Florida A1A Scenic and Historic Coastal Byway (255 km)

Ponte Vedra Beach to Ormond Beach · one way, about 255 km back to the start

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Why this ride

A one-way ride of 255 km, Ponte Vedra Beach to Ormond Beach - roughly 3 h 25 in the saddle. It goes by way of St Augustine and Flagler Beach. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.

Roadbook

1. Ponte Vedra Beach start

   The beach at Ponte Vedra is a wide band of pale sand that drops gently into the Atlantic, backed by dunes with sea oats and low scrub, and the coast road behind it, State Road A1A, runs for miles in a sequence of palm trees, big houses and glimpses of the water. It is an affluent place now, with golf courses, tennis clubs and gated communities, and home to the headquarters of the PGA Tour and the TPC Sawgrass course, where the Players Championship is played each year and the par-three seventeenth hole sits on an island green that has humbled the best golfers in the world.

   The name sounds Spanish but was made up in the early twentieth century, and the area was first developed not for golf but for mining. Prospectors found that the beach sands here held titanium-bearing minerals such as rutile and ilmenite, used in paint and later in the war effort, and for a time the community was called Mineral City. The mining stopped, and the town turned to tourism, which proved far more lasting.

   On a motorcycle, A1A is a relaxed run rather than a technical one. The road follows the barrier island south toward St. Augustine, the oldest continuously inhabited European-founded city in the United States, established by the Spanish in 1565, with a stone fort and narrow streets worth a long stop. Northward, the route leads to the Mayport ferry and the beaches of Jacksonville. The surface is generally good, with long straight sections broken by gentle bends, bridges across tidal creeks and marsh, and low sunlight through the palms. Speed limits are enforced, and summer traffic can be heavy near beaches.

   Weather deserves attention. Thunderstorms arrive suddenly on summer afternoons with lightning and heavy rain, and hurricane season runs from June to November. Winter days are mild, with morning chill sometimes dipping near freezing in January. For fuel and food, the community of about thirty-five thousand people has everything, with a long list of seafood restaurants, bakeries and cafes. October to May is the best time to ride, with clear air and warm sun.

2. St Augustine scenic

   St Augustine has been going since 1565, when the Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés landed and founded a settlement, which makes it the oldest continuously occupied European-founded city in the contiguous United States. That is more than half a century before the Pilgrims. The Spanish held it, lost it to the British, got it back, and finally ceded Florida to the United States in 1821, and the layers of all those flags show in the old street plan, narrow and tight, running between coquina-stone and stucco buildings.

   The great landmark is the Castillo de San Marcos, a star-shaped fortress finished in the late seventeenth century and built from coquina, a soft limestone made of compressed shells. When English cannon balls hit it in a siege in 1702, they stuck in the stone rather than shattering it, which is exactly the story the guides like to tell. You can walk the walls and look across the Matanzas River toward the lighthouse on Anastasia Island. The town also owes a lot to Henry Flagler, the oil tycoon who built grand hotels here in the 1880s and a railway down the coast, and whose Ponce de Leon Hotel is now part of Flagler College. A well-known spring claims to be the Fountain of Youth, for the explorer Juan Ponce de León, who landed on this coast in 1513. The claim is more cheerful than historical.

   For a rider the town is a place to arrive slowly. The Bridge of Lions brings Highway A1A over the Matanzas from the island, and the old centre is a grid of narrow streets full of tourists, horse-drawn carriages, trolleys, and one-way systems. The pavement is uneven in places, and parking for motorcycles is easier than for cars, but still crowded at weekends. The coastal run of A1A north and south is flat, easygoing and often right on the dunes, with good views of the sea and a warm, salty smell in the air. Summer thunderstorms are frequent, and winter is mild and the best time to ride.

   St Augustine has everything: petrol on the main roads, seafood restaurants, ice cream, coffee and plenty of places to sleep. Park near the old Plaza, walk the length of St George Street, and give yourself time for the fort. The town is crowded at midday and quieter in the evening, when the old buildings glow in the lamplight.

3. Flagler Beach scenic

   Flagler Beach is what much of the Florida coast used to be like. The little town stretches along a narrow barrier island between the Atlantic and the Intracoastal Waterway, with a long, broad beach of hard-packed sand, low buildings, a pier and a laid-back, unhurried feel that the high-rise resorts to the south left behind long ago. The population is about five thousand, and it is a place where people still walk to the beach, fish from the pier and eat at small seafood restaurants. State Road A1A, the coastal highway, runs right along the shore, with the sea on one side and the town on the other, and it is one of the most relaxed roads in the state.

   The county and the town are named for Henry Flagler, the oil magnate who built the Florida East Coast Railway down the peninsula in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and who developed the great hotels of St Augustine and Palm Beach. His railway opened the east coast to settlers and winter visitors, and a trace of it can still be seen inland. The pier, first built in the 1920s, has been damaged by hurricanes more than once and rebuilt, and it is a favourite place for fishing and for watching the sun come up over the water.

   For riders, A1A is a gentle pleasure, a road of easy curves, with sea views, palm trees and sand blowing over the tarmac in places. The surface is generally good, though storms have eaten away at the dunes and the road in places, and the shoulders can be narrow. Traffic is moderate, thicker on weekends. Wind off the ocean can be strong, and sudden thunderstorms in summer arrive with huge rain and lightning, so keep an eye on the sky. Nesting sea turtles use the beaches in summer, and some areas are lit with turtle-friendly lights.

   To the north, Marineland, which opened in 1938 and claims to be the world's first oceanarium, is close, and to the south lies Washington Oaks Gardens, with its shore of coquina rock and formal gardens. Fuel and supermarkets are available in the town and in Palm Coast, about fifteen kilometres away. Early morning is magical, with the light on the water and pelicans skimming the waves, and a cup of coffee on the pier is a fine way to start the day.

4. Ormond Beach finish

   Ormond Beach is a small city with a big place in the history of going fast. Early in the twentieth century the hard-packed sand here, together with its neighbour Daytona to the south, was where the world's first speed records on wheels were chased, long before anyone thought of building a speedway. Henry Flagler's railway brought the winter crowds, and his grand hotel in town drew millionaires; John D. Rockefeller wintered a short walk from the shore in a house called The Casements. A motorcyclist rolling in today is following a very old tradition.

   The loop and trail that start here are the quiet side of Florida riding. Inland of the beach, the old roads lean under live oaks hung with Spanish moss, and the canopy keeps the tarmac in dappled shade through most of the day. The surface is mostly good and the speed limits are low, so this is a ride for looking rather than leaning: slow bends, a few tidal creeks, old plantation-era ruins among the trees, and the broad flat water of the Tomoka River and its marshes not far from the road. Look for ospreys, herons, and in the right season the odd manatee in the shallows.

   The coastal road itself, A1A, runs along the barrier island and is the other half of the story. It offers the ocean on one side and a crowded line of condos and beach bars on the other, and at weekends, bike week or school holidays it can be slow and loud. Early mornings are better, and so is winter, when the air is soft and the humidity gives you a rest. Summer afternoons bring brief violent thunderstorms, usually clearing as fast as they came.

   As a start or finish this is easy. The town has forty thousand people, so fuel, a decent meal, a motel and a mechanic are all within a few minutes, and Holly Hill is next door if you need more. Wander down to the sand if you have time. The beach is hard enough that Volusia County lets cars drive on parts of it, and it is a remarkable thing to stand on the same flat shore where engines were first tested to the limit, with the Atlantic just ahead.

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