Pacific Coast Highway, California State Route 1 · short arc

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Monterey

   Monterey is a town with a layered past, and the best way to read it is to walk from the old adobe buildings of the first capital of Spanish and Mexican California to the shiny aquarium on the water's edge. Spanish explorers anchored in the bay in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, and Monterey served as the capital under Spain, then Mexico, and briefly under the United States. Colton Hall, where California's first constitution was drafted in 1849, still stands in the middle of town.

   Read the complete Monterey write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Monterey is where the day begins. Next is Big Sur.

2. 2. Big Sur

   Big Sur is not a town but a stretch of coast, about ninety miles of steep mountains dropping into the Pacific between Carmel and San Simeon, with a few clusters of buildings in between. The Santa Lucia Mountains rise straight from the sea to more than a thousand metres, so the land has almost no flat ground, and the only road is Highway 1, built in the 1930s by convicts and workers who cut a ledge in the cliff. Before that, the coast was reachable only by track or boat, and it still feels remote.

   Read the complete Big Sur write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Big Sur comes up about 43 km into the recorded legs. Next is San Luis Obispo.

3. 3. San Luis Obispo

   San Luis Obispo is a small city of about forty-seven thousand people, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and for riders on the coast it is a natural place to rest. It lies in a valley of the Santa Lucia foothills, a short way inland from the Pacific, with hills of oak and grass rising on all sides. Franciscan friar Junipero Serra founded Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa here in 1772, and the mission church still stands on the central plaza, next to a creek that runs through the downtown.

   Read the complete San Luis Obispo write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 218 km into the recorded legs you reach San Luis Obispo. Next is Santa Barbara.

4. 4. Santa Barbara

   The Pacific Coast Highway has a way of ending in places that look like film sets, and Santa Barbara is the best of them. The city sits on a narrow shelf of land between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the ocean, facing south, which is unusual on the Californian coast, so the sun seems to hang over the water in the afternoon. The red tile roofs, white stucco walls and arched arcades are not an accident. After an earthquake in 1925 destroyed much of downtown, the city rebuilt in a unified Spanish Colonial Revival style, and the result is a place that feels more like Andalusia than Los Angeles.

   Read the complete Santa Barbara write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Santa Barbara, late in the day. Next is Malibu.

5. 5. Malibu

   Twenty-one miles of the Pacific Coast Highway pass through Malibu, and most of them are within sight of the sea. The road squeezes between the steep brown slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains and a narrow ribbon of sand, a mix of beach houses, small plazas, surf breaks and sudden gaps with a view over the water. The town itself has about thirteen thousand people, a city of film stars and surfers, and a strong feeling of being at the edge of something. It was once a ranch owned by the Rindge family, who held off development for decades, and the land was divided only in the 1920s, after the state forced a public road through it.

   Read the complete Malibu write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at Malibu. That is the ride.