Day 4 | From the City to the Valley

September 8th 2011

291 to 328km

We decide to rest in the morning and clean up our bikes from the dusty roads we were on the day before. Also take this opportunity to update our blog. We have lunch at Chinese wooden restaurant, which gives us the feeling of being on the movie-set of a Jackie Chan gangster movie set in the 1930s Shanghai. Our nice Fuwuyuan (waitress) is very patient with our limited Chinese food vocabulary and serves us some delicious non-spicy, boneless beef with a side green beans.

After lunch we set out to a bike shop to fix Lana’s broken handlebars and loose foot stand. On our way out of the city we come across once again a MERIDA bike shop. Every time we have a problem with our bikes there happens to be a MERIDA shop in the town we are currently staying in - What are the chances!

Yesterday we said our goodbyes to our loyal companion and guide ‘the Yangtze’ and today we head into a mountain terrain. We cycle on good countryside lanes and through lots of towns which all seem to share one common feature; a steep hill at the town’s exit. The road is an up-down rollercoaster ride with buses overtaking lorries which are overtaking tuctucs which are overtaking motorbikes.

The late afternoon start allows us only to cycle for 40km before night pulls us back into a hotel. As we venture further into the countryside the amount of furniture in each hotel room decreases, but the quality of the Chinglish on headrest substantially increases - see last picture in the slideshow . We eat a dinner of cucumber soup and shredded potatoes (it’s the closest thing Neil can get to Fife cuisine in China, a dish consisting of half potato half grease) and then head to bed ready for a full days cycling tomorrow.