CTC Cambridge

Wednesday 15 January 2020 

Andy writes: It all started with "where shall we go this year?" We had cycled in India in 2017 and in Taiwan in 2018 so it seemed sensible for us to try a different culture this time. We therefore decided to visit the USA and cycle down the Pacific West Coast. The entire route runs from Vancouver in British Columbia down to San Diego in southern California.

We didn't have the time to cycle the whole route, as we were limited to a maximum of three weeks away from the family, so we decide to ride the section from Seattle to San Francisco. This is a distance of just over 1000 miles and took us down the Washington coast, along the iconic Oregon Coastal Trail, and on through northern California to San Francisco.

Day-by-day itinerary below

We planned our route using MapMyRide, with an average daily mileage of about 55 miles and two rest days, in Newport Oregon and in the Redwoods National Park in northern California.

We stayed in hotels and inns along the way and booked our accommodation either directly or using booking.com. The places we stayed in turned out to vary greatly in quality and comfort, and we decided that a booking.com rating of over 9 was not necessarily sufficient for the Carlyles.

We took our Condor gravel bikes as we were unsure of the type of roads we would encounter.

We flew to Seattle via Vancouver and then took the Amtrak Trailway bus to Seattle. From there we took a ferry to Bremerton where our cycling tour began. After we reached San Francisco we caught the Amtrak Coastrider (train) for our final leg to Los Angeles.

Our planning bible was the classic guide Bicycling the Pacific Coast – a complete route guide, Canada to Mexico by Vicky Spring and Tom Kirkendall. The route is described as "traversing along some of the world's most scenic coastline to palm-lined beaches. More than a route, this is an adventure where incredible scenery is topped off with visits to national parks, a national recreation area and several national historical monuments plus numerous state parks".

We rode north to south to take advantage of the prevailing wind, and in September/October to avoid the main tourist season whilst allowing us weather that was kind to cyclists. In the event we had three half days of rain riding through Oregon but for the rest of the time the weather was very pleasant; shorts and short-sleeved cycling tops were the rig of the day.

The first thing to mention is you can't get lost as the route follows Highway 101 through Washington State and Oregon and then Highway 1 through California. It is a highway, sometimes a pleasant pedal along the coast and sometimes a dual carriageway with lumber trucks thundering past, and ever-present RVs which are basically a coach converted to a camper van towing at least one 4x4.

There was almost always a hard shoulder to cycle on, though the width did vary and occasionally the shoulder disappeared, strangely at the very times that cyclists needed it. There were a few hairy moments but on the whole it is a safe cycle although rather noisy.

The route occasionally deviated from the highway, and not all of these quiet sections were signed with official "Pacific Coast" signage. However these sections were easy to identify using mapping software or Google Maps on the phone.

Finding places to stop for coffee presented a challenge: we discovered that we couldn't assume that a dot on the map for a "town" meant there was habitation. We ended up carrying food for lunch, having learnt our lesson early on.

Towns in the USA are not the same as in Europe and not every overnight stop offered historical monuments and cultural sites. Not all had restaurants either, though there was normally a general store which sold pizzas and salads.

However, the coastal scenery more than made up for the negatives. We saw numerous bays, sea stacks, and cliffs. Wide sandy beaches. Weird-shaped rock formations and lighthouses. We watched the whales blowing offshore, the seals basking in the sun, and the sea lions making a tremendous racket (apparently it is impossible for a sea lion to be quiet).


We cycled through the Avenue of the Giant Redwoods. These tower above you as you meander through the trees, with trunks large enough to accommodate both my bike and me.


We visited the "Magical Kingdom of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox" (named after a mythical lumberjack), cycled through the "Drive-Thru Tree", saw the log cabin made from a single hollowed-out log, and admired the immortal tree, the chimney tree, the magical tree, the tallest tree and numerous normal 200-foot specimens.


Our ride ended with a ride across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. This was surreal: the bridge towers over San Francisco Bay and the cycle path was amazingly busy with all types of cyclist, though there weren't many who had just arrived from Seattle. It was certainly a highlight of the trip.


Our tour continued by Amtrak train from Oakland (just across the bay from San Francisco) down to Los Angeles: a twelve-hour journey through the agricultural belt of California and along the coast into LA.

Would I recommend the trip? Well we thoroughly enjoyed our ride, despite its busy portions. It was quite an experience: everyone wanted to talk to the strange people on bicycles, and nearly everyone had an interesting story to tell. The USA was not what we expected, with whole days without mobile phone signal and it didn't seem as technically advanced as Taiwan. Infrastructure was very poor in places. We found California much better for cycling than Oregon, with less traffic and more alternatives to the highway.

Japan in 2020!

Andy Carlyle





We departed from Bremerton on 22nd September 2019 (day 1) and arrived in San Francisco on 12th October (day 19). Here is our day-by-day itinerary: