Journey to the Californian desert

I have survived a journey by Greyhound bus! Dire predictions of lost luggage, drunken passengers and rude drivers meant I was a tad nervous as I waited at the San Francisco depot for my bus to Los Angeles, but, in the event, the staff were friendly and generally efficient and we reached LA early. There were delays there, resulting in a crowded room of remarkably cheerful passengers, but I managed to get on a different bus to the one I had booked, and arrived in San Diego 40 minutes earlier than planned. And my luggage came too!

Brown and blue - the colours of California

The landscape of central California is astonishing. For the first six hours of the seven/eight-hour journey, very little of the view from the windows changed. To the west, rolling, golden-brown hills of dry grasses, like rumpled beige carpets, were alleviated only by occasional power lines running along deep gullies or morose groups of black cattle picking at piles of hay. To the east, the vast agricultural plain that supplies so much of America's food stretched to the horizon, flat and featureless. Sometimes, we passed through huge fields of almond trees in perfectly straight lines, the ground below their spreading dark green branches dusty and brown. When we stopped for a comfort break at Avenal, the wave of heat was palpable on stepping out of the air-conditioned bus, but so dry is the air that it was soft, rather than oppressive. One tip for travelling this way - bring your own meals. The service station seemed full of the kind of food designed to induce instant heart attacks, and from the amount people were buying, I'm surprised there was anyone left to continue the journey. I discovered a forlorn packet of melon slices on a top shelf and twinned it with Kettle Chips, a favourite of mine at home, but sadly sickly and salty here. When American food is bad, it's really bad.

A (rather blurred) orchard of almond trees

A few hours later, we began to climb into the mountains between Angeles National Forest and Los Padres National Forest, past places with such beguiling names as Paradise Ranch or Violin Summit or, more appropriately, Hungry Valley. Engine grinding, we topped the pass and descended to the grimy sprawl of Los Angeles. Taking the freeway into the bus depot is definitely doing LA the unglamorous way! It would be fun to return to sample the delights that draw the A-list stars, but this time, I was just glad to escape the incessant urban ugliness and reach the San Diego hilltop house where I was staying. The view was terrific, with ranges of dusty hills and even a glimpse of blue from a rare lake, only marred by the inevitable freeway that streaked along the valley.

Sunset over San Diego hills

Like LA, San Diego is ringed about by freeways, and the car is definitely king. Even in San Francisco, I heard of one mother who will drive two blocks to pick up a takeaway and I didn't see many people walking here, bar the homeless people who clutch pathetic cardboard signs and, sometimes, medical equipment, a damning reminder of the appalling lack of affordable healthcare in this country. In southern California, distances are great and a satnav is vital, with different roads intersecting and winding around each other like a demented, overgrown Spaghetti Junction.

Fortunately, we soon left the traffic roar behind to venture inland to the scrub-covered hills that ring the Temecula wine country north-east of San Diego, where coyote and ground squirrels burrow and roadrunners skitter across the tracks. Here, the sandy hills peppered with great boulders and greeny grey bushes have an arid beauty to them. The clear, dry air affords far-reaching views to mountains that are topped with snow in winter, and the lowering sun of evening threads the dusty air with gold. We took to horseback to explore, stopping for a much-need glass of something chilled and sparkling at Keyways Winery (www.keywayswine.com), and climbed into the hills as the air cooled to marvel at the views. This is an equestrian paradise.

At the risk of sounding like a cheesy advertising campaign, sign up for alerts at the bottom of this site and be the first to read about hunting and cattle cutting Californian style in my next blog!

Just the thing for a summer's evening in southern California

The sun begins to set over the scrub

Looking into the hills above the Temecula wine country

Beginning the descent back to the valley

The next instalment of this blog will be somewhat quicker in coming - a combination of travelling and having my laptop die at a mere four weeks old (Acer Aspire One netbooks are to be avoided, for anyone considering buying one) meant that I have been slow to knuckle down. It may be time to bite the bullet and enter the Apple store on Chestnut Street...

Cruising Highway 1 to Monterey, Carmel and Big Sur

Americans love big cars. So much so, that, on picking up our hire car, the cheapest option Enterprise could offer, we were offered a Fiat 500 with as much enthusiasm as if it had been a clapped-out old Ford Escort. But we were delighted – it was a gorgeous little thing, brand new, shiny black and great fun to drive. And, as a combination of terrible maps (Americans haven’t quite embraced the concept of putting all the roads on a map of California), worse road signs and a refusal to use Satnav meant that we found some fantastic, but very tiny, roads, the Fiat turned out to be the perfect car. 

For more photographs, read through to the end. 
Images taken by Octavia Pollock and Sybil Cope

Our beloved Fiat 500 next to a more typical American car

The Fiat parked by Carmel beach

Setting off from San Francisco airport, I and Sybil Cope, an Irish friend and intern at not-for-profit organization 826 Valencia (http://826valencia.org/), which helps children develop their writing skills, headed west to the fabled Highway 1 that runs down the coast of California. We took a slightly roundabout (and not entirely planned) route around the vast and palatial Stanford University, then over the Los Altos Hills by way of Old La Honda Road. It wound up and up through forests of redwoods, which began hundreds of feet below us in a ravine and towered out of site above, their trunks straight and tall as Guards officers on parade. The odd postbox revealed the presence of cabins clinging to the precipitous slopes, and we overtook several dedicated cyclists determined to reach the top. Crossing Skyline Boulevard on the summit, we plunged down again through meadows and blossoming trees, eventually joining the main road to the coastal district of Pescadero.

Grey dunes from Highway 1 - where was the Californian sun?

Sadly, the cloud cover we thought we had left behind in San Francisco returned to dog us on our way south, but nothing could diminish the majesty of the Pacific. On reaching Monterey Bay, the sun came out, and the sea turned from gunmetal to sapphire, bordered by great pale sand dunes that threatened to engulf the road. Monterey Bay is home to some of the deepest waters in the world and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is the largest such sanctuary in the world by volume. What wonders lurk in its waters? The Loch Ness monster's summer lodging? The legendary Kraken? Vast cousins of the creatures housed in the renowned Monterey Aquarium?

The writer and Sybil on the shores of mysterious Monterey Bay

Safely on dry land, we found our B&B on the pretty main street of Pacific Grove, an historic village by Monterey full of cheerfully painted cottages and villas, many with plaques denoting the date of construction together with the original owner’s name. Our Gosby House Inn (http://www.gosbyhouseinn.com/), one of the Four Sisters collection of boutique B&Bs, was built by J. F. Gosby, a cobbler from Nova Scotia, in 1886-88. In order to accommodate increasing numbers of guests, he added on a room here and there as necessary to create a delightfully higgledy-piggledy building in the classic Californian Queen Anne style. Now, it is a charming inn with comfortable rooms, delicious afternoon tea cooked fresh every day and a decanter of something stronger set out ready each night for the guests’ evening tipple.

Gosby House Inn by night, courtesy of Four Sisters Inns

In the biggest sweet shop I have ever seen!

Original huts on Cannery Row

A wander along Cannery Row of John Steinbeck fame and a bowl of clam chowder ended the day, and we woke refreshed for the famous 17-mile Drive that winds past the astonishing houses of Pebble Beach. The kind of place where owners build a complete $1 million house to live in when their own is being renovated, only to knock it down afterwards, it is a cornucopia of excess, tempered by centuries of history from the Spanish explorers who first discovered the area and gorgeous views of the vast Pacific ocean. Sprawling Italianate piles shelter under the tall, grey Monterey cypresses, jumbles of fairy-tale turrets and battlements loom up on the slopes and, everywhere, vast windows make the most of the breathtaking views. From Spanish Bay to Bird Rock, from the Lone Cypress to Carmel Beach itself, the red line down the middle of the road leads from viewpoint to viewpoint, the private palaces rivalling the rocky shore at every corner. Carmel itself is beautiful, with a pretty main street of beguiling shops leading down to a sweep of white sand, off which we saw dolphins cavorting in the waves.

A summer house? A gatehouse? An extra bedroom?

 A Pebble Beach mansion channels a fairy-tale castle in its garden

The Lone Cypress, symbol of Pebble Beach, and genuinely ancient 

for America - 250 years old

Sea lions and sea birds crowded together on the appropriately named Bird Rock

Leaving the glamour of Pebble Beach behind, we pointed the little snub-nosed Fiat south again on Highway 1 to Big Sur. Those who had urged us to take the road had not exaggerated – it is breathtaking. Such are the views that it is easy to see why the authorities spend close to $1 million every year rebuilding the bits that fall into the sea. They were still at work – one section clinging halfway up a cliff was a single-track road held up by a few rickety pilings. At least we knew that if an American truck could make it without taking the whole thing into the Pacific, our Fiat could! Beyond the road, cliffs plunge into foam-flecked seas of deepest aquamarine, darkest blue and vivid green, broken by wide sweeps of white sand. On land, only a painter equipped with the richest of oil paints could do justice to the myriad colours of the hills, reds and neon pink, soft yellows and olive greens, splashed with bright green where tiny trickles ran down clefts to the sea. Two great bridges span the largest ravines, eagles soar above and occasional tracks wind down to houses perched precipitously on narrow ledges above the waves.

Looking towards Big Sur on Highway 1

Beyond Big Sur itself, where the road turns inland through forested valleys, we took a chance on a lane that led towards the sea in the hope of finding a sandy spot to have lunch. A sign, well off the main road, indicated Pfeiffer Beach and we wound through a sun-dappled valley that reminded me of Exmoor. Our hope that we had discovered a secret hideaway faded when we found a pay booth and a carpark, but the beach itself was worth it. A great rock guarded the entrance, fissured and broken by archways through which the waves crashed, and steep dunes led up to dry grassy hills behind. Walking north from the entrance, we left the most crowded part and settled down in a sunny corner to sunbathe in true Californian style. The winds that make sunbathing almost impossible on San Franciscan beaches were absent, and the constant roar of the waves drowned every other noise. Sourdough bread, salami and olives stuffed with ‘blue cheese’ completed a very happy picture.

Not a bad view from a picnic spot! The Pacific crashing on Pfeiffer Beach

Returning home to San Francisco the following day, we again left the beaten track and drove inland from Santa Cruz through vast areas of industrial farming. This is the garden of America, one of the most fertile areas in the States, and the scale is enormous. Warehouses containing every vegetable imaginable border the dusty roads and sprinklers pump out a mixture of water and fertilizer over hundreds of acres. Dozens of workers in wide-brimmed hats bend constantly to pick strawberries, almonds and artichokes, as huge trucks trundle off to the container ships and trains that transport the produce around the world. It is a stark contrast to the sleek, manicured streets of Pebble Beach. 

A cheerfully painted warehouse in the agricultural district

After one abortive attempt to cross the mountains via a lane that turned out to be closed, we took Mount Madonna Road over the pass, which afforded spectacular views of the agricultural district and the sea on the way up, then turned into a tiny, dusty track on the other side. We crept downwards as the sun shot the occasional beam through the towering redwoods, hugging the edge of the road and thanking our lucky stars for the tiny Fiat when a huge truck roared past round a corner. We probably gave him more of a fright than he gave us – little black Fiat 500s are probably as rare here as a summer shower.

Kicking up dust on the way down from Mount Madonna

A detour to Montalvo Arts Center (http://montalvoarts.org/) took us past the some of the worst of stereotypical American communities, temples to shopping and fast food in the form of sprawling malls only accessible by car. However, the villa was set up a winding drive in a secluded cleft in the hills, a suitable setting for the artists’ residences based there. Sybil's mother, Elizabeth, is an artist (http://elizabethcope.com/), and the family hosts similar residencies at their home in Ireland, Shankill Castle in Co Kilkenny (http://shankillcastle.com), hence the detour. The colours and sunshine may be richer here, but I wonder if soft Irish green and rolling hills might not be my preferred setting, far away from retail sprawl. It would be interesting to see what the same artist would produce in each place!

Sculptures in the Italianate garden of Montalvo Arts Center

Thankfully, we left the sprawl of San Jose and Saratoga behind to climb up into the hills once more, and traverse the ridge along Skyline Boulevard, which afforded glorious views of the San Francisco Bay and the city itself, hazy in the distance. As the light waned, we plunged west to the sea, and ended our trip on Grey Whale Beach, an almost empty sweep of sand where waves broke in glittering shards of gold and pink in the last rays of the setting sun. When California pays homage to the gods of Nature rather than the gods of shopping, it is one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

Grey Whale Beach - the perfect place to end our trip

We loved our little Fiat!

Psychedelic sweets in Monterey

Cannery Row, made famous by John Steinbeck

On our balcony at Gosby House Inn, with Californian 'Champagne' 

for Sybil's birthday!

Pretty houses in Pacific Grove

Views from Highway 1

Rocks off Pfeiffer Beach

No photographs can do it justice - the myriad colours of Californian hills

Waiting for passage through the roadworks on Bixby Bridge

Trying out a fellow traveller's conveyance in the middle of Bixby Bridge

The Lone Cypress on the 17-mile Drive

A hobbit home in Carmel

View from our lunch spot on Mount Madonna.

Apparently, mountain lions lurk among the trees...

The noble entrance of Montalvo Arts Center

Big butt and little butt

A slightly dirty butt after the dirt track over Mount Madonna

The view from Skyline Boulevard to San Francisco Bay

Happy campers on Grey Whale Beach

Foodie heaven in San Francisco

In Britain, we're very proud of our farmers' markets, with their homemade Scotch eggs, fresh vegetables and venison steaks, and rightly so. Up and down the country, people chose to browse the stalls for quality produce, instead of kowtowing to a vast supermarket. Country Life even ran a competition to find Britain's best (Edinburgh, championed by writer and chef Clarissa Dickson Wright, took the crown) in 2006, which was one of the first projects I worked on at the magazine. So there might be a tendency for us to feel as if we have the monopoly on these fantastic events, but California would challenge that assumption.

Every Sunday, at Fort Mason on the edge of the Bay, with a grandstand view of the Golden Gate Bridge, one of San Francisco's many local farmers' markets takes place. I strolled through there this weekend, and could have filled any number of baskets with delicious food. The market is certified by the non-profit Californian Farmers' Markets Association (www.cafarmersmkts.com), which was set up in 1994 by Gail Hayden and now looks after 700 markets throughout the Bay area, ensuring quality and independence. The Fort Mason one was bursting with the sweetest of peaches ('yen yen' ones are my new favourite), fresh asparagus, melt-in-the-mouth spoonfuls of honey that finished with a hint of vanilla and bottles of cloudy lemon cider. It was full of people, and it was possible to have a full lunch just by tasting the vast array of olives, cheeses (including a crumbly one with the wonderful name Foggy Morning), dips and chocolate cake laid out to entice customers. Crepes, rotisserie chickens and German sausages were on offer for those who wanted something more substantial, and a general air of bonhomie reigned. 

The setting for the Fort Mason farmers' market, with the Golden Gate Bridge

just visible in the haze beyond

And the CFMA does not cover every farmers' market in San Francisco. Almost every district has its own market, with the Ferry Building markets, on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, run by Cuesa (www.cuesa.org), being among the most famous. The Ferry Building on the Embarcadero, beloved by San Franciscans since it opened in 1898 with a 245ft clock tower based on the bell tower of Seville Cathedral in Spain, became a symbol of hope for the city when it survived the 1906 fires and has recently been restored to its former glory. Once the focal point for travellers arriving by sea, it is now thronged with people in search of something yummy for dinner. 

Alcatraz seen from the top of Fort Mason

It may be easy to dismiss American food as fatty and Americans as fat, but it's not always the case. The food  in San Francisco is fantastic - clam chowder in sourdough bread, anyone? - and it seems Californians really do care about buying good, local, fresh and healthy food. And it doesn't hurt that it's delicious!

The kindness of strangers

On my first visit to San Francisco last November, I had an encounter that underlined the unrivalled hospitality of Americans. Standing admiring the magnificent stained glass of Grace Cathedral at the heart of affluent Nob Hill - literally named for the nobs who built the splendid mansions that crowned the hill – my friend and I were approached by Charles Shipley, the cathedral verger. Some few minutes later, we had discovered any number of coincidences – he knew Worcester Cathedral in England, to which my school, King’s, was attached, and the nearby town of Malvern, home of the Morgan classic-car factory. He then happened to mention that he read Country Life every week and did we know it. I replied that yes, I knew it rather well, having worked as deputy chief sub-editor there for six years! Subsequent emails cemented our friendship, and a first day spent driving across the Golden Gate Bridge in his 1996 Oldsmobile was rather a good reintroduction to life here. His welcome has been echoed by other friends of friends – when an American says ‘you must come and stay’, even if they are only acting on an email from a mutual acquaintance, they actually mean it.

Charles Shipley, and a rather nice view!

The tradition of generosity is strong here, on a personal and civic level. Indeed, Grace Cathedral was itself a beneficiary of philanthropy. In the earthquake of 1906 and the ensuing fires that wiped out much of the city, the old Grace Church was lost, together with the Crocker family mansion. The Crockers subsequently gifted the site of their home to the Church, and the new cathedral was constructed on the plot between 1927 and 1964, work being interrupted by the Depression and the Second World War. A replica of Notre Dame, it is now home to a thriving community of church goers and music lovers, and overlooks Huntington Square, an oasis of green amid tall apartment blocks and grand hotels. Typically, the land was gifted to the city by Arabella Huntington, after her family’s home was also wiped out by the 1906 fires.

Grace Cathedral

Full of roses and centred on Fountain of the Tortoises, the square is frequented by dogs of all shapes and sizes, couples embracing, Panama-hatted gentlemen reading Ambrose Bierce and old ladies watching the world go by. Sitting writing my diary there, my attention was caught by a powerful young bull mastiff and his tattooed owner. It was easy to label them as a dangerous pair, to be avoided, but when the man’s other dog, an old Australian cattle dog, came and lay down by my feet, we got talking. He explained how his mastiff had been owned by someone who had tried to train him to be a fighting beast, but that he was trying to retrain him and acclimatize him to human company. The mastiff was handsome and played goofily with his owner, but there were flashes of his fierce nature when he took a dislike to someone. The man knew England slightly, and even paid compliments to our food – a rare happening indeed. He waxed lyrical about the fantastic cuisine on offer in San Francisco, especially, he said, in the Tenderloin district, a patch between Nob Hill and the Civic Center known for its less-than-savoury characters. I had been warned away, but his description of the Indian and Eastern food on offer was very tempting. (I did have to conceal a smile when he said that he came from between Tenderloin and Nob Hill: Tendernob. Perhaps the euphemism doesn’t translate…) All my pathetic prejudices aroused by the dog and its owner’s extensively tattooed arms had been thoroughly dispelled by another instance of San Franciscan friendliness.

A view across Huntington Square towards Grace Cathedral from
a very comfortable bench

I am sure that a great part of such welcoming behavior comes from the pleasure San Franciscans take in simply being here. No better example could there be than the attitude of a waiter in an Italian restaurant on Polk to a rare drizzly day. ‘It’s epic,’ he beamed, when we mentioned the rain in true British fashion. ‘I love the way the lights shine through the water.’ In England, such weather would be met by a groan. Here, it was a novel experience to be cherished. Admittedly, it’s easier to bear when you know that it probably won’t return for weeks, but such an attitude certainly makes for a better welcome.

At the end of Tenessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche Dubois says as she is led away by the doctors: 'I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.' In context, it is intensely poignant and symbolic of a lonely life bereft of loving relationships, but in America, the kindness of strangers is everywhere. It goes a long way towards making visitors feel at home, and, in San Francisco, no one feels like a stranger for long.

The back of Grace Cathedral from the corner of Sacramento and Jones

An exciting note to finish… I have just discovered a new flavor of Magnum ice cream to fall in love with – salted caramel! Scrumptious is the only word.

A last word to my English readers – apologies for the American spellings, but when in Rome (and using an American computer), do as the Romans do!