West Coast

Fun on the quadcycle
Originally uploaded by Thomas W-P

At Glyn and Linda's, the boogie boarding was a bit of a disaster. Linda had bought two for us, and within 5 minutes we'd pulled the safety strap off it. Later I took E out to do some boarding but we got caught out by a violent surprise wave (apparently every 7th wave we were told) that churned E badly and scared both of us. Her goggles were ripped off and lost. Not good.

On Friday we had another lazy morning. The girls were quite obsessed with Linda's dogs (Tutti and Bella) and spent the entire time tormenting them somewhat. Harriet probably said the word "Toodi" about 200 times an hour (minimum). Wearing for the dogs and the parents, but great for the girls. Much of the delay was due to the arrival of little Carew, Linda's darling little grandson who is rising two. He would not register my presence which was pretty sweet. Eventually we got out of the house at around 10 and went to explore the sea front at SB. I did not have high expectations, and this no doubt was one of the reasons why I enjoyed our low key entertainment so much. We started by renting a silly quadcycle that Tamsin and I could pedal whilst the kids enjoyed the ride. It was stupidly silly and fun. We cycled a mile or so to a restaurant recommended to us by Linda and had a simple meal where the kids ate like horses. More chips. The restaurant food is pretty risible here. Only Linda's plain, simple veggie fare was keeping us sane. After returning the quad we wandered on to the wharf (like a pier) in SB. A wooden structure forming half of the harbour, it is dominated by an aquatic centre which is part of the SB Nat. Hist. museum. A relatively small building, we expected to spend half an hour or so in there, but they had some lovely _scientific_ activities for the children and we ended up spending at least two hours in there testing water, looking for invertebrates, picking up sea slugs and crabs and generally having fun. It was excellent, mostly due to the volunteers and their efforts. We then pottered back to Linda's to meet her daughter Kimi and her husband Eric for an evening meal. It was a nice evening with them, though punctuated with Harriet finally falling in one of her heroic and discouraged climbs, leading to a LOT of blood from a puncture wound on her head, and Abigail burning herself on candle wax whilst ignoring advice that it might be a bad idea to pick it up!

The next day was mostly spent in the car. We drove up the West coast, past Hearst castle (couldn't face it with the kids) and on to the coast road, which is supposed to be stunning. Sadly the sea fog obscured all but about 5% of the coast. When we could see it, it was stunning, but it was basically windy roads in the mist. This was pretty disappointing. We stopped to look at Elephant seals, but that was about it. Our target was Carmel, which Linda said was "lovely" but we knew nothing about. It is a very atypical American town! It reminds me of Padstow. Designer shops on the coast. Quite quaint though by US standards. All the restaurants appear to be fine dining at first view, and all were booked out when we arrived. We did find a nice Italian though and had (easily) our best meal out in the USA. I suspect we'd have been disappointed at the fare for the fee in the UK, but standards have been lowered somewhat.