Wot! No TOAL? (Jony)

I wish to apologise. My sins are many and manifold but, in the present context, they include the failure to write a series of coherent, interesting, witty diary entries that record how our Trip Of A Lifetime down the Pacific Coast Highway is moving from one mind-boggling highlight to another.

I doubt that Mrs E Trellis of North Wales (whom I take to be our audience) really wants to know what we had for breakfast yesterday or what tomorrow's landlady looks like. She wants wall-to-wall awesome panoramas of the Oregon coastline followed by mega-wow vistas of the Big Sur in which dirty laundry and coffee stops barely feature. Can't blame her really. After all, she can get laundry and coffee chat in Llandudno. However it's a sad fact that life on the road - the stuff that actually fills one's mind between 10.20 and 1.37 - is all too often about the grotty hostel where you left your phone charger or what the waitress at that café said. Sorry Mrs T.

Today was a good example. We left FortRoss and set off down the coastal highway for an hour or so before turning inland towards the wineries of Sonoma. The coastal views were pretty damn impressive and as usual I was bombing along, looking for thrills and spills among the winding bends, while Nick was steadily following in my wake, enjoying the oceanside scenery, quietly oblivious of the queue of cars forming behind him. Occasionally we would stop to enjoy the views; once I stopped to take a video of Nick's stately progress; sometimes we stopped to check the map and get some petrol. We were laughing the other day that we never stop to check out the botany: sorry about that girls!

And sorry too that our pictures are awful and our editorial discipline even worse. However I hope that we have, nevertheless, somehow conveyed just a bit of the majesty, the rugged beauty, the big open skies that have met us in this part of the world and helped refresh our spirits.

And, by the way, we have, somehow, now reached San Francisco. Stand by for Golden Gate photos.