See? Lions (USA Day 121)

The nights are getting longer. The combination of us travelling south, autumn arriving and our lack of camping over the past two weeks, we’ve totally lost track of how long the day is. The upshot of all this is that between sunset and sunrise is significantly longer to spend in the tent and, you’d assume, sleep.

Most of our night was spent listening to the delightful sounds of a living forest. There were definite heavy stick-breaking things that galumphed around, presumably bearing their enormous fangs, trying very hard to kill us. Many of these things may well have been falling leaves, but on the off-chance that one was a bear or mountain lion, we both decided to sleep terribly.

The wind, as it always seems to do, blew us down the coast most helpfully, and we pootled along at injury pace (which happens to be about 8mph) between avenues of redwoods that resolutely ceased to get any less breathtaking. Our eyes were set on a camping spot further down the coast: Gold Bluffs Beach. I asked the lady at the information centre if there was anything we needed to know about Davison Road, the final stretch that took us to the beach.

“Oh, that’s a hard road,” she said, tutting.

“Why?” If the answer was hills, we’d have to reconsider. While Amy’s ankle gets better every day, steep climbs still cause problems unless she spins out like a washing machine.

“It’s a gravel surface,” she said, “and there’s no shoulder. Very bendy.”

But she didn’t mention hills, so we that was good enough for us.

Well, I guess she forgot to mention the hills. The six miles of consistently steep (16% at least) gravel tracks that would be riotous fun if your ankle wasn’t made of dried spaghetti and pritt stick. So we took the road in sections: I’d ride up to the next level(ish) spot, then park my bike somewhere innocuous and run back down the hill to drag up Amy’s, while she walked gingerly up to meet us all at the top. This continued for a good week, until we reached the summit, where we inched downhill with brakes fully exerted, bumping wearily over eight of the world’s top ten potholes. By the time we rolled onto the coastal road, neither of us were in any state to enjoy it, but somehow we managed.

The campsite, or at least the hiker/biker part, spilled over onto the beach so that our spot was on the flat part of a dune, amongst spiky grass and pockets of ‘pebbles’ which upon closer inspection were sun-bleached, sea-rounded chunks of driftwood. The ocean, softened by a cloak of mist that hung onto the beach with moist little hooks, rolled in enthusiastically, busy with the oily bobbing heads of a dozen sea lions who hunted the shallows for fish.

We laid out our sleeping mats on a sloping dune and watched the sea, munching on carrots and peppered jerky and slowly putting on more layers as the sun left for Japan and another long night began. Getting here was really hard. Getting back to the road will be just as tough. Perhaps that’s why we feel so secure here, and why we’re so resistant to leave.