The Pacific Coast Highway

THIS IS California’s iconic road trip, linking the cheesy glamour of Los Angeles with the funky bohemia of San Francisco in the space of a leisurely week. Unravelling along the ocean in a series of West Coast clichés — surfers’ beaches and orange groves, wine country and giant redwoods — this is the highway that makes California Dreamin’ a reality.

Days one and two: LA is car city, and you can happily spend your first two days cruising the freeways and the boulevards. Pop down to Long Beach to visit the old Queen Mary, drop by Venice Beach for all that is weird, wacky and muscular, and cruise along Sunset Boulevard and Rodeo Drive with the top down.

Lunch, of course, should be taken in your car at the In-N-Out Burger, a retro drive-in diner in Westwood Village (922 Gayley Avenue). To rub shoulders with the rich and famous, stay at Shutters Hotel on the Beach (00 1 310-458 0030, www.shuttersonthebeach.com; doubles from £230). To merely look, try the Best Western Beverly Pavilion (273 1400, www.bestwestern.com; doubles from £90) in Beverly Hills.

Day three: fill the tank with cheap petrol, fire up your Beach Boys CD and head out on the highway, past the beach houses and the palm trees and the big Pacific surf. The long tentacles of LA soon fall astern, and the open road takes you to Santa Barbara in a couple of sunny hours.

Prosperous and sophisticated, Santa Barbara lies between a fabulous beach and the wonderful wine country that featured in the film Sideways. Spend the afternoon on a wine-tasting tour with Cloud Climbers Jeep Tours (00 1 805-965 6654, www.ccjeeps.com; from £56), which will take you over some dizzying mountain roads into wine country. For dinner, it’s Bouchon (730 1160, www.bouchonsantabarbara.com), which has a wonderful list of local wines. Not far from town is El Capitan Canyon (685 3887, www.elcapitancanyon.com), a retreat set in a wooded canyon near the sea, with cabins from £105.

Day four: cutting inland, you cross the Santa Ynez Mountains into big-sky, ranch-and-wine country. An hour later, you are in John Steinbeck’s California: vegetable and fruit country, where Mexican pickers in stetsons wait for payday. Another hour and you are back on the coast at Pismo, where surfers ride the big waves and Baywatch extras play volleyball on an endless beach.

A few miles north, at San Simeon, is one of the biggest attractions on the coast — Hearst Castle, the former home of William Randolph Hearst, immortalised by Orson Welles as Citizen Kane. Its scale, its shameless plundering of old European castles and its indiscriminate mix of styles make it a wonderful parody of American tastelessness. Tours start at £12; it is wise to book (at www.hearstcastle.com).

When you tire of all that materialism, you can chill out with the protected colonies of elephant seals on the secluded beaches at Piedras Blancas (924 1628, www.elephantseal.org). Another 15 miles brings you to the Ragged Point Inn (927 4502, www.raggedpointinn.net), which has great views of the ocean. Doubles start at £65; dinner from £15.

Day five: you are now entering the most beautiful stretch of the coastal highway, Big Sur, 70 miles of spectacular coastline where condors circle precipitous headlands. From the viewpoints, you may spot blue and humpback whales in the summer, or grey whales during the winter. When the forests push down to the coast, it is time to get out of the car. The hiking trails in Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park will lead you deep among the redwoods, where rivers pool in sunstruck swimming holes. Big Sur Lodge (00 1 800 424 4787, www.bigsurlodge.com) has cabins in the park from £57.

Day six: roof down — or, if you’re not that flash, windows open — for a leisurely cruise through the Monterey Peninsula, one of the most popular areas of this coast. Monterey stages its jazz festival (00 1 831-373 3366) in September; and it is home to one of the world’s great aquariums, the Monterey Bay Aquarium (648 4800, www.mbayaq.org).

As famous for electing Clint Eastwood mayor as for its boutiques, art galleries and twee teashops, Carmel has one of the great Spanish missions. If you missed the one in Santa Barbara, check out the Carmel Mission (624 3600, www.carmelmission.org), which has an 18th-century baroque church, three museums and gorgeous gardens. Santa Cruz, a wonderful Californian mix of surfers, skaters, yuppies, new-age freaks and ageing hippies, is a good place to spend the night. The Babbling Brook Inn (00 1 800 866 1131, www.babblingbrookinn.com) has doubles from £80.