Half-eaten egg sandwich and cold coffee to hand, a typical blogger tries to conceal his identity

Big Mom gives

us a Toronto blessing

At Toronto we change planes and have a three-hour stopover. We join a slow-moving mass of travelers without thinking where we are heading. I come to after ten minutes of this and approach an information desk staffed by eight uniformed Air Canada people. “Excuse me,” I say in a quiet and polite lost-and-bewildered-Englishman-abroad voice to the red uniform in the middle of the eight. “But can you point me in the direction of the transit lounge?” No answer. She is looking down at something on the desk beside her. “I think I may be a bit lost,” I say encouragingly to her, hoping to arouse a maternal instinct perhaps. I hover uncomfortably. She can’t be deaf surely? Then a hand come up from behind the desk and gestures in a broad sweeping motion. She still doesn’t look up but I hear a voice saying loudly: “It’s IN FRONT of you.”

“Thank you for your advice,” I say. “You are a credit to

Air Kanaydia. I’m sorry if I disturbed your sleep.”

Of course, I don’t say that at all. I’m flustered. I look around and see that the red uniform is right. The transit lounge is indeed in front of me. I redden and slope away.

Later I summon up the spirit of Big Mom and Wendy, the battling belles of Bodega Bay. Big Mom wouldn’t have stood for this. She would have given the red uniform the fright of her life wouldn’t she? Yes, of course she would! With one clunking throw of her mighty fist she would have swept all the eight uniforms to the ground like scattered skittles. And their desk would have been reduced to splinters. Good old Big Mom, I think. I misjudged you. We’d make a great team. I’d be George to your Lennie. OK? You know what’s important. Come back!

As we leave the aircraft at Heathrow a rugged, silver-haired member of the crew who personifies authority and competence is saying his farewells to us travelers. He has the sort of face that can sell insurance. “ It was such a smooth flight. Thank you for piloting us so well and safely,” Jane tells him with her unfailing enthusiasm. “Thanks for that,” says rugged silver hair. “But I’m one of the cabin staff.”

So that’s about it. But what about the lists? I was going to list all the good things and the bad things, wan’t I? The good things would have stuff like pretty irises growing on San Francisco’s pavements and the tram cars. The bad things would have been things like American puddings (don’t go there!) and tissues (they shred at first blow). But I’m not too good at lists. When it comes down to it I just forget things I want to include.

But what I’m going to give you next is something much more useful. I’m going to give you SOME HINTS FOR TRAVELLERS TO THE U.S. I think it’s only fair, since you have been following me so far, that I give you something useful if you happen to be heading in that direction. Stay tuned!

An elephant seal yawns. It's not an otter but it's certainly bigger

Elephant seals and

Californian memories

On Tuesday morning we leave Dragonfly Cottage and the Vaca del Sol in the Santa Cruz mountains. We say our goodbyes to Martin and Mary-Jane. Martin, who Jane decides is a gentle American – so I shall call him GA – tells us that a trailer truck has overturned on route 17 and that the road will be blocked. GA, by the way, doesn’t need Clint Eastwood to play him. He speaks for himself and does all his own stunts.

Again we miss Jolene as we thread our way through country roads that never seem to lead anywhere. Having at first decided not to take the Highway 1 coast road back to San Francisco, we change our minds and are soon careering under a clear sky alongside an iridescent blue Pacific fringed with sparkling-white beaches. We stop at the Ano Nuevo state park, a wildlife reserve on the dunes where a four-mile walk takes us to where elephant seals are lazing on the sand like heaps of steaming tarmac.

Later we drop from a mountain ridge to the airport where we deposit a dusty Elefanta.

We take the Bart train to the Mission area and from then a bus to the Million Fishes. R cooks us a last dinner, a curry with pinto beans, we survey the photos we have taken, we kiss D goodbye and clamber into the Bald Eagle for the journey to our Holiday Express airport hotel. Our bags are packed, the holiday is over, we dry our tears.

The smells and sights of the Mission district blend into other places we have visited, the poetry of the streets is behind us, Mary-Jane of the Santa Cruz hills glows in my mind like a hologram for a while and I wish we had got to know her better. We are now ticketed tourists prepackaged for a return to Heathrow.

Spot the otter competition: ring what you think is an otter in Jane's photo and win a prize!

Jane sees even

more otters

Monday is our last day at Dragonfly Cottage. We head for swish Monterrey past fields of artichokes. Steinbeck’s Cannery Row is now a street of novelty shops with not a cannery in sight, the harbour is a marina and the sardine boats have gone. Dirty industry may have gone but the sea lions and seals have moved in, and the sea is full of them, flapping their flippers, sunbathing, pointing their noses at the sky. And the otters too! For, sure enough, Jane sees something moving in the kelp that floats in sheltered bays. We go through the routine again. It’s a log, I say. The camera comes out and Jane snaps at the log. But then it moves and starts doing otterish things like diving and lying on its back and holding something in its front paws. OK, it IS an otter, I admit – when other people start pointing at it.

We pass Pacific Grove and enter something called the 17-mile Scenic Drive round the Monterrey peninsula. It’s famous, says Jane. It probably is and we have to pay $10 for the privilege. We see a lot of cypresses windblown into odd shapes and even more golf courses, and then Jane sees ANOTHER otter. And suddenly otters are popping up like rabbits on Watership Down. The otter population is rising by the moment. Jane is in seventh heaven.

Jane finds a barn in the Salinas Valley but would Lennie and George recognise it?

Jolene, all is forgiven!

We never doubted you

It is Sunday and HaM leave their tree house and Dragonfly Cottage for Yosemite with Jolene now fixed to their windscreen. Without her ever-correct navigational instructions we drive to Salinas, home town of John Steinbeck. The museum devoted to him is stuffed with tricks. Voices of his characters boom out, extracts from films made from his book are shown in cubicles, blown-up photos on walls illustrate his life and the Monterrey canneries, his Nobel prizewinning speech is heard at length, his chair, his pipe, his wives, his belt buckle are all there. Steinbeck is now an industry; the writer is probably unread except as a set text. Extracts from his work on the walls seem portentous and self-regarding. The private man is not there. Sorry John! Perhaps if you returned you would pull it all down, forget about the money, the success, the prizes, Hollywood, the praise, the critics and just get on with writing a book as good as Cannery Row.

Our Steinbeck day doesn’t end there. Jane wants to visit the Gabilan mountains, which figure in Of Mice and Men, and she wants to photograph a farm and a river where Lennie and George might have lived. She has a project in mind: blown-up photos she takes will be pinned up on her school library walls, Steinbeck posters and other material she has collected will illustrate the writer’s life. She must find the right old timber barn and a pool in the river near where his characters would have camped. We pass many barns and farmhouses but none is what Jane has in mind. We must go a little bit farther, she says, past that hill over there, perhaps stop by that bridge.

Oh well, at least we are moving and Elefanta’s music system is happily belting out Broadway hits from the Fifties. And it’s still only four o’clock. In Jolene’s absence, Jane lays out a map in front of her. The map covers the whole of California and it always seem to fold where we want to go, so it becomes creased and torn and difficult to follow. The roads on the map are not so easy to find, we begin to realise. We drive on and dustily on, past huge fields of corn and enough cabbages to create a dark cloud over Europe. We are aiming for a road that will take us up to the Salinas Mountains in a big loop and into the Carmel Valley. None of the turnings off our road are signposted but we go up one or two hoping they will take us to the valley. But they don’t and we then find the road barred and having to turn round and brave farm dogs to ask the farmer where we are. We just don’t know where we are.

Jane disturbs two owls in a barn and the first stars appear. We still haven’t found the road that will takes us to Carmel Valley. If only Jolene were with us! And we begin to regret our cheap jibes about her. She is wasted on HaM, we say defiantly. Wasted! And they will certainly not appreciate her finer points.

But Jane is still thinking of her school “project” and blithely searching for barns and mountains and stuff. She has now developed a new interest: trees. She is going to make an album of interesting ones, she says. She wants to photograph every single one we pass. And we pass a lot of them dripping with lichen in the Carmel Valley. We make a lot of stops and the camera is hauled out of the bag for a picture of a tree.

It is now dark and we have been driving for hours and I’m getting hungry. I have passed into a state of Zombie-like dead-tiredness. But still Jane points her camera at trees, even in the dark. At last she relents when we reach Carmel Valley town, a settlement of smart shops and restaurants and well-dressed people. We collapse into a fish restaurant and lap up a fish stew. Jane says it’s Liza Minelli at the bar. But is so isn’t, I say.

Hours later and still cursing the loss of Jolene we somehow navigate through the fog and sign-less highways with their huge dark trucks that silently fill the rear mirror and, after many wrong turnings, push Elefanta through the redwoods to Dragonfly Cottage.

A happy couple on the beach at Santa Cruz

Hilary and Matthew give Danielle a few hints on how to look through binoculars

Jilly Cooper meets

the Bald Eagle

Saturday is our “family” day. So please switch off now unless you are a fan of the Swiss Family Robinson or just like reading embarrassing home truths about other people’s families. I’ll try to make it as short as possible. The meeting place is to be Lighthouse Point overlooking the sea and an island that local pelicans use as a restroom. (Yes!!! That’s what they call loos in the US! Restful places, lavatories.)

R&D, whom we heard about earlier, lead the convoy in their 6,000-litre white Chevvy truck (“van” doesn’t quite do justice to this gas-guzzling, earth-destroying brute of a vehicle that R&D lovingly call the Bad Eagle). Hilary and Matthew, as befit their respectable stations in life, follow on less obtrusively in a scarlet hire car. HaM, as I shall call them for short – and fun – have been much concerned about the weather, bombarding R&D and us with daily texts and emails about “what to wear”. We have tried to explain that in California – of parts of it – an Arctic wind can blow at one moment, an ice-cold fog can envelop you at the next, and a Saharan heatwave will break out when you least expect it, and then there is that stuff about the cloud menace that follows you wherever you go. Mark Twain’s little joke is repeated too often: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”

So, to say the least, we await with interest what all-weather-defying garments HaM have picked from their wardrobes. And we are not disappointed. H is sporting a waxed boilersuit guaranteed to repel wind, ice and water to great depths and heights. That is topped by a khaki corduroy cap as worn by Jilly Cooper at polo matches or Desert Rats, and by “sensible” woollen socks at the other end – in case of a sudden drop in temperature. M, in more streetwise fashion, has gone for a hoody. Grey, of course (do hoodies come in any other colour?). As a back-up he brings a red covering of indeterminate nature. In case he should be called to round up a herd of Andean llamas, perhaps? If all this is still not up to the most unexpected the weather can come up with, round their necks HaM are wearing scarves. Like you do when you are invited to watch some outdoor winter sporting event.

So surely the Californians can show us up? Yes they can! For D goes for the jaunty French boho look, her Jules et Jim cap worn at kooky angle. R, rather oddly – but perhaps this is a complicated joke to which we do not have the key – is wearing a sheepskin jacket a passing tramp gave him. He claims it is not real. But it patently is, and whenever he moves his arms bits of sheep fall off.

Jane, by the way, is perfectly dressed for the seaside in white blouse and blowy skirt. I strike a bravely daring note by just wearing a T-shirt. But we are half-way into our walk when I realise I probably won’t last till lunch and Jane has to go back to get my coat from our car. Poor show, I admit!

Well, that’s the fashion story [ AND ABOUT TIME TOO – ED. THE READERS CAN’T TELL THEIR BALMAINS FROM THEIR BALENCIAGAS. GET ON WITH IT!!!]

Er, yes, I suppose so.

Well, there’s not much else to tell. We have a picnic, R catches grapes in his mouth, D looks through the wrong end of a telescope, we look at a sea lion, see a chevron (thank you M!) of pelicans gliding over the waves, and under R’s guidance do funny walks in the car park.

That evening we light a barbecue on the wooden balcony of our mountain cottage with the tops of redwoods in front of us and the blue Pacific horizon beyond. Martin and Mary Jane, our landlords, and John and Monet (I never did ask her how she spelled her name), their friends, join us. R is the barbecue master chef. The wine flows and, amazingly, everybody gets something to eat. R&D roar off into the dark, the Bald Eagle spurting sparks and soot from the exhaust. If only I had the Bald Eagle at Bodega Bay, I think, Wendy and Big Mom would have shown me respect.

There is nowhere to sleep in our mountain shack, so HaM are invited to a treehouse a quarter of a mile down a dark track. They spend a chilly night there, in the redwood forest, and heavy blankets are put to use. One redwood holds up a little shower, another their bedroom.

Next morning we expect them for breakfast back at our shack. But they don’t turn up. I am sent to investigate. The poison oak didn’t get them, however. They are just too cold to get out of bed. They leave for Yosemite, taking Jolene with them, a move that we will regret.

But read the next jaw-dropping episode to find out why

Another odd picture: Jane spots another strange bird, so I have to photograph it

Jane sees an otter

We sleep well beneath a pile of blankets on our first night in Dragonfly Cottage in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I had to lift Jane on to our bed. She was having difficulty trying to get into it, as it towers over the other furniture and there was no handy chair near by. We wake to a layer of mist beneath us and look out over the tops of redwoods as our cottage is perched on the side of a steep slope.

Our washing is lying in a heap so we head for a launderette in Santa Cruz, a seaside town that used to attract the hippy generation. There are few signs now of the flower children; I expect they have all built shacks in the hills. The combination of a chilly wind, finding somewhere to park, losing our way several times, and locating a launderette puts us in a critical mood and I start rewriting Lonely Planet’s glowing account of Santa Cruz. The sun comes out after 1pm and we eat our sandwiches overlooking the sea. Jane says she sees an otter on its back eating something but she is always “seeing” otters – which just happen to be her favourite animal. We can’t go near any bit of water without Jane seeing otters everywhere. I assure her that it is piece of driftwood bobbing about in the waves. Later I hear a bearded passerby, whom I take to be a wise old man of the sea, tell a young boy: “Look son, there be an old dog otter. Seems as if it be eatin’ a crab for his dinner.” Of course, old US seadogs don’t talk like this, but no matter. I decide to revise my opinion and tell Jane that on this occasion she is right and that what she has seen may have been an otter. She is not, however, placated by my late conversion to otter-sighting. I learn later that this is the first otter that she has actually seen in the wild!!!

But even that excitement fails to raise our spirits, so we head for the Nickelodeon, the town’s art cinema. It, at least, has withstood the tide of commercialism that has swept away all trace of alternative living. The Nickelodeon is showing a crop of foreign films, including a Russian-made Chekhov adaptation, but we plump for a safe bet, a French-made cold war thriller called Farewell. Sure enough, it’s a good choice. We give it four ****. Catch it if you can. It contains an amusing portrayal of a Reaganesque US president who spends much of the time watching his old cowboy films.

And that was about it for our first day in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Last morning at Yosemite Rose, home of four generations of soldiers who have fought in foreign wars

Ah’m a simple mountain boy but ah always love you well

We have left the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada and we are in the plains heading east to Santa Cruz. Vast acreages of fruit trees give way to parched and yellowing grassland and distant hills. We pass half-empty giant reservoirs supplying the coastal cities. It’s hot outside and Jane ramps up the air-conditioning. Elefanta gives a squeal of climate-change abandon as we speed smoothly down the dry dusty roads. We have got to appreciate the lumbering ways of Elefanta and her wide-ranging music system with its banjo-picking Bluegrass stations from the smoky mountains and pounding Nashville songs: “Ah’m a red-necked woman, ah’m a tailgate woman. Ah’m sittin’ on the porch and I’ve got my Christmas lights on. Ah’m a red-necked woman, ah’m a tailgate woman . . .”

At a cheese factory that has a retail outlet we stop for a bite. Industrial-size vacuum-packed blocks of Californian Cheddar cheese line a long display cabinet. I decide I shall be a Royal duke being attentive to the natives while on a trade mission to a small outpost of the British Empire. I lean over the counter and put on my Prince Charles voice: “That’s very interesting that you make Cheddar cheese. Why do you call it Cheddar? Shouldn’t Cheddar cheese be made only in England.” But this is lost on the big man in a big white hat behind the counter. He seems baffled by the implied criticism. “Have a good day,” he says.

In the afternoon we stop at Watsonville, just short of our cottage in the Santa Cruz mountains. Despite its name Watsonville is overwhelmingly Mexican. We stock up with provisions at a Mexican grocery, because we shall be cooking for ourselves for the next five days. I buy a garlic bulb the size of a large turnip. We pay $12 for a full shopping basket. Dragonfly Cottage is 20 miles from Santa Cruz and as we climb a long narrow road through redwoods we share a sense of foreboding. We are far from anywhere and are surrounded by forest. Then at a fork in the track there is the sign Vaca del Sol and we drop down to our destination as the sun reappears bathing the whole valley with evening light. In the far distance we see the Pacific. I turn off Blue Grass Junction. Ah love you when you smile, ah love you when you cry, a’m a simple mountain boy but ah always love you well, ah love you when you smile.....

It’s often what you half-glimpse out of the corner of your eye as you look away that changes your view, that makes you realise that things are not as you comfortably assumed they were. That suffering takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along. . . . . as the poet says. The villagers in the Breugel painting go about their daily lives, leading horses, ploughing the land, sitting down to eat, skating and chasing away a dog and they do not notice the little boy in the corner of the painting falling from the sky. So it was that morning at the House of Flickering Light. We are having our last breakfast in the verandah. Granma has brought us a huge pot of tea that she holds in one hand and she brushes away my offer to take it back to the kitchen. “I’m a big girl now,” she says.

The Brooklyn attorney who speaks too much and his wife, whom I shall call Celeste, are at the next table and she looks expectantly towards us as if she would like us to transport her back to England, away from – well, she can’t quite give a name to what oppresses her.

Henry appears and he is cradling in his arms half a dozen rocks. He tells me to choose one. I ask if they have fallen from the sky in the night. “No,” he says. “They come from an old gold working. They’re quartz and there’s gold in them – not much gold but it’s something a mining company would extract.” I have a sudden illumination. Elinor Brompton-LeFage never introduced Henry as her husband. Henry is not Henry Brompton-LeFage. He is an family friend, an amiable eccentric who potters about the place looking at the stars and giving random rocks to visitors.

Half an hour later as we gather to say our goodbyes in the ample hall with its pianola, military insignia and mementoes of a family of warriors Elinor Brompton-LeFage takes me aside. “You see, Richard is in his seventies now but they still need him. He won’t stop. Most of the satellites up there,” and Mrs Brompton-LeFage gestures vaguely towards the ceiling, “were put up years ago and the young engineers can’t work them. Only Richard knows. That’s why he has to go on. Besides, Richard . . .” And Mrs Brompton-LeFage hesitates as if uncertain how I, rather than any other visitor, would receive such a confidence. “Well, Richard is sometimes ‘politically incorrect’.”