Day 2 | New Friend's Town to Industrial Suburb
September 6th 2011
from 88km to 184km
We have a little lie in for Lana's knee to recover. Swelling has gone down. Laoban and fiancee have made us delicious breakfast zhou and baozi. They have invited us to their wedding next Valentines day. As we have become good friends they don't allow us to pay for the room or food. As a gift we give the Laoban some B&H cigarettes.
Filled up our water in the village shop and have chat with the people outside. An old lady helpfully suggests that taking a bus to Changsha rather than cycling would be much less tiresome.
We cycle at a good pace on the smooth road next to the banks of the Yangtze. Out of nowhere a little round mountain appears out of the flat landscape, complete with a monastery nestled into the side of it. We decide to investigate further and stop off to climb up the mountain. In the temple a monk offers us some apples and Lana locks a lock to a railing at the top of the mountain for good luck.
After a long and fast day of cycling we have a picnic for lunch and take a nap on the grass. After lunch we head for the border of the next province. We arrive in the Hubei province, where we notice a slightly less high spirited mood in the people than in Anhui. Less yelling Hellu, less waving, less thumbs up, less staring behind while still driving, and more blank faces.
We decide against the first opportunity to cross the Yangtze because the bridge is massive, busy and actually out of our way. However on the north side of the river isn't much better as we cycle into a noisy and smoggy industrial town, the main feature of which is the two motorways which join in its city centre. The idea of sleeping next to the motorway in a lorry driver's hotel doesn't appeal to us much and we head out of the town as fast as possible.
The dark roads with no street lights stops up from cycling much further however and we stop at the next available hotel on the road. Luckily this works out to be a good choice, the rooms are new and the bathrooms are clean. We even have our own gaming table in our room!
Noodles and sweet rice balls for dinner and we fall quickly to bed