We drove from San Francisco down to Santa Maria for the first leg of the journey. It took us the best part of a day, but we did stop off at regular intervals to admire the views and take photos. There are plenty of places to stop and get gas or food etc. There are also touristy places to stop such as Carmel and Monterey Bay. We stopped for a couple of hours at Monterey and visited the Aquarium whilst there -– it's worth a visit but resembles many other aquariums the world over. We had dinner here too before travelling on.

We spent a few days mid-way, at Santa Maria, then travelled the rest of the journey to San Diego.

The only thing we would change about this stretch of the trip is: don’t stay on the PCH through Los Angeles. We did the typical tourist thing and thought the coastal road would be a much more pleasant drive than taking the detour thorough LA. How wrong we were. Firstly the coastal road actually goes quite a way inland and the scenery is non-existent. The road is very, very busy and at some points we hardly moved for an hour or more. It took us longer to do this stretch of the PCH than the rest of the journey put together. My advice to anyone else would be to carry on the main highway through Los Angeles. This is not a frightening as it sounds, the roads are well marked and quick moving. You soon get back onto the PCH, once through LA, and it takes a quarter of the time and patience to do it.

The route from LA to San Diego is less pretty as you are not so close to the coast, but it is very easy going and, again, there are lots of places to stop off for gas and food etc.

The PCH is a very pleasant journey and one I would recommend. Some of the sections are quite hair-raising as you drive close to cliff edges and a lot of it is very winding, but the views make it very worthwhile.