Steve's Cycling Blog

For each day’s ride we get ‘navigation notes’ which run through proceedings for the day. Coupled with these the crew ‘mark’ the route with orange streamer tape (I’ll take a photo of some tomorrow) so that we can find our way from place to place:

Day one rider navigation notes

For day one it was a little differently however because we left Beijing in a convoy – partially because of the complexity of getting out of the city, and partially from a safety perspective.

Today began too early for my liking (as does tomorrow it seems) with an 0530 alarm, so that we could have bags ready to go by 0600, followed by breakfast and a departure at 0700.

We got away more-or-less on time, and had a surprisingly easy time getting out of the city – being so bloody early probably helped with that…! We stopped for group photos (to come) outside the Summer Palace as we went before getting properly started on the route about 0800.

It was great to be finally underway – after months of thinking about it, months of talking about it and months of preparation to actually be on my bike, in China, and heading for Istanbul was awesome!

Over the course of the morning the group split up, with me finding myself amongst 8 – 10 of us cruising along comfortably at 25ish km/h on the reasonably flat terrain. At one stage we passed a large Giant (bike manufacturer) store, and all but three of our group decided to stop. Myself and two others, having no need to stop continued on.

Shortly there-after the ‘short but steep’ (we need to discuss the meaning of these worlds with Andreas) climb began – I carried on, and at one stage looked back to discover that my two colleagues where no-where to be seen…. Oh well, not much to be done about it but stop and take a few photos, and carry on up the hill.

The totally unexpected consequence of which was I ended up being the first person to the lunch break…! Lunch was, what I believe is going to be fairly typical – cheese, tomato, pickle, peanut butter, jam (etc, not all at once) sandwiches.

Though the wind got up over the course of the day it was generally sunny and reasonably warm – other than at lunch where we were in the shade and the wind at which point it go damn cold!

There was a 3km tunnel which we needed to pass through immediately after lunch – in initially there had been some suggestion that we would be able to bike through, however cycling wasn’t permitted, so five bikes and riders at a time we were ferried through in one of the vans.

Thus, I once again found myself being the first to arrive – this time at the hotel – at the end of the day, as the five of us who have gone through in the van stayed together for the short (18km) afternoon run to town.

So day one of riding was all done and dusted by 1300…! This left plenty of time for taking a look at Yanqing where we’re spending the night, which has proven to be a very pleasant ‘small city’ with ‘only’ 900,000 residents.

Because we’re staying in a hotel dinner was out at a local restaurant which was awesome – with so many people at a table, and a set menu of about 8 different dishes you get to try all sorts of different things.

Over-all a fantastic start to the trip and I’m looking forward to tomorrow – other than the early start, so time to get ready for bed…!

Convoy out of Beijing

Remainder of the day’s riding

Today’s award for “dumbest saying on a shirt worn by a local”

I love food trucks donut!