So when I am riding along a cliffy section of the coast an hour or so before sunset and I see a narrow path leading over a grassy hill and across a meadow towards the cliff half a mile away I am easily lured onto it. I push the bike through clinging grass still wet from a recent squall. Clouds are looming again out to sea and the weather looks uncertain but I am drawn to the cliff’s edge where a sheltering cave is formed by the curving arms of a windswept spruce. Waves crash far below, rocks rise out of the sea. A large sandstone stack towering above the water just to the left of my eyrie could almost be considered an island with its spiky top knot of trees.

Ocean stack with a top knot of trees.

Clouds out to sea in the evening.

I love the feeling of camping by myself in a wild place – of being alone hidden from the eyes of the world. The sun sets over the sea into the bank of clouds still hanging there and I watch the stars come out, one by one, overhead. Later in the night it rains and I wake, listening to raindrops falling on the thin membrane which protects me from the elements.

The rugged coastline of the Pacific Northwest is heart-achingly beautiful.

My little tree cave hanging above the ocean...

... and you would never even know that I was there.

Sunny days as summer drifts into autumn.

I exist in a total media blackout, paying not the slightest heed to news bulletins or weather forecasts and I find it quite comforting not knowing what is going on outside my immediate realm or having any expectations of my environment beyond the ones I develop on the basis of what I can see in front of me.

Some things filter through, though.

A man at a campground informs me that he was told to evacuate a campground a little further down the coast the night before because of a tsunami alert. There are tsunami warning signs on all low lying coastal areas on the US coast and after a while you don’t take a lot of notice of them but this alert, apparently, was in earnest. The warning came in response to the earthquake in Samoa, and it was in this way that I learnt of that event. No tsunami made its way to the coast of the US, however, and I was unaware of any potential threat, as I cycled along, until after it had passed.

I cycle out of the supermarket car park in an Oregon town with people anxiously warning me of approaching rain squalls. Exactly what they expect me to do, I am not entirely sure – check into a hotel, I guess, to watch television or something like that until the inclement weather passes. However, the idea of getting wet doesn’t frighten me unduly so I ride out of town.

I stop to admire the oncoming storm front moving across the sea parallel to the coast. It is a lovely cloud formation that brings the predicted rain in its wake.

I ride in the rain. It is not so bad.

A weather front advancing. Beautiful, isn't it?

I think I could become a storm chaser - but then I might have to have a faster means of transport than a bike at my disposal.

Oregon's dune area is a sea of shifting sand.

Sand encroaching on the highway.

I pass a sign indicating a campground and continue climbing to the top of a long hill. I am riding through forest on a still warm afternoon. Fireweed, a roadside companion that has been with me all the way from Alaska, still lines the highway: the plants are like old friends now – I have watched them bloom and fade over more than six thousand kilometres.

Fireweed is an old friend now.

At the top of the hill I change my mind, make a u-turn, and speeding back down the slow upward mile I just covered I return to the campground. The area is heavily wooded and the campground, quiet, almost deserted – closing for the season at the end of the week, a sign at the entrance informs me. I choose a sheltered site where my tent is not visible and set up camp before exploring.

An information board displays a map of a six mile loop trail traversing forest, dunes and the beach. Ignoring the lengthening shadows, I set off uphill through the forest and after quarter of an hour emerge onto golden sand dunes. Where the path crosses the sand all traces of previous footprints have been effaced by a relentless wind. I case about until I find the path again where it crosses a more sheltered area of the dunes but, after some hesitation, I decide that if I walk as far as the beach it will be dark on the return trip so I, opting for ’sensible’, make my way back to camp.

Dunes in the evening.

Grass and sand.

A perfect dune.

Grass and sand calligraphy.

In the morning, I return to the trail and set off heading the other way around the loop which takes me on a longer walk through the forest. The forest is hushed with that special silence which is filled with small sounds: rustles and sighs, stirrings and sudden disappearances. Constantly irascible squirrels scold shrilly and then silence falls once more. The light is soft, filtered again and again, first by mist and then by foliage. The forest floor is thick and soft, padded with green moss, grey lichen and red brown fir needles. I walk slowly, the path winding gently uphill through old trees – Douglas fir, spruce and hemlock.

A tree frog.

At the top of the hill the forest opens out and I am lured off the path by mushrooms – mysterious life forms that are neither plant nor animal. They are everywhere bursting forth from the ground, pushing vigorously through the forest litter, clinging delicately to tree stumps, rising up in holes and crevices – magical indescribable beings.

Most of the funghi I see are unknown to me and I have left my new mushroom guide at my camp but a few chanterelles appear and find their way into a makeshift collecting bag created by my tank top sealed by a knot. A white mushroom, which I take initially for a pale chanterelle growing at the bottom of quite a deep hole, turns out to have no gills on inspection of its underside. I put it in the bag for later identification. Some mushrooms have been disturbed and I can see the small yellow stumps here and there. I am not the first mushroom hunter here.

Not sure - a small amanita of some description?

Clusters of mushrooms - honey mushrooms, perhaps?

Close up of the clusters.

A mushroom with patent vigour!

Small knobbly mushrooms.

Vanished conks (Ganoderma tsugae) - bizarre creatures, inedible but used medicinally .

Yellow funghi on the ground.

I wander slowly through the forest drifting away from the path, losing it, finding it and losing it again, heading always upwards. At the top of the hill I can see down the other side over the dunes to the sea. I come suddenly upon a young couple with a dog in a sandy clearing on the hill, packing up camp. The dog runs forward barking as I approach but what I notice is the magnificent mushroom the girl has in her hand. A flash of mushroom envy must have passed across my face, at that moment.

A proud mushroom hunter.

King Bolete (Boletus edulis)

The couple have been here for a couple of days and they have kilos of chanterelles in a couple of large brown paper bags and an odd assortment of other funghi. The mushroom the girl is holding is probably a King Bolete, the prize mushroom, and this one is a beauty. I show the couple the mushroom I am uncertain of and they name it and show me the entry describing it in their book. It is supposed to be good eating.

I walk on down the hill. The forest opens out as the ground becomes more sandy until I find myself crossing the dunes, wind blowing, sand flying, silver tussocks of grass undulating, gulls crying, blue skies above. My heart always leaps as I approach the ocean. I pass through a thicket of dense low conifers and I then I am on the beach – deserted for miles in either directions with barely a human trace. I walk on the hard sand examining the offerings washed up by the tides – broken sand dollars, scraps of kelp, a fish carcass, clam shells. There is remarkably little plastic or glass.

The beach in the morning.

Scary fish carcass.

I walk along the beach until I see the sign directing me back across the dunes to where I was the evening before and return to my camp to a breakfast of mushrooms.

Breakfast - a mixture of chanterelles (chantharellus cibarius) and hedgehog mushrooms (hydnum rapandum).

It is the mornings that are misty here. The sun rises – in the east, like it always does – behind the hills and as it creeps upwards light spills in luminous sheets and shafts through gaps and fissures in the ranges, silver rays illuminating cold water laden air. The sea takes on colours slowly: dove grey, pearly pink, eggshell blue, white caps whipped up by the wind, the endless breakers rolling in.

In the evenings, I watch the sun slide down, directly into the water of the Pacific; the sky and sea illuminated – red, orange and purple, rocky outcrops and islands silhouetted, black, against a fiery backdrop.

This is a reversal of the all the years of my life. Years where, if I happened to be on the beach at sunrise, I would watch fire, in slow motion, flickering into the sky, clouds on the horizon filling with light over the tireless waves… and in the evening the mist would draw in as the colours ebbed and faded slowly from the sky and sea with the disappearance of the sun – west, behind mountains – leaving only a soft pearly silver luminescence until the final descent of darkness.

I wonder if I sat on the beach at dawn and sang a song for my friend, Lauri, she would hear it echoing over the waves with the sunset in Bondi, Australia.

Bike Newport doesn’t have a kickstand that they deem up to the task of supporting a fully loaded touring bike but the staff are keen to offer help to a long distance cyclist. The guy serving me invites me to use the staff lounge upstairs.

“We try to be like a day hostel for cyclists on tour,” he says. “You can have a shower, do your laundry, watch TV…”

I opt for internet access and spend the rest of the afternoon curled up on a comfy sofa catching up in Cyberland. The guys on the floor phone ahead to Florence, the next town with a bike shop, and ask them to order a kickstand in for me for tomorrow.

In a pattern that is becoming a little too familiar, at 5.30PM I hurriedly pack up my computer and get on the bike to find a place to camp before dark. I want to get to the State Park about fourteen miles north of Florence where Dave had suggested I might find more mushrooms but the sun sinks below the horizon long before I arrive. Luckily, an alternative state campground appears before total darkness descends.

The campground is small and relatively empty and I have the hiker/biker camp to myself. I cook a couple of lobster mushrooms that I have stashed from the morning and then a red lentil stew, making sure to hang my food securely in a tree when I have finished cooking.

In the morning, I get up early while the sun is still caught amongst the branches of the trees above me on the hills.

Sun coming up.

The first event of note is a passage through a tunnel. While the Oregon Coastal Bike Route tries very hard to live up to it’s name, the route, as detailed in a free map available throughout Oregon, for the most part follows Highway 101, a major highway with heavy traffic. Apart from occasional signposts on the highway reminding car drivers to “Watch for Cyclists” there is no real reason to consider it a bike route in any sense other than that in which any road can be considered a bike route.

However, this tunnel is equipped with a sign and flashing warning lights to indicate when cyclists are in the tunnel. The lights are activated by a button at the entrance of the tunnel. Pushing the button pleases me in the same way that pushing an elevator button amuses a five-year-old – even if it doesn’t give me a huge amount of extra confidence when I set off on the murkily lit narrow tarmac strip burrowing through the mountain. Fortunately, though, the tunnel is not a particularly long one and I pass through it, wincing as the cars pass, but, without incident.

You can only hope that the car drivers take heed of the sign and flashing lights. It doesn't seem to slow them down much.

On the other side of the tunnel, as I continue a steep climb around the cape, I become aware of a strange noise. Gruff shouts start to echo up and down the rocky cliffs. It sounds a bit like a bunch of half-deaf old men standing around a bar during a football game trying to make themselves heard above the TV or a political demonstration where a whole lot of people with cheap megaphones are competing for attention but neither of these options seems likely in the circumstances. I ride on puzzling over the sound until I pass a pullout and stop. A couple of men are peering over the wall. I join them.

Far below, is a vast sea lion colony. The animal are heaped, carelessly, together; piled up on top of one another seemingly largely indifferent to each other’s presence. Every now and then one clambers over the pile of recumbent bodies causing a temporary upset. Each disturbance results in some frantic barking and snapping before the creatures subside into torpor once more.

I sit on the wall, next to a man studying the colony closely with a pair of binoculars, and watch fascinated by the sheer number of these animals. The tide and the sun are both rising and as sunlight and waves start to wash over the rocks where the animals are resting the agitations become more frequent and more sustained. The man shares his binoculars with me and together we put forward various theories regarding sea lion habits and behaviour.

An unbelievable quantity of sea lions heaped up on the rocks below Highway 101.

As the sun and tide rises the animal become more restive - although even a restive pile of sea lions appears pretty relaxed.

I continue on my way to Florence where I find Bicycles 101, the bike shop, on the highway, as I enter the town. My expectations have been raised by the warm welcome I received at Bike Newport yesterday but the girls behind the counter appear to regard the entrance of a customer into their domain as something of an unwarranted intrusion. They know nothing of a part that may have been ordered for me.

When I don’t leave immediately, they eventually try to attract the attention of a guy talking on his cell phone. He is deeply involved in conversation and the unseen participant in this dialogue is clearly mixed up in a difficult relationship. The guy manages to interrupt his counselling session for long enough to inform me, without further explanation, that the order wasn’t placed. He then returns to his call. “Cut her loose,” he advises. “Cut off her credit card. Show her what life is about.”

Nobody inquires if there is anything else I might need or, in fact, heeds my continued presence at all so I go on my way, disappointed, and without buying the replacement brake pads that I will need shortly. Feeling thwarted, I wander off into town to find some form of consolation.

A bookshop is the obvious solution. I stop first at a second-hand bookshop but it offers thin pickings. I am directed to another bookshop around the corner that stocks new and second-hand books and inquire after a couple of titles that I am interested in, to no avail. I finally settle on Cannery Row by Steinbeck, a book which came up in conversation with Sheila on Lasqueti Island.

I am about to pay for my chosen book when I remember the mushroom guides that Dave recommended. The woman directs me to a shelf next to the counter. She has a number of copies of both All That the Rain Promises and More and Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora in stock. There is a cheap second-hand copy of Mushrooms Demystified and I weigh it in my hand for a long time before passing it up, regretfully, in favour of the far smaller and less comprehensive ‘hip’ pocket guide, All That the Rain Promises and More.

I leave the shop excited by my new purchases and very keen to find a likely place to hunt mushrooms.

The Pacific Ocean is so beautiful that it never stops surprising me.

After the racoon incident, I obviously need to replenish my supplies and I make a number of stops at various grocery stores in the towns I pass through during the day. I am irritated to discover that in the majority of regional supermarkets in the US the only thing you can reliably buy from bulk bins is candy, while things like oats are much harder to source. Buying from bulk bins means that I can control the quantity of each item that I purchase which is pretty handy with the limited space I have available in my food pannier.

I finally arrive at Beverley Beach State Park campsite late, after a long day. Night has fallen and I ride to the hiker/biker camp in almost complete darkness. The only thing I can really see is a guy standing tending a fire in the middle of an open grassy area.

“Is this ‘hikerbikerville’?” I enquire.

He admits it, somewhat reluctantly, not seemingly overly pleased to have his solitude broken. However, as I case the area in the dark for a suitable tent site he points out what he considers the most favourable position available. I pitch the tent and then address myself to the matter of dinner. My food pannier is in total disarray and I need to repackage and reorganise the new supplies before I can even think about cooking.

The guy seated at his fire behind me is silent. The fire pit is in communal space but it seems a little problematic making friends in the dark, with someone who I can’t really see. I rustle through plastic bags as I dispose of bulky packaging and place various food-stuffs into zip lock bags.

After a while he announces, somewhat irritably, that I am welcome to join him at the fire. I explain about the racoon disaster. When I have sorted the food, I cook some pasta and stir in tomato paste – not a culinary highlight, but I have no patience left to make something nicer – and go to the fire. It is cold enough to be grateful for it.

We sit side by side at a picnic table facing the fire in silence while I eat my mess.

“If you’re interested in edible mushrooms, there are a lot of lobster mushrooms around here,” the man informs me suddenly.

Mushrooms are a subject that interests me enormously but not one that I know a huge amount about. I have been mushroom hunting a couple of times before in the Czech Republic, where the pastime is something of a national passion -  rivalled, perhaps, only by beer and ice-hockey.

“What are lobster mushrooms?” I inquire, eager to expand my knowledge.

“They are red and orange – like lobsters. They are in the woods, there… and there…,” he gestures into the darkness.

I am not satisfied and press for more information. Eventually he offers to show me and so we walk, not ten metres away, to where the nearest trees are, with our torches and he points out a lumpy misshapen reddish-orange funghi. I am thrilled to have learnt a new edible mushroom – especially such a colourful one.

We return to the fire and our conversation is more animated now; we discuss mushrooms we have seen, mushroom expeditions we have been on, mushroom books. My new-found mushroom mentor describes a funghi called chicken-of-the-woods and I feel sure it is one that I have seen recently. I drag out my computer to show him the photos of mushrooms that I took in the forest around Forks. I proudly show off the takings of a particularly fruitful mushroom hunt, with my first mushroom guide, in the Czech Republic.

Eventually talk drifts to other topics and I discover that Dave makes hand-made vegan truffles for a living, in Portland. I am impressed.

In the morning, I get up early eager to search out some lobster mushrooms for breakfast – especially since I haven’t managed to replace my oats yet. I wander into the wooded area beside the my tent and immediately see numerous reddish-orange forms pushing up through the bed of needles carpeting the forest floor: there is not much searching to be done here.

Lobster mushroom (Hypomyces lactifluorum) - this mushroom is actually two: a parasitic funghi engulfs it host (a gilled mushroom - usually the short stemmed russela) forming this brightly coloured intriguing creature.

Another one.

Breakfast.

I look around for the most attractive funghi, choosing firm ones with the prettiest colouring. I return to my table with four choice specimens but I feel dissatisfied. The thrill of the hunt is lacking in this experience. I walk across the road and climb a steep bank passing a multitude of the lobster mushrooms; they no longer interest me. Clambering up the hill, there are numerous funghi that I stop to examine but none that I recognise.

Unidentified white mushrooms.

Mystery black mushrooms.

Brown funghi.

There are so many boletes that I never know which ones are good to eat and which ones are not.

Towards the top of the hill my progress is halted by a sturdy wire fence and I walk along it for a while before turning to descend. I see a flash of yellow and, scrambling over fallen logs and evading the trailing blackberry brambles, I make my way towards it. More frilly yellow circles come into view. I find myself in the middle of a sizeable patch of fresh chanterelles. Luckily, I had the foresight to bring a bag with me to collect them in.

Chanterelles are really yummy.

I make my way back to the campsite where Dave has emerged from his tent and is already cooking his breakfast. I show my find to him for a second opinion. As he examines the contents of my bag I see a flash of envy and new respect in his eyes as he confirms my identification.

Chanterelles - yummmmmy!.... this is a really good breakfast!

“Would you like to have some for breakfast with me?”

He seems a little surprised by this offer but doesn’t hesitate for long. We both voice regret at the lack of butter. We discuss cooking methods and the benefits of dry sautéing* mushrooms. Dave lends me a bigger pot as I still haven’t managed to replace my tiny cooking pot that is barely capable of feeding one adequately.

It is not long before we are sitting eating mushrooms, straight from the pot – definitely friends now, in the daylight, over a shared meal.

Dave, a new-found mushroom mentor.

After polishing off the chanterelles I remember the lobster mushrooms. I decide, in the spirit of discovery, to cook them as a second course. They do, in fact, look remarkably like lobster flesh as they cook and, while they are certainly not equal to chanterelles, they are pretty tasty.

Cooking up lobster mushrooms in my tiny pot.

Today, I have an evening destination in mind and it is about sixty miles (100 kilometres) away which is, in theory, an easier day than the previous three or four. I want to camp at the Cape Lookout State Park campground. Oregon has a sweet deal for bikers and walk-in campers, with a fee of a mere $4 for each camper. That is a price I’m certainly willing to pay for the luxury of access to hot showers and not having to worry about early morning dog walkers.

I ride briskly for 40 miles before turning off Highway 101 onto the road leading to Cape Lookout. I have a copy of the Oregon Coast Bike Route map so I am forewarned that the gradients are steep but I am always happy to leave the major roads behind me.

On the highway.

The road is steep in places but nothing desperate and I arrive at Cape Lookout in the late afternoon with enough time to walk on the beach, set up camp and cook before dark. The extensive hiker/biker camp, which is hidden among trees close to the beach, is practically deserted. There is one rather unsociable biker already there when I arrive and another young cyclist, who I met previously at a campground a few days before in Washington, turns up as I am returning from the beach. We greet each other but both retire early.

I wake in the night to furtive scurryings. I would like to ignore them but as I roll over another rustle drags my unwilling attention out of the realms of sleep. The boy who arrived in the camp after me had mentioned that the ranger had warned him to hang his food. I sit up, fumble for my torch and struggle out of the tent.

A circle of glowing red eyes reflects my torch-light back to me. My food pannier is lying on the ground amongst a circle of racoons, who continue eating unabashed by my presence. Plastic bags are torn open and what is left of my food is scattered on the ground. I approach and they retreat unwillingly. I falter, slightly nonplussed by the sheer quantity of them – I am definitely out-numbered – and brazenly, they advance. I stamp my foot. They hesitate.

Racoon - this is not, in fact, one of the culprits involved in the raid on my pannier but one I encountered at another campsite. I was too beleagured to take a photo of the racoon mob at Cape Lookout.

I decide the creatures are small enough to not pose a real threat and rush into the middle of the chaos. The only thing the animals haven’t eaten is my coffee and my spices. Everything else – oats, pasta, granola bars, nuts, dried fruit – has been devoured.

I pick up the tattered shreds of plastic that is all that remains of my food supply and tie it into a bundle, simultaneously cursing and thanking my lucky stars that this didn’t happen in one of the more remote areas I passed through. I check the pannier anxiously but it seems to be intact; thankfully, the racoons have managed to pull everything out without damaging it. Rather too late in the evening, I find the rope that I carry for the purpose and hang my food pannier, along with the bundle of plastic still containing odd scraps of food, from a branch out of reach, I hope, of renewed assault. I return to my tent.

In the morning, I get up and, given my circumstances, decide to go for a walk on the beach without breakfasting.

Sunrise is also disorientating for an east coast girl on the west coast.

Soothing views to help me recover from the racoon incident.

I love the Pacific Ocean.

When I return the young cyclist I spoke to yesterday is preparing his breakfast. I go to tell him of my midnight visitors and, generously, he cuts his cinnamon role in half and offers it to me. He also provides me with half a red grapefruit and an apple which I gratefully accept.

A chipmunk cleaning up the remnants of my oats in the morning.

Washington disappears under my wheels quickly, leaving me with only a series of flickering hazy images of impoverished hamlets – small groups of houses in various states of dilapidation, surrounded by pick up trucks and rusting car bodies. After 80 miles, late in the afternoon I come to a pleasant county campground where the park guy lets me camp for free on seeing my face fall when he tells me that the fee is $15. He makes me promise not to tell anyone so I’m not going tell you exactly where it is. I watch the sun set into the sea which is still a novelty for an east coast girl like me. The light reflected off the water paints everything a ruddy gold.

Golden light.

A peaceful campground in the evening light. Kids are back in school this week and so the place is almost deserted.

The next day I set off early, again with the sole aim of covering ground. The sun is still smiling on me but the wind picks up as I approach Astoria. I am battling around the bay, against a stiff offshore wind, when I see the Astoria Bridge which will take me across the state line to Oregon looming ahead. It seems endless.

The bridge is not, in fact, endless but it is over four miles long and it runs across the bay so that when I swing onto it the wind is now blowing from the side. Apparently, this bridge was built to withstand 150 mile-an-hour wind gusts. I have no idea how many miles-an-hours the gusts buffeting me backwards and forwards across the road are but the experience certainly amounts to the most terrifying that I have undergone on this trip. Trucks and cars whizz by me, sharing a single narrow lane, as I struggle to maintain control of my bike. By the time I reach the other side I am totally exhausted and I retire to a cafe to soothe myself with a dose of internet and a cool drink.

The Astoria-Megler Bridge is certainly a handsome one. For the technically inclined, it is, apparently, the longest continuous truss bridge in the US. Crossing it in a vicious cross-wind is absolutely terrifying.

An almost endless bridge.

When I have recovered it is almost 5.30 and I set off to find a somewhere for the night. Ambitiously, I decide to aim for a campground some 30 miles south of Astoria but, unsurprisingly, I find myself riding in the dark long before I get there.

It is immediately apparent that the character of the Oregon coast is totally different to that of the Washington coast. The road is lined with discreet, but obviously vastly expensive, architect designed timber houses weathered to tasteful silver-grey. They are set well off the highway behind high secure fences, nestled amongst the trees. The possibility of finding a quiet, unguarded, corner appears slim. However, the wisdom of continuing to ride in the dark in heavy traffic on Highway 101 is extremely doubtful.

Just when I am beginning to get desperate, I see a car park to the side of the road. I pull in and find a small park, with picnic tables and outhouses, overlooking the sea.  A path leads down the cliff to the beach. The evening is unseasonably hot and so the car park is still quite full and a large group of young people are on the beach, standing around a bonfire. I ponder the possibilities.

A west coast sunset is still a novelty for me.

After hanging around the picnic area for some time, snacking on various items from my pannier, the crowd thins out. Soon there is only one car left and I push my bike toward the beach access path. I scout around looking for a place where I am unlikely to be disturbed or bothered during the night and eventually decide that the beach is the best bet. I push the bike awkwardly down the steps of the access path and onto the large round pebbles that line the beach above the sand.

At the end of the beach I set up a bed on the sand, with my bear spray and flash-light to close to hand, and curl up in my nest. I wake periodically in the night and each time I am aware of the stars swinging across the heavens above me.