Travel2015

From Greystone, the route is all downhill, off to the famous Beverly Hills Hotel – which inspired the Eagles song Hotel California – and then Rodeo Drive.

There, bling and bad taste meet exclusivity, including perhaps the single worst desecration of a RollsRoyce since John Lennon had his painted with flowers. From there it’s across the road to the public toilet in the Will Rogers Memorial Park where George Michael was arrested in 1998 for “engaging in a lewd act” with an undercover LA cop.

Later that afternoon it’s off to the Griffiths Observatory, a vast chunk of land courtesy of another LA enfant terrible, former journalist, rampant alcoholic and mining consultant Griffith J Griffith. It’s 1 740 hectares of prime real estate with the 500m-high Mount Hollywood at its peak, and incorporating the Greek Theatre and the Griffith’s Observatory. It also includes the hill that has the Hollywood sign on it, although that hill is Mount Lee.

You can’t escape movie references in LA, and Griffith’s Park is no exception: CSI is filmed here, in the main. It was the backdrop to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the little tunnel that runs beneath it was made to look 100km long in Back to the Future. Getting to the top is a battle, pulsing veins in forehead, sweat breeding on itself, cramping thighs and heaving lungs – as scores of Angelenos nonchalantly jog past.

The pain and the strain are forgotten the moment you get to the top. Situated at the north-eastern border of Hollywood, the park provides unrivalled views of the city.

It only hurts when you stop; so, foolishly, I volunteer to cycle along the beach the next morning. I can barely throw my legs out over the bed. I rue my enthusiasm of the evening before.

Surprisingly, this time’s a doddle. The route’s flat and we head south from the Santa Monica pier down to Venice Beach, the vanity of tobacco baron Abbott Kinney who wanted a haven for LA’s moneyed elite, with a development that had its own canals, but ended up as a haven for the homeless, addicted and dispossessed.

Venice Beach is also where the drifters hung out after World War II; an oasis for the motorbike gangs, a bazaar for drugs and ultimately a rendezvous for hippies, free love, musicians like Jim Morrison and muscle freaks such as the former governor of California, Big Arnie – Mr Schwarzenegger himself.

The canals that were dug in 1905 to give the area its name don’t exist any more, save for the last six, which make up the Venice Canal Historic District. It doesn’t matter that Venice Beach is gritty – you still can’t escape the movie links. Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes starred in White Men Can’t Jump there, Oliver Stone went there to film The Doors and the hit TV series Californication had much of its storyline set in the canals.

Moving inland beyond the postcard-perfect homes of the canals, there’s the re-gentrified Abbott Kinney, where Robert Downey jr has just made his home.

From there it’s up to Santa Monica, to the end of Route 66, the iconic interstate highway that linked the mid-west with the Pacific, starting in Chicago and looping down to Texas to end at Santa Monica, until it was retired in the 1970s.

The penultimate stop is a trip through Santa Monica’s boutiques and artisan market, before finally ending at the pier and its funfair.

Getting off our bicycles back in the car park, Erick Martinez runs around high-fiving everyone, shouting that quintessential Californian exultation “Good job!” He’s right. It was a bloody good job at that.

● Kevin Ritchie was in Los Angeles as a guest of British Airways.