Day 9-10: Occidental

On from Sacramento towards the coast. We stop first in the Napa Valley area for a quick bite to eat at Yountville’s bakery. The sat-nav then chooses to take us by winding mountain roads on to our next destination, the little town of Occidental, deep in the coastal forests and by happy chance, a wine region called Russian River. The town itself, despite being about an hour and a half’s drive from San Francisco, looks like backwoods America, albeit a version well set up for tourists. The lovely Inn at Occidental has a wine hour every evening too.

Nearby on the coast is Bodega Bay, where Hitchcock made The Birds. There’s a huge beach nearby at Salmon Creek, where fog rolls in from the cold Pacific and people have left strange sculptures of driftwood.

The afternoon is for wine-tasting at two nearby vineyards, Marimar, an outpost of the famous Spanish Torres family, founded by a female winemaker who found California more open-minded than Spain, and Moshin.

Another quite cool thing is the sculptures made from recycled bits and pieces round about.