MY ROUTE

San Francisco to New York City, with quite a few points in between

HMU if you need some photoshop doing badly

With apologies to anyone who’s already seen this, still figuring out substack due to not bothering to read any instructions before starting to type. As I say below I’m quite impatient

As you can see, America is a very large country; 463 times the size of Wales in standard measures. God knows how many double-decker buses you could fit in there, but I imagine none of them would take unboxed bikes.

I have to admit I am not one of those people who enjoys the planning as much as the journey – much as I love reading about other people’s preparations, when it comes to getting down to the nitty gritty of timetables and tiny frustrating little online maps myself I get impatient with all the unknowns, and tend to end up thinking, oh well, it’ll all come out in the wash. Which it usually does, but the US, thanks to its sheer size and inconvenient distance from the home (guessing I’m unlikely to stumble upon a friend who can give me a lift if I tear my hamstring falling off a bridge again), feels like it merits a little more in the way of both nitty and gritty, which has forced me to firm things up a bit more than I like to do. (There’s a terrifying hubris in making firm plans when travelling by bike.)

Much as I would have loved to do everything under my own steam (especially given the number of amazing cycle travelogues I’ve enjoyed as “preparation” – off the top of my head would recommend Anna McNuff’s the United States of Adventure and the Seek Travel Ride podcast) I have a book to write and a dog to come back to, so I will, as usual, be taking a few trains (hurrah for Amtrak, who seem FROM AFAR to have a very sane and reasonable bike policy which has not forced me to make one phone call to a nice lady thus far, unlike almost every long-distance train in this country).

Given huge swathes of the US are not served by the railway however, and Greyhound buses require bikes to be boxed (no free chewing gum for me), I was tearing my hair out on how to connect several of the destinations I really want to hit… until it occurred to me that rather than wasting my limited time pedalling for weeks on end just to reach somewhere I’d have taken a train to in Europe, I could just stick Eddy in the back of a car. So much as it pains me, I’ll probably do that in the Midwest too. (Why does that feel like cheating?)

- San Francisco to Los Angeles along the Pacific Coast Highway (though not via Big Sur as I suspect the road will still be closed… though if anyone knows better?)
- San Antonio
- Austin to New Orleans via Avery Island (ie eastern Texas and western Louisiana)
- Memphis, Nashville, Lexington
- Cincinnati to Columbus on the Ohio to Erie trail (yes I will be eating both chile and White Castle)
- Chicago via various US bicycle routes that seem to go via Indianapolis. Hey, why not, never been to either Ohio or Indiana before, they sound cool. Bet they have some lovely old headwinds
- Washington DC
- Bar Harbor, Maine, or as close as one can get to BH by public transport with a bike, and then south along the Adventure Cycling Association’s Atlantic Coast Route through NH, MA, RI and CT
- NEW YORK - because I will be at the Famous Nathan’s 4th July Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest by hook or by crook, unless I’ve been eaten by a bear or squashed by an RV. And yes, if that does happen you can reference this tragic foreshadowing in my obit, please use a nice photo of me and not the one where a Daily Mail reader said I looked like Peter Kay in drag thanks

Not the whole country by any means (I’m going to have to come back for the Pacific Northwest, which I already know I love, because it has great food, great wine and rains a lot), and to cycle through Utah (Monument Valley! Mormon poke cake!) and visit Colorado and Montana which just sound right up my big empty street… as does the ACA’s southern tier route because honestly, cycling San Diego to Florida sounds incred) but enough of it to make me a bit nervous.

The first thing I do whenever planning any proper journey is to go to Stanfords and buy a map. I love a paper map. One day I’m going to have them all over the walls. Unfortunately there is nowhere large enough in my flat to open it up properly without the dog walking all over it (this is at my parents’ place)

On the plus side, I’ve read lots of very positive accounts of cycling in America, I know it to be breathtakingly beautiful because I’ve spent a lot of time checking out roads on google street view (is the entire country full of hunting dog breeders or just the routes I’m taking?!), and the people to be incredibly welcoming and warm. Not that the British and French aren’t warm and welcoming once you approach them, but once a woman in Athens, Georgia heard my accent while I was buying a stamp and asked if she could give me a “momma hug” because I was a long way from home and must be missing them. I was only away for three weeks, but I said yes anyway, because it’s always nice to have a hug and she was a lot bigger than my actual momma, and consequently better at hugs (I LOVE YOU MUM).

On the negative side, people keep unhelpfully bringing up James Cracknell. To which end I have invested in a lot of safety-related items I would previously have regarded as embarrassing. More on which, next post, but anyone with positive experiences of cycling in the States, and I know there are many of you out there, please reassure me! Horror stories only welcome if they come with helpful advice (that isn’t DON’T DO IT).

Largely, I am incredibly excited. I love the States – I think I’ve been a very lucky 13 times:
1 New England when I was about 12, a trip I mainly remember because I had my first blueberry (or any kind of) muffin, which puzzled me because a muffin had sounded so savoury in What Katy Did and this, presented after Easter Mass in Boston, was very much a cake, and for the visit to the Ben and Jerry’s factory
2 A family road trip between San Francisco, LA and Las Vegas when I was 15 (too young to play the slots… but they put CHEESE on scrambled eggs?!)
3 A road trip from Florida to Atlanta and the Gulf Coast when I was at university, when I put on 3/4 stone in three weeks and all my friends laughed at me when I got home. Different times
4 A press trip to Chicago for Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine when I was on work experience, which remains the pinnacle of my journalistic life
5 A press trip to Las Vegas where they fed us truffles (I hate truffles, my golden shoes are too tight) and I fell asleep in the Cirque du Soleil
6 A Deep South road trip which remains one of the best holidays ever thanks to my friend James’ fanatical enthusiasm for organising things like visits to Civil War reenactments and state fairs
7 A press trip to Fort Lauderdale which I remember principally for the volume of jagermeister consumed, though I’m sure it has many other attractions to recommend it
8 A trip to New York to see my friends Gemma and Orla arrive by sea on their round the world mid-life yachting crisis
9 A road trip from Baltimore to the Chesapeake Bay to make a film about soft shell crabs for the Guardian. That was fun. I bought the best peanut butter ever by the roadside
10 Another trip to Chicago with the Marks & Spencer product development team which was FASCINATING and great because the only time you weren’t eating was when you were asleep
11 A road trip around the Pacific Northwest where everything tasted of pumpkin spice
12 A press trip to Kansas City to eat barbecue. Jagermeister and a mechanical bull also featured heavily I’m afraid to say. Thank God I don’t go on many press trips these days, I can’t take the pace
13 And lastly my friends Max and Jess’ wedding in Williamsburg in 2016

Turns out I haven’t been for a really, really long time. Even more excited now.

with apologies to the East Coast