With such beautiful scenery at our fingertips, we decided on another short day to enjoy the views. After breakfast we were left with very little water so we motored on to Gorda, where we refilled our bottles. One big difference to our day was the monumental tail wind. We had a couple of steep climbs, but the downs were long and gently winding, with only the odd switch back, affording us high speed descents.
Nearing Ragged Point the road came down to sea level where the wind picked us up and transported us practically effort free. I could have placed a foot on my handlebars and relaxed with a paper and coffee the winds were that extreme. At one stage we turned into a car park to look at an elephant seal colony. To my dismay Tim turned North. Tim must have managed about 3m - this was impressive - my bike stopped dead. I physically could not cycle into the wind. It was a battle I didn't fancy partaking in. There was only one direction to be cycling today and that was South.
At San Simeon Village we came across Motel city. The last 100 miles of the Big Sur coastline had been conurbation free. At the other end was affluent Carmel. This end was obviously where the likes of us stayed. There was some extreme planning at play here.
Our night was spent in San Simeon State Park, where we paid the princely sum of $2 to camp. Mike, who we had met at New Brighton State Beach turned up, then a guy called Warren and finally a dejected looking French guy - dejected because he was cycling North in record breaking southerly winds, to a booked flight from Seattle. He had started at 7am and at 7pm had only just managed 60 miles. The worst point was when he asked us all if we had known about the prevailing southerlies...
As the light dropped we swapped remarkably similar cycling stories: I can't believe it's not butter (I can - Mike), RV hatred, Nature Valley granola bars, REI, MEC.
In the middle of the night Tim and I got up and stood yet again in awe, this time at the spectacle shining down on us from the night sky. It was so clear that we could see the milky way, Saturn and the North Star - it added yet another layer to our visual extravaganza.
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