Cycling to Los Gatos - the hard way!

Saturday 26th October

Returning to San Jose last night was like coming home and a weekend back at base will give us a chance to take stock of the lovely week that we have just had in Marin County and look forward to the adventures waiting for us next week in Yosemite.

The plan for today was a gentle pootle along the Los Gatos Creek Trail to meet Sherry and Rich for brunch at the lovely Los Gatos Cafe, a favourite haunt.  In order to get to the trail we had first to brave some local roads and then picked up a bike path along the Guadelupe Parkway, not a particularly thrilling experience sandwiched as it was between the road, a high chain link fence and a wall of concrete.  Fortunately we only had to follow it for a short distance and then back onto the road again before finally reaching the trail.

This was the best part of the ride and we enjoyed cycling side by side along this well used trail with other cyclists, runners and walkers. Just before the Los Gatos Creek County Park we crossed the river and cycled on through the park with the river on our left and the lake on the right. Unfortunately we left the trail a little too soon and cycled through local roads to our destination. Looking at the map after we had uploaded Garmin later we could clearly see that if we had continued on the trail we could have cycled through the very attractive Vasona Lake Country Park and ended up in exactly the same place!

We managed to arrive at the cafe at almost exactly the same time as Sherry and Rich.  Due to the popularity of the cafe we had to wait for a table but it was a beautiful sunny day in pleasant surroundings and it was no hardship to sit outside chatting and people watching until our name was called.

Choosing a dish from the huge selection of omelettes, scrambles, pancakes and bakery items proved the hardest challenge of the day.  I finally settled for the Gorgonzola scramble with herb potatoes and a pumpkin and cranberry muffin but it was a hard choice.  I need about another fifty visits to work through all the menu options!  After brunch we strolled around the very attractive town with it's unusual and expensive shops, including a visit to the Apple store to use an IPad to work out our return route.

I would like to state for the record that I wanted to go back along the creek trail and then find an alternative route back across to Erica Court.  However, Martin wanted to go east and eventually pick up the Coyote Creek Trail.  Much as I wanted to cycle some more along that lovely trail it worked out at about 20 miles and that was definitely further than I wanted to ride.  So of course that was the way we went.  What a nightmare!  Although there appeared to be a lot of bike paths (according to Google maps) these were all roadside and whilst they were quite safe it was so boring cycling block after block along straight 4 lane roads stopping at red lights every quarter mile or so. The real highlight was when there was no bike friendly route and we ended up on the freeway where I completely lost my nerve, a bit of a domestic ensued and we gave up our attempt to get to the trail and zig zagged through residential streets in stony silence instead.

By the time we got back to Erica Court we had done over 33 miles, it was nearly 5pm and my sense of humour had left the country.

A quiet night was all we had the energy for enjoying the hospitality of Sherry and Rich and the fabulous meal that Sherry cooked for us washed down with some seasonal Pumpkin Wheat Ale.