Leo Carillo State Beach to a nice motel in Redondo Beach

We’re up early, as we want to be gone from Leo Carrillo.  We roll at about 8am.  The surfers are already up and at it on the actual Leo Carrillo State Beach, which is really very picturesque.
 
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We soon stop at a Starbucks in Malibu, as we didn’t even pause to make our usual morning cup of tea.  Malibu itself is a very thin town, clinging to the hills by the ocean.  This is Malibu Pier.  I’m sure it’s very expensive to live here and all that.  I keep hearing the Joni Mitchell track Trouble Child in my head (“…breaking like the waves at Malibu”).
 
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We stop at a petrol station to use the restrooms.  Whilst standing there, we meet a couple who are on their way to LAX.  They’ve just been reunited after 46 years apart: childhood sweethearts together again.
 
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The roads are getting busier and busier, and we can see LA in the distance now.
 
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Then we cross the city limits.
 
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Tis a big old place, then.  What price Harmony, Population 18, that we passed some weeks ago ?  We cycle along the Santa Monica bike path, which is actually on the beach.  Almost in it, really.  Those are the Santa Monica mountains in the background.
 
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The path runs all the way past Venice Beach (cool and froogy, lots of homeless).  At Venice Pier, we run into a couple of fellow tourists we haven’t seen since Monterey.  They’re staying in Venice tonight, and then flying back to Australia tomorrow.  We continue, and then swing inland around Marina del Rey.
 
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Here’s me chatting to a local who’d bought his bike that day, and was trying it out.  We hit the beach again near LAX, whose runway ends just before the sea starts.  Beach volleyball is evidently popular here, though not on a Monday.
 
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Well, if you’ve got a nice beach, what’s the thing to do ?  Build a power station, of course.  This is Scattergood Steam Plant.  The bike path runs right past it.
 
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After a bit more cycling, we arrive in Hermosa Beach.  Some assiduous web research has found us the Hermosa Cyclery. We stop there briefly to  arrange to have our bikes boxed for the trip home.  We’re only seven or so miles from LAX so it’s pretty convenient.
 
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Then we cycle the couple of miles to Redondo Beach, where we’re staying for a couple of days.  And yes, that’s another power station just peeking out there.  It has a big muriel of a whale on it.
 
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It’s a nice, quiet place compared to Venice Beach, or even Hermosa.  And we have a nice motel room so we can catch up on our missing sleep from last night.  We’ve cycled 44 miles to get here, and almost all of it urban.
 
By the way, I know how to spell mural.  Calling it a muriel is a hangover from my youth, long, long ago.

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