Los Angeles: the South Bay bicycle path

By Sophie Campbell 1054AM GMT twenty-two March 2010

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Previous of Images Next The 22-mile cycle trail links the disdainful enclaves of Malibu and Palos Verdes Photo CORBIS The cycle track passes around the Marina del Rey Photo ALAMY Boards for rent on Pier Avenue, by the renouned surfing mark of Hermosa Beach Photo ALAMY Waiting for the right call at Santa Monica beach Photo ALAMY

The ubiquitous physical education instructor of Le Merigot is wearing what you would design the ubiquitous physical education instructor of a oppulance road residence to wear an unblemished fit and tie. It"s tough to suppose him in a teeterboard unit on Santa Monica beach.

Los Angeles My kind of locale The Venice Beach Art Walls Chateau Marmont Hotel, Los Angeles Hotel Palomar, Los Angeles Guide to Santa Monica, California Raymond Chandler"s Los Angeles

"I was the catcher, my hermit was the lifter and his mother was the flyer," Paul Hortobagyi says with a grin, vocalization in the road residence restaurant, a integrate of hundred yards from the beach. "We came from Budapest in 1969 and worked for Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey. We used to know guys similar to Russ Saunders."

Russ Saunders was a important gymnast and try stand in for Gene Kelly. Shots from the Fifties and Sixties, taken at the cluster of rings, vaulting horses and weights afterwards well known as Muscle Beach, nearby Santa Monica pier, show sculpted gods light girls in structured swimwear, all posing to soundness in the sun.

For the past 130 years or so, ever given the residents of the dried city of Los Angeles, most prohibited miles inland, pitched tents on the beach and due a genuine estate boom, this immeasurable crawl of silt stretching from what is right away disdainful Malibu right down to disdainful Palos Verdes has been about carrying a laugh. Linking the dual is a 22-mile, super-smooth badge of dark grey concrete, finished in the late Seventies, that claims to be "the longest beach trail of the sort in the world".

Whatever sort that is, it is fabulously southern Californian. This is where you can pose, lift weights, buy crystals, stick on a "circle" all from yoga to chanting draw your drum board, float your bike or keep fit in your wheelchair. It"s not all egalitarian you can additionally own a residence value multiform million dollars or go to one of the ritzy beach clubs, though the city not long ago non-stop the free-access Annenberg Community Beach House on the site of the palace once owned and partied in by William Randolph Hearst"s mistress, Marion Davies. And whoever you are, the people-watching is superb.

I cycle there on a day so misty that the Malibu bluffs are invisible, sailing down the high point of view of Ocean Drive to beach level. Out of the obscurity looms a man, all narrowed eyes and cheekbones, roving a trike arrayed with eagle feathers and dual American flags. He passes silently, similar to an outtake from Mad Max, withdrawal me seeking at 4 pigeons that have cosied down in the sand. Nobody would mental condition of hassling a seagul on attractive Santa Monica beach. The silt is as neat as a jobbing actress exfoliated by tractor each morning, studded with blue lifeguard towers the Baywatch strange is at the Malibu finish and patrolled by military you do beach avocation on feet or bike.

I pedal towards the resounding loops and spirals of the rides on Santa Monica Pier, that was 100 years old last September. It still has the strange carousel, that appeared in The Sting (the film"s co-star, Robert Redford, valiantly fought the due demolition). The Moorish-style post ballroom, La Monica, that didn"t survive, welcomed 50,000 dancers at the opening night and was a prime for years.

A integrate of hundred yards over down the beach, Nathaniel "Nat" Trives, right away 75 and prior to Santa Monica"s initial black mayor, is watchful for me by a coronet board observant "The Ink Well A Place of Celebration and Pain". This was the 200-square-feet widen of beach where black adults could bathe. "Restrictions strictly finished in 1927," he says. "But I was still unwelcome at the beach clubs in the early Fifties." Black beachgoers would attend to song floating out of the Club Casa del March that had a trench for gamblers to slip down during Prohibition and the important black surfer Nick Gabaldon taught himself to drum here and after drowned at Malibu.

After I encounter Nat, things speed up. The trail is well-spoken as silk compared with the lunar aspect I invert on at home you can simply do twelve miles an hour and the day is cool. I keep pedalling dismounting underneath slim palms to run along the grungy Venice boardwalk with the stalls offered crafts, tattoos and tees, drifting over the small humped bridges and flattering mini-canals built internal by the developer Abbot Kinney to opposition Santa Monica in 1905 unsuccessfully, as it incited out. I spin left at the faded, rhubarb-red Doge"s Palace and wizz south towards the huge, festive Marina del Rey.

Joe Poblasco functions in Daniel"s Bike Rentals in the row of fishermen"s houses on the corner of the marina, the main traveller captivate until it got out-glittered. "A crony pronounced let"s buy a residence by the Venice canals 40 years ago," he says, twirling a tyre lever. "It was a hole behind then. Nineteen thousand dollars. Be value millions now." Cyclists stop to discuss one man, in his sixties, customarily cycles the complete path. They determine that it"s value a diversion to see the millions of dollars" value of yachts, but the jetty is a suffering for cyclists you have to round it since there"s no bridge. Beyond, a underbrush of week end halibut fishermen signals the begin of Dockweiler Beach, underneath the Los Angeles International Airport moody path, where huge‑bellied 747s bark out over the Pacific and the border of surfers.

As I pedal I can feel a mood change. The ocean-view houses are still flash, but Manhattan and Hermosa Beaches feel summery, villagey. The object comes out, the beach sprouts volleyball courts, silt crunches underneath my wheels. A man wiggles past on a snakeboard, with a terrier wearing a kerchief and a trek ("Oh, sure, he"s usually carrying his H2O and a snack," he says, as the terrier gazes coolly in to the distance).

It"s usually right away that I realize I"ve cycled about eighteen miles and have to go all the approach back. I"m as well sleepy for Redondo Beach, though I wish to eat seafood and find the bust of George Freeth, the Hawaiian-Irishman deliberate to have due Californian drum insanity (when I do go back, somebody"s nicked his head but I love Redondo with the operative boats and food stalls). I fall at Martha"s on Hermosa Beach and consternation what a cab would cost their cilantro duck soup is the usually thing that gets me home.

The approach behind is similar to rewinding a movie beach "burbs fly past in retreat Hermosa, Manhattan, El Segundo, Marina del Rey, Venice but this time I stop at Muscle Beach. The famously bodacious locus changed down from Santa Monica after a integrate of contemptible scandals in the Seventies. On a petrify platform, confronting packaged steel bleachers and corroborated by a span of hulk petrify club bells, a guy staggers underneath a outrageous weight. "He can"t settle," opines a lady on drum blades. "No lift!" calls the MC. "Take the club to 710lb. The club is open. Opening try for Lance Carabas from Chicago!"

Everyone leans forward. Will he do it? Won"t he? I suppose Paul Hortobagyi and his acrobat friends examination the same thing 40 years ago. It"s built for fun, this beach, all twenty-two dazzling, leg-breaking miles of it. And I ought to know.

Beach trail basis

British Airways (0844 493 0758; www.ba.com/california) offers a seven-night fly-drive to Los Angeles from �529 per person, vacating during April, together with lapse BA moody from Heathrow and entirely thorough Avis car hire.

Le Merigot (www.lemerigothotel.com; from $299.95) is laid-back, dual mins from the silt and honest about the "partial beach view"; the revamped art deco Hotel Shangri-La (www.shangrila-hotel.com; from $335) is that singular thing, a Santa Monica road residence with excellent sea views. The Marina Pacific at Venice has been jauntily revamped in to the Hotel Erwin (www.hotelerwin.com; from $189). Best Western has hotels all the approach down the beach, for around $120 (www.bestwestern.com)

Bikes Malibu to Marina del Rey Perry"s (www.perryscafe.com) has eight cycle/skate sinecure outlets and the interesting three-hour Legends Beach Bike Tour, $35, leaves from the pier. For Marina del Rey to Torrance, try Daniel"s (www.danielsbikerentals.com) or Marina Bike Rentals at Redondo Beach (www.marinabikerentals.smugmug.com)

Metro Bus (www.bikemetro.com) publishes a good map of city bike routes, together with the beach path. Racks at the front of the train take dual bikes discuss it the motorist prior to you bucket up.

See www.visitcalifornia.co.uk and www.discoverlosangeles.com, run by the LACVB, with links to sites such as www.santamonica.com

Off the beach paths

Santa Monica Pier (www.santamonicapier.org) starts a array of free concerts, the Twilight Dance Series, in July; check website for events.

The Annenberg Community Beach House, 415 Pacific Coast Highway (beachhouse.smgov.net), is free to everyone, with pool, object loungers, caf and bookable tennis and volleyball courts.

The Getty Villa (www.getty.edu), usually off the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, is a noble scale reproduction of a Roman villa, with strange artefacts.

California Heritage Museum (www.californiaheritagemuseum.org), on Main Street, is a singular e.g. of a 19th-century Santa Monica house.

Santa Monica"s Sunday Farmers" Market (www.smgov.net), usually outward the museum, is full of outlandish furnish and has a cheuffer use that parks and services your bike.

Abbot Kinney, at right angles to Venice Beach, is good for selling and eating try Hal"s (www.halsbarandgrill.com) for shining insatiable and vegetarian options tasty residence salads from $6.

Martha"s 22nd Street Grill, Hermosa Beach (001 310 376 7786), opens for breakfast at 7am try the blueberry pancakes ($5.25 for two).