The Hollywood sign the perfect shot

And we’re all looking for it, the tourists, the day trekkers and the cops over the hill, the Hollywood sign the perfect shot.

We’re stationed about 150ft down from the iconic billboard.

Putting thumbs-ups, jazz hands and time-lapse jumps.

When we hear a booming warning over the Tannoy.

‘Please walk away from the sign, you are trespassing.’

Cop that

Our guide Katie, who has walked up the trail backwards, tells us not to worry.

The cops are talking to a couple of figures who have climbed the hill to get up close to the 45ft letters.

I envisage them ready to shoot them down but maybe I watched too many Police Academy films in my youth.

Katie tells us that you’ll get a £3,000 fine and sore legs, it’s a steep oul’ climb.

Us, we took our 2-mile trek up to as close as we could legally go to the sign, in our stride.

All the time learning more about the sign.

Although there’s always one smart ass in the group who thinks they know as much as the Bikes and Hikes LA guide.

Well, I have been following their email drops.

And know that the sign is in its 101st year and was originally a real estate company’s billboard.

But I didn’t know that Albert Kothe kept the 4,000 light bulbs going.

Or that the Hollywood sign has been in danger of being lost to us a couple of times in its history before being saved.

The houses with the best views of the sign, Madonna’s and Guy Ritchie’s old pad among them, are among the dearest anywhere.

Just as the original real estate firm Holywoodland intended.

But it is refreshing that the trails, the Hollywood Park open space and the Griffith Observatory are all open to the public.

All on account of Griffith J Griffith, the Welsh born businessman who bequeathed the land which we enjoy to the LA people.

We enjoy a farm to fork on cutdown deckchairs in Hollywood Park in the shadow of the billboard.

It’s the ideal end to an ideal LA morning and I have me the Hollywood sign the perfect shot.