The Northern Coast

There is not a surfer-packed beach, a Spanish mission, a home of somebody rich and famous, or even very many sunny days to be found along California’s North Coast. Instead the best places to visit are lonely coves, tortured bluffs and isolated fishing settlements – and fantastic groves of coastal redwoods, the world’s tallest trees – fill the 640 km between San Francisco and the Oregon border.

It is nature-loving adventurers who derive the most enjoyment from the North Coast, and if the prospect of getting sweat on your brow or mud on your boots does not appeal, then you should spend your time elsewhere. Visitors should expect to get wet, too. The redwoods thrive because the North Coast has a cool, rainy climate, and the relatively dry period – from April to September – is the only sensible time to be here.

While this is one of the state’s least-visited portions, the North Coast is by no means deserted. Many Californians arrive here for back-to-nature weekend breaks in rustic – but far from basic – country inns and to treat their taste buds in the area’s numerous award-winning restaurants. North Coast residents, on the other hand, are predominantly fishermen, farmers and lumber workers – the scourge of the North Coast’s very active ecology movements. They who keep the region’s archetypal American diners in business: places where you can gorge on food at knockdown prices (especially seafood, served fresh and in very large quantities) while eavesdropping on scandalous small-town gossip.

A flying visit takes you up Highway-101, leaving San Francisco and clips the edge of the Wine Country – the Russian River Valley town of Healdsburg – before reaching rural inland towns such as Ukiah and Willits and continuing north through the deepest redwood country. Switching between Highway-101 and Highway-1, our slower route, is relatively easy using one of the many minor roads linking Highway-101 to the coast. Highway-1 ploughs a continually engaging route beside the Pacific (where, in all but a few spots, the cold choppy waters are best left to the seals), linking small towns that hug sheltered bays but missing out on the redwoods until after merging with Highway-101.

TRANSPORT

The open spaces and scattered communities of the North Coast are not well-connected by public transportation. Five daily Greyhound (www.greyhound.com) buses from San Francisco keep to Highway-101. Amtrak’s train services (http://www.amtrak.com) here go interstate and have quite a few options stretching to North California where they often cling to the coast with superb scenery.