Today (monday) we did very little (no change there then). A walk to the closest Safeway, where the moral of the story is, closest is not necessarily the best as there are some steep sections of road on the way to this store, we will not be visiting this one again!

We baked a fruit cake, then promptly ate most of it!

A flock of parrots landed on the tree and stairwell outside the apartment window. The parrots are Cherry Headed Conures which are native to Ecuador and Peru, some escaped a number of years back and have bred so an estimated 300 birds live in San Francisco.

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The sky was clear this morning so we blew the dust off our cycling things and got ready to pay a visit to the Golden Gate Bridge. To celebrate I fitted my new saddle, what will it be like? who knows? who even cares?

The descent down to Castro is very easy by bicycle, then we cycled the length of Market Street all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf along a mixture of cycle lanes, normal road and restricted traffic areas, and of course about a hundred sets of traffic lights. Well it feels like a hundred.

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There was quite a lot of left over turkey so what else can you do but make a pie. Using homemade shortcrust pastry, fresh onions, peas, carrots in a well seasoned white sauce, lovely. We split it with Robin, it will make 2 meals for us.

Pie filling ready to fill

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Wednesday we set off to visit Haight Street district, walking down to Castro then continuing along to Haight Street. Unfortunately (and I blame Janet) we turned right instead of left, after a couple of blocks we realised Janet’s error and jumped onto a bus back past Castro, the correct direction this time.

A few trams (I just love them).

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Tim was up and away very early (before we were even up) and just left us to it. So a little bit of a sort and tidy of our things was in order, and of course plenty of admiring the view across the city.

Night view from Tim’s apartment

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After yesterdays winds it was a relief to wake up and find all was calm and still. There was a very heavy mist giving a lovely grey colour to everything!

The misty harbour at Half Moon Bay

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During the night the wind got stronger and stronger (dam those pinto beans) by morning they were gusting to 20 mph and by 7.30 am when we left the skies were looking very dark indeed. We had to have a good search for our waterproof things as we have not used them for so long now!

Rainclouds gather over a wind whipped sea

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As we only had a short 20 mile day today a long overdue lie in almost took place (well maybe an extra 30 minutes). We sat down with Rita for a lovely english breakfast, thank you, the first one since July and also tried Persimmon, a lovely refreshing semi sweet taste, try one today (make sure it is ripe!). With nice tea and coffee we chatted away for a while before the campground called us onwards.

Seafront rollercoaster

Pier and beach Santa Cruz

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You do get a nice easy start from a motel, everything packed and ready to go. Again it was a chilly start (all relative though, back home it would be a lovely start) hat, gloves and gilet on. It was straight on to the cycle path from yesterday but this soon finished and we rejoined highway 1.

Near the end of the cycle path

The highway was very busy indeed, just a steady stream of cars really.

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Everything was dry again this morning but to make up for it the wind has started to blow, gusting up to 20 mph, but a steady 12 mph straight at us, it was going to be a tough but beautiful day.

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