Big Sur to San Simeon: California Cycling

By Dave Briggs · Published 2009-10-24 · Last updated 2026-07-18

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During this day of cycling between Pfeiffer Big Sur and San Simeon I met up with a bunch of other cyclists cycling the Pacific Coast Highway.

(Blog post written October 24 2009 - Part of my Alaska- Argentina bikepacking trip)

Distance from Pfeiffer Big Sur to San Simeon

The route I took followed the road along the California coast. The distance cycled between Pfeiffer Big Sur and Sam Simeon was 64 miles or 102 kms.

Cycling to San Simeon

Over the last few days, I've been crossing paths with a few other cyclists with similar itineraries for this section of the Pacific Coast Highway, so we arranged to meet up at the end of the day.

The coastline was simply awesome, stunning, magnificent and wonderful - So a great day to leave my camera rolled up in my tent. The pictures of duelling elephant sealions and Hearst Castle will have to be stored in my head instead.

Camping at San Simeon

A total of six of us turned up at San Simeon, so we shared a campsite, reducing the cost to 3 dollars each. One of the guys had broken a spoke, so we could all indulge in that great spectator sport of watching someone change a spoke.

I'm normally a bit rubbish with trying to remember names, but here we go - Jennie, Luke, John, Chris and Brook... I think.

Dave Briggs
Dave is a UK travel writer living in Athens since 2015. With 20 years of firsthand travel experience and over 80,000 km of bicycle touring across six continents, he's been blogging at Dave's Travel Pages since 2005. Every guide is based on places he's actually been.

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