The Big Sur

Transport today was via a very comfortable Lincoln Town Car: we collected one passenger, Nancy, from the Bay Park Hotel (Alison: the ladies voted it "offal") in our car plus 3 in another  Lincoln and set off in convoy for The Big Sur, a 90-mile stretch of coastline on Route 1. 

        Our car at Hearst Castle

I got what I wished for - a driver who doesn't talk - but some conversation would be good, especially information about what we were seeing; however his knowledge was abysmal. David told him about trees and a barista en route supplied some local tidbits. A fire has been burning around Carmel for 10 weeks which we could sympathise with. 

There was beautiful rugged coastline all the way, reminiscent of our Great Ocean Road. 

We all had tickets for Hearst Castle at 12.10 and it suddenly appeared sitting on top of a hill. It was built on a grandiose scale by William Randolph Hearst between 1930s and 1950s; was bequeathed to the state and is now run efficiently by the State Park Service. 

You are assembled into a bus at the visitor centre and driven to the hill top where the mansion and its attendant guest cottages and buildings sit. 

This is the grand mansion above, below is the dining room, billiard room and the indoor swimming pool. 

The outdoor swimming pool is being retiled but there is a dear little statue in a niche there: