When we got up this morning it was actually chilly, California chilly not England chilly, it did mean starting wearing some extra clothes though.

It was not a peaceful relaxing nights sleep on the site, two women chose last night to have a full blown argument with each other, and of course sharing it with the rest of us campers as well.

After a chat with a cycling couple who arrived later last night, they confirmed what we had heard that there is not hiker / biker site in Oceano. As it is saturday of Veterans day weekend we may have fun finding somewhere to stop.

As we left the site, they were preparing to pick the whole field of stocks, all the flowers destined for florists to use in their bouquets.

The route led us back through our already visited downtown Lompoc, it is not really a tourist town although they are trying to encourage people with the focus on wine and wine tasting.

Once out of the town the climbing began, even more so once we left highway 1. The road became very quiet and really quite nice to cycle along even with the twisty uphill section rising to 1000 ft similar to yesterday. There was quite a number of oil wells here just next to the road, there does seem to be a lot of small wells here in California.

The coast back down was enjoyable (as they all are). The countryside was a lot greener with many more trees than we have seen in a long time.

Once down the hill, the road undulated all the way to Guadeloupe, passing strawberry growers everywhere, along with an army of pickers going down each row by hand. There were many other crops including brassicas. There is an enormous amount of water used to irrigate everthing just to keep the plants and trees alive.

Strawberry picking

Around now the wind really started to blow straight at us making it doubly difficult to cycle, we are not fast so it does not impact hugely on us but it is always disappointing to waste energy.

There was an interesting collection of birds nests under a bridge.

Guadeloupe is a working town with no pretences of having anything for the tourist. We did manage to get a cold drink from the gas station though.

Around here there is no real shoulder and the road is busy so not very pleasant cycling, although we did find one mile of well hidden cyclepath which was nice.

More up and down as we approached Oceano, we did cut a corner off (easy if you travel northbound, less pleasant if you are travelling southbound). After a 2 mile flat section we got to the State Beach and Campground where we found no hiker / biker sites as they only camp directly on the beach! They did direct us to Costal Dunes RV Park a county run site which did do hiker / biker camping. $13 and a shower later we walked across the road to a Mexican resturant, which was very nice, some very big portions as well.

The only drawback with this site is the busy main road right one side and the Amtrak rail line on the other (and it is only a very narrow site). But anything is better that fighting women, unless of course they are pro wrestlers, or boxers, or martial artists or fencers …….

Goodnight.