Judith Chalmers and husband Neil Durden-Smith take the ultimate drive on California's celebrated Highway One. It's a journey that's filled with history, style and stunning views as Judith discovers.

How often do you get to gaze at a white shark in Monterey, shop in Carmel, visit the Hearst Castle and admire the sunset from the same terrace where Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles had a bolt-hole?

Not only that we also got to meet former Mary Poppins co-star Dick Van Dyke, took a helicopter to lunch in Palm Springs, and all as part of our drive along the famous Californian Pacific Highway.

Thanks to a new Air New Zealand route, flying direct from San Francisco to Auckland, we decided to fly from London to LA and for the first time drive the Californian Pacific Highway from LA to San Francisco.

We began our Californian sojourn in La Jolla taking advantage of a chance to visit friends that we had met on a Lady Taverners Silversea Cruise to Alaska the previous summer. They live close to San Diego, one of the top five best places in America for eating and a really buzzy destination. La Jolla is a Spanish-influenced town meaning 'the jewel' and it's a most attractive place.  Its smartest hotel La Valencia is where world leaders, celebrities and those in the know stay, as they have been doing since it opened in 1926. It has traditional olde worlde charm in the best sense; we only had time for coffee on the terrace overlooking the blue Pacific yet the service was as if we had ordered caviar and lobster and we'll not forget the flowers on each table either, vivid orange and vibrant yellow ranunculi bunched tightly in short deep blue glass vases – beautiful!  From the hotel you also have good views of The Cove, a lovely walk, partly roped off when we were there for a colony of seals with their newborn pups slivering in and out of the water, and out to sea dozens of wetsuited surfers were riding the waves.

We were due to fly to the renowned Getty Museum in LA but this was cancelled due to poor visibility caused by sea mist. So instead we were helicoptered inland to lunch at a roadside diner in Palm Springs. That hadn't been on the itinerary!

Quad biking on Angel Mountain was also on the surprise schedule and one evening we had dinner at the Marine Room in La Jolla where we sat by two huge windows looking out to sea mesmerised by hundreds of screeching seagulls swirling and swooping in the moonlight and sandpipers running along the edge of the waves as they reached the shore searching for their dinner. It was hard to concentrate on our excellent food or the conversation.

After four days we set off up the coast towards San Francisco, initially driving in relentless traffic on freeways which in places had no less than eight lanes. Not for the faint-hearted. We left the freeway following the sign for the celebrated Highway One, a very exciting moment. Our first stop was the seaside town of Santa Monica with its long established pier and unpretentious small houses many originally owned by fishermen.  We stopped for lunch at Malibu which one of the guidebooks says 'is not a destination; it's a state of mind'. It's been the haunt of celebrities for decades and nowadays home for at least two of them – Tom Hanks and Barbra Streisand. Many of them spend time at Geoffrey's on the 27-mile long Malibu Beach – how often have we seen it on films and TV? And guess what – sitting at the next table was Dick Van Dyke!  He wanted to know about the West End productions of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mary Poppins, both of which he had starred in. He was very friendly and joked when we had a photograph taken that "no one will recognise me with my grey hair". Wrong! Geoffrey's has a long mirror, which was next to our table so you can see exactly who is there without the embarrassment of turning round to stare – good for people spotting!

Our next port of call was Santa Barbara, a really attractive town between the Pacific and the Ynez Mountains. At the top end of the accommodation market is The Biltmore – which is renowned for its Sunday brunch, and is a superb example of Art Deco architecture. We stayed at the Harbor View Inn conveniently situated on the corner of Cabrillo Boulevard and State Street. Our room looked out on the palm fringed edge of the ocean and Stearns Wharf, a wide wooden pier where families fish at the weekends and people stroll or jog and perhaps make their own selection of multicoloured jelly beans in one of the few small shops. Walk the length of State Street and you see just how much this affluent town has to offer. Attractive stores, museums, art galleries, clubs, bars and restaurants, including the Enterprise Fish Company for those who love seafood. We were lucky to come across the James Joyce, a bar where monkey nuts are freely on offer from a beer barrel and where Dixieland Jazz is played every Saturday night. A clock in one corner was counting down to St. Patrick's Day – five days away! And, as with many a fine Irish pub anywhere in the world, the music set our feet tapping and our spirits soaring.

We could have spent longer in Santa Barbara. As well as its glorious shops and exciting restaurants it has fabulous blonde spanking clean sand and the whole place is very well laid out.  I hope I have the chance to go there again some day but we had great expectations of what we would find farther along the Pacific Highway. Some 220 miles and 41⁄2 hours later we came to Hearst Castle. It is an extraordinary phenomenon – the former home of press baron William Randolph Hearst who at one stage owned no less than one hundred media properties.  You can imagine how elaborate it is – Italian and Spanish inspired with marble, gothic church pews, fabulous gardens and two swimming pools, the largest decorated with stunning royal blue and gold tiles. The Neptune Pool outside has Palladian columns and a dome. Both are magnificent, worthy of any Hollywood blockbuster! Heads of state, literary and film stars of the time were regular guests.  David Niven, Bob Hope and George Bernard Shaw were just a few who stayed in lavish style. Anyone making world news would get an invitation including the first woman to swim the English Channel, Gertrude Ederle. Randolph Hearst did not like the Highway being built beneath his castle but we were happy for it to take us some sixty odd miles to what we found was another highlight – the exceptional Ventana Inn and Spa, very attractively built in wood in the mountains above the Pacific.  They serve wonderful fresh breakfasts and our suite had an open fire and an outside terrace with a bubbling hot tub from which we could see the green and gold covered hills of the Big Sur coast.  How romantic was that, night and day!!

Across the road we watched an incredible sunset from the terrace at Nepenthe, a bar/restaurant that has been there for over fifty years and sits on the top of a cliff with the ocean immediately below.  It used to be the hideaway for erstwhile lovers Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles. The name in Greek means 'no sorrow' which I suppose is what it meant to them and certainly to us on a warm balmy evening. Another reason the Ventana Inn is such a great place to stay is that it is a skip and a jump away, actually three quarters of an hour's drive away, from the legendary towns of Carmel and Monterey.

Carmel, where Clint Eastwood was once mayor, is a charming treelined town full of straight streets, umpteen antique shops and boutiques and pretty restaurants.  In contrast we went to the Mission and its historic church founded in 1770, one of the most popular pilgrimage sites for visitors from all over the world.  From Carmel beach we caught glimpses of the 17-Mile Drive at Pebble Beach on the Monterey Peninsula.  The renowned drive, which only costs a few dollars per car, meanders through the Del Monte Forest with its Monterey pines and Cyprus trees and past the crashing surf on the coast. Various landmarks en route have memorable names such as Spyglass Hill, Spanish Bay, Poppy Hills, the Restless Sea and Point Joe, all with outstanding views.  We sat on the terrace of The Lodge at Pebble Beach and, glasses in hand, watched the golfers playing the formidable 18th hole with the sea and rocks at their backs.  Sensational!

On to Monterey and its fascinating Aquarium, once the site of a cannery and Cannery Row itself, home of John Steinbeck's best selling novel based on the sardine industry of the 1930s and 40s.  The fishermen brought in 'the Silver Harvest', 250,000 tons of sardines each year all processed by immigrant workers.  Here we pressed our noses to the glass to watch the graceful movement of the only White Shark in captivity. Our journey ended at San Francisco, our gateway to New Zealand, after four unforgettable days on the magnificent Pacific Highway.