Stay, stay like the wind!

While you're sitting in a bar in Big Sur, relishing the Firestone Ale and trying to think of a song which the Juke Box can't play. It will cross your mind, time and time again, to stop for another night, just because you can and, because people are a bit thin on the ground there, perversely, you chat more. However, you will have been rejuvenated and, whatever it was that brought you there, will seem eminently attractive because it had brought you to this mini Eden. You will want to carry on, not because Big Sur drives you away, you'll just feel compelled to find other Big Surs.

Anyway, that road which I've described earlier will continue further on up the coast and, as I've said, it's great. So, it's early up and off you go.

This time, the gentle calling of the ocean and the friendly mountain slopes will not seem so welcoming. You will drop down from Big Sur, seemingly out of the sky and to greet you will be a wind. And what a wind. It whooshes around the headlands and diffracts to fill the small bays and inlets. You will struggle like fury against it to attain the peaks, coincidental to the extreme of the headland.

Here be monsters! You will have found a small hurricane-free patch, just as you rise the last few metres of the climb, where the wind has travelled too fast to turn quickly enough to fill a void on the leeward side. Blessed, blessed relief. Then you will hit the crest. It will be all you can do to stay on the road. There's no point worrying about the traffic, you must simply bully it by hogging the entire lane while the wind decides what to do with you. If you're quick enough (thank you, Precious) you'll have rounded the crest before the wind has decided exactly how to torture you and be on your way down to the beginning of the next lump.

Don't think for a moment that the downhill bit will be any easier. You will struggle just as hard and find that ascending is as quick. This is the most exposed bit as you're hit full on by the main thrust of the wind, punching you into the craggy rock and the ancillary branch which has turned at the oncoming headland and, unable to progress inland, wheels round to deliver the uppercut. Truly you will understand the value of combination punching. So next time you're at the bar, mulling over what to do the next day. Check the Juke Box for 'Should I stay or should I go' and stay, stay like the wind.