After I posted yesterdays blog I went for a wander round our local area and took a few additional photos:
Back on the tarmac, and with just on 400km to our next rest day we’re splitting that over three days which makes for some pretty comfortable riding. Today’s route was extremely simple – through the town, up the hill and down the other side again.
Stage 15 rider notes, and a very important warning about the nettles!
I’ve got my morning routine down to just over half an hour, though this morning I had lots of close camping neighbours who seem to take a whole lot longer, so alarms were going off from 0500, though the additional 25 min snoozing-in-a-warm-sleeping-bag was pretty good!
Porridge and banana day, so a great breakfast as well, and I was on the road by 0620.
Bulgan was a larger town than it had appeared from the top of the hill yesterday, so took a little while to get through, before we began what was basically a solid 45km of (generally moderate) climbing – it kicked up in places, but was mostly about keeping the legs going and the wheels turning.
There are increasingly more trees in this part of Mongolia, so as well as yurts there are more permanent looking buildings and structures built from timber in fairly rustic ways (think log cabins – see pictures below).
From the top of the first climb to lunch was a dip down to cross the top of one valley before getting back up onto the next saddle. An early lunch (at 60km) to allow those riders who struggle with the climbs (and so ride the van to lunch) a decent day.
I was in to the lunch stop just before 0900 to find Andreas getting his wish and getting to drive one of the local vans ’round the parking lot’ as it were – he seemed pretty happy 🙂
Andreas getting his wish to drive one of the vans.
From lunch we dropped down into another valley which really reminds me of the South Waikato – rolling hills, but rocky outcrops, and plenty of cattle. It was an amazing ride from there, basically downhill for the next 50km – not steeply, but enough that pedalling was pretty optional for most of the way!
The last 20km was still generally down, but with some rolling hills to get up and down as we headed onward.
Today was a good day to be in to camp early as there are a few trees which we can pitch our tents under, so I’ve grabbed what I considered to be the primary spot – under a tree, level ground, but well away from everyone else for (hopefully) a quite nights sleep 🙂
Camping under a riverside tree for cool shade.
Our campsite tonight is below a fairly new hotel, so some of our number have given themselves an upgrade and moved into the hotel for the night – me, I’m happy camping, though the presence of the hotel does mean that there’s cold beer available and I’m currently sitting in a pergola typing this with a really nice view over the campsite and the river to the hills behind.
For the interested, at this point I’ve ridden 1,728km, climbed 10,285m and all of that’s taken 84 hours and 1 minute (the time is riding time, excluding lunch stops, but including other shorter stops)
Riding data
First central Otago, then Mackenzie country, now south Waikato? Better be careful or you’ll hit Hamilton before long! Looks like a rather pleasant spot though…
I kinda feel like I may be in the Mongolian equivalent of Hamilton, Mörön a city that exists for no discernible reason!
Nice second half to the day……the down hill dream.
BTW – I didn’t actually hit 114 km/h that would be down-right scary – something must have gone astray with the importer – my top speed was ‘only’ 61 km/h
That made me giggle…I had visions of a “runaway bike” scenario ?
That could have been fun…!
Phew, I was concerned for a bit. Even for you 114km/h would be a bit extreme! 🙂
Tee hee 😉
Oh good! I was a little worried you may have taken flight!
At 114km/h a distinct possibility…!