I realised that calling them ‘day one’ and ‘day two’ was going to get confusing because tomorrow is a day, but not a stage as it’s a rest day – so, today was stage 2 and day 2…! Here are the notes for today’s ride:
Not easy to spot is the absence of the ‘Turn Left’ instruction at km 100.3 which proved to be somewhat crucial…!
Another early start this morning, with a Chinese breakfast of congee (thankfully no shrimps), steamed buns (yum) and boiled eggs – which I thought was perfect 🙂
Once on the road the first 18km were really lovely – it was still cool (less than 10° C), but the sun was up and the scenery was quite spectacular.
(Hopefully) here’s a video of the early part of the ride when it was still scenic. It ends slightly abruptly, and with my finger in there too, because we arrived at the next junction and I needed to steer!
Then we passed under the railway line and it was like going to another country – we were on a fairly narrow and very busy road with endless trucks thundering past. The next 30km weren’t that much fun, particularly as we headed up quite a lengthy climb, with dust and pollution being blown into our faces.
We did have an amusing time (Rob, Paul, Edgar and myself who cycled together for most of the day) in a town we passed through negotiating the market-day traffic – there are no photos of that, keeping my hands on the bars and the brakes was way more important!
Once we had negotiated that hill, and a couple of laneways it was time for lunch – at 0945…! that said, having left the hotel at shortly after 0630, and having cycled just shy of 72km we were well and truly ready for ‘lunch’.
Setting off after lunch we had a couple of detours to account for new roads and subdivisions which had been constructed since Andreas was scouting this part of the route late last year. Then it was into the second of the long climbs for the day – Rob and I set off together, but then he stopped to take some photos while I continued on (I’m not a fan of stopping on the ‘up’ side of a hill!)
Again, a very scenic part of China, but then we were back on the ‘big’ and ‘industrial’ roads, and when Andreas said this was a ‘grim area’ he wasn’t kidding – coal mines, fertiliser factories, power stations, cement works, the whole lot and all ugly as sin…!
Coming into the south of Shalingzizhen helped to relieve that – it’s a relatively nice looking town, and all business and bustle. I was on my own at this stage, and made the right hand turn at 99.3km, but then found myself at the toll plaza for a major motorway, with seemingly a further 2km to go before I should be passing through the city walls and turning right.
Seemed like I was lost, so decided to head back and see if I could find out where I’d gone wrong, or at least see if I could find someone else…! I met Rob 1km back and we compared notes and decided that I had been in the right place, heading in the right direction, so back we went.
Once there were two of us there it made no difference – still seemed totally wrong…! As we tried to look at maps and see if we could figure out what to do Erwin and Paul arrived – now there were four of us sure we were doing the right thing, so we figured maybe we were allowed to continue through the toll both.
That would be no…! The woman there was very polite, but made it quite clear that we were not permitted to go any further.
At this point Erwin suggested ‘phone a friend’, so Paul found Andreas’ number and I gave him a call. We figured out that we’d done the right thing at 99.3km, but missed the left turn at 100.3km. Well that would be fine – if we’d known about it…! At the intersection in question (see photo below) our primary consideration had been staying alive, and not expecting a left turn none of us had been looking for any flagging tape.
About turn, and make the 1.5km trip back to the intersection (by which time I’d ridden most of that piece of road three times ;-). Once we were there, and knew what we were looking for we could see the tape on the intersection exit, but it later turns out that some super-efficient street cleaner had removed the tape leading in, so not only wasn’t the turn on the notes, it wasn’t flagged either – no wonder I missed it…!
Back on track, we found the city walls – these are proper impressive (see photos below) and stopped for a few photos before getting back on the road.
Shalingzizhen city walls
The final ride from Shalingzizhen was a bit dull – 20km of (at least) flat tarmac, through nothing-much sort of countryside, and just uphill enough to slow you down when all you wanted was a cold beer and a hot shower…!
Based on the trouble we’d had Andreas and a couple of the other crew headed to ‘the corner’ and provided later riders with the much-needed ‘turn left now’ instruction which prevented others from getting lost too.
After a shower a second lunch of ice-cream and beer went down mighty well 🙂
One of the advantages of having been with faster riders today was that we were off the road by 1300 and so avoided the worst of today’s heat – it got to 32° later in the afternoon and the people coming in then were looking decidedly hot and bothered.
This evening a few of us went to a local restaurant (on night-before-rest-day and rest days dinner isn’t included’/organised) where the off-line version of Google translate came in very handy as we ordered dinner from a menu with nothing but Chinese. In the end it was a great meal, and for five of us came to a grand total of 212 Yuan (about £23) including beer…!
I’m really pleased with the way the last couple of days have gone – I’m still somewhat apprehensive about the upcoming six days of riding, particularly with the later days after the 163km on Thursday, but based on today less so than I was.
Despite the fact that there’s no early start tomorrow it’s still going to be an early night, so, good night!
Today’s ride
Wow Steve it’s shaping up more amazing than I thought it could be…brilliant.
Will be reading every day but may try to refrain from commenting…OMG, amazing, brilliant, fantastic, how exciting etc…every single day ??xx
Indeed – it’s been awesome to actually get started and to really feel like it’s actually going to happen 🙂 Rest day today which is as much an opportunity to get things better organised now that we have more of a feel for how the days go – we also have our first night camping in the coming days so need to be prepared for that.
What’s your average moving speed Steve? I take it the 18kph was speed over ground…you must have been going quite a bit faster on average, esp given ‘the corner’! Sorry, geeky question I know 🙂 How’s everyone holding up physically?
To be honest Claire I’m not certain! The uploader I use to get the tracks into the blog calculates the average speed itself simply by taking the time of the last point uploaded, subtracting the time of the first point uploaded and dividing the distance covered by the difference, so even if I stop my Garmin over lunchtime (which I generally do to save battery life) it still factors that in.
The Garmin itself says my average was 20.92, which will be an average over-all excluding lunch, but not other stops (photos, traffic, getting lost etc). You’d imagine that somewhere in its brain it’s calculated a moving average, but I don’t know how to get that out…! I’ll see if maybe I can dig that information out of the Garmin Connect website.
Physically people all seem to be fine, though with it so hot and dry yesterday there were a few people getting cramp in the evening.
You can set your garmin to auto stop when you stop at long lights, to rest or take pictures etc. Then it will give you average speed and also average moving speed. Good lick on the trip: say hi to Ruth from her family.
Thanks Alan – I figured that was possible, but this is still very much a ‘new toy’ to me – will dig in the settings menu and if that doesn’t work ask Dr Google 🙂
Ok – found it in the Garmin Connect stats. Yesterday’s moving average was 22.6 km/h, Sunday’s longer ride was 21.1 km/h. I’ll see if I can tweak the importer to include that too 🙂
Frustrating much 100.3km in .. at least you were in the right place according to the instructions you were given AND phoning a friends proved its worth!
What an amazing place China is – and a fabulous perspective you’re getting of it 🙂
It wasn’t too bad on the frustration levels – just really rather confusing! I was certainly relieved when others did exactly the same thing as I did and the four of us ended up in the same place.
And yes – cycling through the countryside certainly gives one a different perspective on things 🙂
Ooooh. Frustrating time with the tape/intersection, but second lunch sounds extra good!
Oh I assure you second lunch rocked…!!
Steve, Sounds like an amazing Journey already. Enjoying reading your blog.
It’s certainly been an interesting start – China is fascinating when you’re really in and amongst it on a bicycle. Although there’s the obvious language ‘issue’ people are incredibly friendly and interested in what we’re doing, and incredibly willing to try and help out.
Manic crossroads with no ‘indicator’ tape….. Wonder why u missed that turning??!!
It was more that the turn wasn’t in the notes – we pass through so many intersections which are un-flagged that unless you’re expecting to turn you tend to focus more on the traffic and staying alive!
But you know, shit happens, and Andreas was terribly apologetic for having missed the turn off the notes.