side of the street. “It’ll burn off by lunchtime,” my host assured me… but by lunchtime I wanted to be a long way south. Preferably in the sunshine.
Inland in sunshine
So I switch tack and ride down the sun-kissed spine of California’s central valley to pick up a road recommended by MCN reader Rick Janes: Highway 130 through Del Puerto Canyon. It twists its way into the hills in ever tightening, steeper curves. And was utterly deserted… I press on, easing the SX up the steep slopes of Mount Hamilton, crowned with white-domed observatories. From there I headed out to the coast, getting lunch in Sonora before riding through the Big Basin Redwood Park. The road was quiet, twisty and involving. I picked up Highway One again at Santa Cruz – the fabulous coastal town where was filmed – but I didn’t much time to explore, as my overnight stop was just outside Monterey.
Big Sur prize
In the morning I pick up the Pacific Coast Highway again – and this, really, was where the best riding begins as the road headed out along Big Sur. Steep hills rise on the inland side, with low dunes between the road and the abrupt drop to the sea. I press on – but had to stop at the iconic Bixby Bridge, chatting with local Bob who had restored his Harley flat-tracker, converting it from race bike to road bike. Then I realise I’d made a fuelling error by not filling up in Monterey – meaning I’d have to do so in Big Sur – paying more than $6 a gallon (nearly double what it costs in some states).
‘Three fantastic days of great corners and brilliant sights’ ‘It rises and falls like the waves lashing the beaches’
Still, it was worth it to ride this road. It rises and falls like the waves lashing the beaches below. I stop at another of Rick’s recommendations: the café in Nepthene, boasting a terrace with million-dollar views, and get chatting with Yamaha Tracer 900 rider Alan, who told me of a detour not to be missed – an old military road climbing over the hills from Highway One to the central valley.
Mist opportunities
As I climb towards Ragged Point, the sea starts to conjure more mist for me. At first it’s atmospheric, tendrils of cloud reaching out across the road like the steam off a witch’s cauldron… but as I get further south it’s just thick and cold. I stop at Piedras Blancas to see the elephant seals but the mist was so dense that the few parked up on the sand were just indistinct brown shapes, like Ford-Fiesta-sized sleeping bags.
It’s LA, baby…
In the morning, I head back towards the coast. Highway One merges with the bigger 101 for this leg, a dual carriageway climbing over the hills to the coast… and I descended towards Grover Beach and into more mist. Would it ever lift? I met Rick at 8575 Perfetto Caffe, to thank him for his help with planning the trip (and to get the best espresso in America) and he suggested a mist-avoiding tweak to the route – and rather than the next, less-scenic stretch of Pacific Coast Highway, I head inland on Foxen Canyon Road.
That was a great tip – a flowing ride in perfect sunshine. Better still, by the time I’d visited the cutesy Danish town of Solvang and taken Highway 154 over the San Marcos Pass to Santa Barbara, the mist had finally left the coast. There’s another stretch of the 101 from Santa Barbara, before the PCH separates to run beside the Ocean. The roads merge again through busy Ventura, before Highway One peels off again at Oxnard.
I stop at Santa Monica, then crawl on to Long Beach, a few miles short of Dana Point, the end of the PCH. It’s given me three days of fantastic riding, with great corners and brilliant sights and it’s taken me to places that have surprised and delighted me. But that’s the California experience in a nutshell – all on this one great ride. Hire a bike from Eaglerider in San Fransisco or Los Angeles and enjoy the ride – either one way, over three days, or taking a week and making a loop with highway 395 and the Yosemite National Park. The best time to ride PCH is September or June, when you’re most likely to have full days of sunshine, with less risk of the mist created by seawater evaporating in the high-summer sun.