The end's in sight

Hello all.

I am currenlty in Solvang which is a Danish town a fair few miles inland from the coast. I have taken a route away from the coast for a change of scenery as the coastline has become really busy and not as picturesque as it has been in Northern / Central California.

There has also been a change in the fact that it feels as though I could already be in Mexico! The language in some towns is just Spanish and english speakers will be in the minority. The most obvious example of this is a town called Guadalope. There is such large scale farming of strawberries, artichockes, celery and cabbage around here and all the workers are of Mexican origin. There has been some great food as a result of this though.

Here's an example of the landscape. Flat and full of farm fields. Not the most exciting of riding but good to clock up some miles. The days have started cloudy for the first few hours but it soon burns off an gets into the late 20's I guess, sometimes more inland but never too hot to cycle in.

Last night I stayed in a place called Lompoc which is hame to the Vandenburg Airforce base where they used to launch rockets into space. I had a really nice climb before hand and then this was the view down to the town

Lompoc
I was very kindly hosted by Roger and Ellen Perkins here who looked after me so well. I was fed and watered and offered a bed. It felt like such luxury. I had met Roger a few days earlier at a campground and he was good to his word of looking after me. I owe them a big thanks. If you ever want to charter a yacht in the British Virgin Islands be sure to check out www.sailillusion.com .

A couple of days earlier I had stayed at a campsite at San Simieon. In the field next door they had these roaming freely

Zebras from Hearst Castle.

After spotting these I got shots of another great sunset on the beach.

The day before here I had stayed at a great campsite alongside the Big Sur stretch of road overlooking the coast. There was more problems with Racoons though as they managed to lift the lid on the food storage box and stole my 7 avacodes I'd got for a dollar earlier in the day. I even caught them in the act of it!

Here's some more shots of that stretch of road. It was a truely incredible 50 mile ride.

As soon as the climbing on this stretch of road ended it went really flat and these were the main occupants of the otherwise desterted beaches.

Well that's about it for now. I am planning on catching the England game after a couple of Danish pastries and ending up in Santa Barbara this evening. By the weekend the riding will be over, what will I do then?

Thanks for reading,

Sam x