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.

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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...