CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
543 km from Kentfield to Kensington, about 10 h 01 of riding. On the way it passes Stinson Beach, Point Reyes Station, Tomales Bay view and Mount. The climbs: El Granada, near Newark and Scenic stretch near Castro Valley. It is a high-mountain day.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 34 km this is Pacific Coast Highway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Mount Tamalpais is the hill that every Bay Area rider eventually climbs, a long dark ridge across the Golden Gate that from the city looks like a sleeping woman on her back. The summit road starts in the town of Mill Valley and follows the Panoramic Highway through redwood and bay laurel, past the trailhead at Pantoll, to the Rock Spring and East Peak turn-offs. East Peak tops out at 2,571 feet, and from the car park a short walk takes you to the fire lookout and a view that takes in the city, the bay, the Pacific and, on the very best days, the Sierra Nevada.
Read the complete Mount Tamalpais road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mount Tamalpais road is where the day begins. Next is Stinson Beach.
Stinson Beach is where the Pacific finally gets its way with Marin. After the long curves of Highway 1 down from the ridge, the road drops to sea level and a pale crescent of sand runs out for about three miles, with a spit of dunes at one end and the steep green slope of the mountain at the other. The village behind it is tiny, a scatter of beach houses, a few cafes, a grocery and a bookshop, and it feels both sleepy and expensive, as seaside places near big cities often do.
Read the complete Stinson Beach write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stinson Beach comes up about 11 km into the recorded legs. Next is Point Reyes Station food.
Point Reyes Station is a small, slightly rumpled ranch town at the head of Tomales Bay, and it serves as the pantry for one of the most beautiful parts of the California coast. Dairy herds graze the hills in every direction, and the town has grown into a centre of artisan cheese, organic produce and good bread. Cheesemakers sell from shopfronts along the main street, bakers draw queues on weekend mornings and oysters from the bay arrive on the tables of the local cafés. It is the best place for a meal on the route, and the food is better than a town of this size should offer.
Read the complete Point Reyes Station food write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
A break here. Next is Tomales Bay view.
Tomales Bay is a long, narrow finger of water that lies in a straight line for fifteen miles along the San Andreas Fault, so straight that it looks as if it has been ruled on the map. The east shore, where Highway 1 runs, gives you the long view over the water, with the Point Reyes peninsula rising on the far side as a low, dark rampart of firs and grassland. The water is calm and shallow compared with the open coast, and the light changes constantly, from pale silver in the morning to deep blue and gold at dusk.
Read the complete Tomales Bay view write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tomales Bay view, early in the day. Next is Back to Mount.
Mount Tamalpais rises above the northern side of the Golden Gate like a sleeping giant, and the old story goes that its outline looks like a reclining woman, which gave local people the name of the Sleeping Lady. At 2,571 feet it is not a huge mountain, but it springs straight up from the bay and gives a sweeping view over the whole region, from the Farallon Islands to the Sierra on a clear day. For riders, it is one of the best short climbs in the Bay Area.
Read the complete Mount write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Back to Mount. That is the ride. Next is Skyline Boulevard and Alice’s.
Skyline Boulevard and Alice’s is the fuel stop for this leg. Next is San Francisco Bay Area return.
Eggs made Petaluma famous. In the early twentieth century this town in southern Sonoma County, an hour north of San Francisco, called itself the egg basket of the world, thanks to hundreds of chicken farms around it and an incubator invented here that helped revolutionise poultry farming. Today the chickens are fewer, but the town still has a strong farming identity, with dairies, cheese makers and creameries in the hills around it.
Read the complete Near Petaluma, on the way back write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 253 km into the recorded legs you reach San Francisco Bay Area return. Next is Skyline Boulevard and Alice’s food stop.
Bolinas does not want to be found, and it has made that clear for decades. Locals have a long tradition of removing the road sign that points to the town from Highway 1, so you may have to watch for the unmarked turnoff at the end of Bolinas Lagoon. The reward is a small, eccentric, salt-weathered village at the tip of a mesa on the Marin coast, with a few streets of old wooden buildings, a beach, surfers and an atmosphere that feels decades removed from the Bay Area just over the hill.
Read the complete Bolinas write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Somewhere to get off the bike, about 311 km into the recorded legs. Next is Skyline Boulevard and Alice’s photo pull-off.
Mavericks, one of the most fearsome big-wave surf breaks in the world, breaks over a reef off Pillar Point, a few hundred metres from El Granada. On the biggest winter swells, waves rise to fifteen metres or more, and only the best surfers in the world dare to ride them. From the bluffs above, with binoculars, you can watch them drop down faces the size of buildings.
Read the complete El Granada write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The high point of this section. Next is Skyline Boulevard and Alice’s checkpoint 8.
The dead outnumber the living in Colma by a margin of more than a thousand to one. In the early twentieth century, San Francisco banned new burials within city limits and then evicted most of its existing cemeteries, and the graves were moved a few kilometres south, to this small town just over the county line. Today Colma is a quiet, green landscape of memorial parks and monument workshops, where Wyatt Earp lies in a Jewish cemetery and Joe DiMaggio in a Catholic one. Locals like the joke on the town's own slogan: it's great to be alive in Colma.
Read the complete Near South San Francisco write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Skyline Boulevard and Alice’s checkpoint 8 closes the day. Next is High point near Newark.
High point near Newark is the summit of this stretch. Next is Scenic stretch near Castro Valley.
You top out here; the road stops climbing. Next is Back to Skyline Boulevard.
This is the East Bay, the side of the bay that gets less attention than San Francisco and has more hills to ride. The point is in the hills above Berkeley, near Kensington and Orinda, where narrow streets climb steeply past eucalyptus trees and houses perch on slopes with views of the bay and the Golden Gate. A line of ridges, the Berkeley Hills, runs along the whole east side of the bay, and the Hayward Fault lies at their foot, which is something people here think about more than they mention.
Read the complete Skyline Boulevard write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back to Skyline Boulevard closes the day.
Mount Tamalpais road → Stinson Beach is 11 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Stinson Beach → Point Reyes Station food is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Point Reyes Station food → Tomales Bay view is 14 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tomales Bay view → Back to Mount is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Back to Mount → Fuel stop near Kensington is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fuel stop near Kensington → Near Petaluma, on the way back is 82 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
High point near Newark → Scenic stretch near Castro Valley is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Scenic stretch near Castro Valley → Back to Skyline Boulevard is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.