Cycling to San Francisco

Sunday 17th November

An unusually relaxed start to the day saw us leaving Erica Court at around 10am to drive up 280 to San Francisco. This is the scenic, rural route into the west side of the city and we parked the car at Lake Merced, got the bikes out and continued under pedal power.

According to the internet there are hundreds of interconnecting bike paths and trails and I had really been looking forward to this cycle ride. We started off alongside the lake and then crossed over to the bike path which runs along the coast (the Great Highway) past the zoo, the Murphy Windmill and Ocean Beach. There was some great surf and a lot of surfers out taking advantage of it. After passing Ocean Beach we got onto a cycle path in Lincoln Park which was great until we came to a "trail closed" sign.  This involved a detour including hauling the bikes up and down steps and then cycling around various roads, all with cycle route signs apart from when you needed to turn off and then no signs to inform you of this fact!

By the time we finally arrived at the Golden Gate Bridge, which had been our objective, I was already feeling exhausted but we navigated to the west side to cycle across it (the east side has the more interesting views but is restricted to pedestrians). That said, the view from the west side across to the Marin Headlands and back to the Baker and China beaches is still pretty spectacular. It was over a mile across and I couldn't believe the volume of cyclists out on the same expedition as us. In retrospect it would have been a lot more sensible to save this particular outing for a week day. On reaching the other side we locked the bikes and descended to go under the road and up to the view point on the other side......which was also very crowded but afforded wonderful views of San Francisco, Alcatraz, Angel Island and the Oakland Bridge.

By the time we got back off the bridge we had already cycled over 15 miles and I was freezing! It was sunny but the wind up on the bridge had been very strong and I never really warmed up for the rest of the afternoon. We didn't find any of the bike trails on the way back, they were very poorly marked so we did lots of "bits" but kept finding ourselves back on the road. Our intention had been to explore the Golden Gate Park but getting there proved quite a challenge.  After stopping at a Subway to pick up a sandwich (not very imaginative considering we were in San Francisco but it was 2.30pm and we had reached the point where we needed to eat and almost anything would do) and a bit more cycling around in aimless circles we finally got into the park and found somewhere we could briefly stop and eat.

Next we headed back towards the coast to try and find an alternative route back to the car. More by luck than judgement we found ourselves on Sunset Boulevard which ran parallel to the sea all the way back to Lake Merced - where we could follow the bike path around the east side of the lake back to the car........having cycled around 27 miles I was more than grateful to get off the bike and back in the lovely warm car. The day had not exactly panned out as expected but cycling across the Bridge had in itself been an experience worth the effort.

We tried to drive back the scenic route - along Skyline Boulevard - but it really wasn't our day.  The road was closed in two places and although we managed to get off 280 and do some lovely sections through Woodside and the Portolla Valley we kept finding ourselves back on the main road and eventually gave into the inevitable and stayed on it all the way back to San Jose.

A brief stop at Erica Court to change and regroup and then we headed out again to join Sherry and Rich at a birthday party for the son of their friends, Bruce and Eileen - where we were made very welcome despite being extremely late and plied with excellent food including Sherry's chocolate stout cake.