© 2011 notworkrelated - David Rutter & Helen Roscoe. All rights reserved. notworkrelated Yangshou day 2

China – Yangshou bike ride – 30th December

We had breakfast at the hotel in the form of muesli and fruit before going off on bikes for the day. At Bamboo they have a good choice of mountain and city bikes (we opted for mountain bikes of course) perhaps some of the best bikes we’ve used on our travels so far!

We had a map with some good trails outlined and so off we went in the hopes of finding some less tourist-driven villages. Finding the right path is okay to start with as you head out of Yangshou town via the back roads and then there is a path that cuts under the bridge and from here you get to a gravel road, which is pretty tricky to ride over, although much more manageable if you have a decent mountain bike – you often see people on tandems and city bikes on this kind of terrain!! From here you go towards smaller paths which take you through farmland and villages, you just head north up the Li River towards Moon Hill, its a long journey on bikes and we often found ourselves the only people on the roads and thinking we may be on the wrong path.

After a brief stop for satsumas and snacks we went on our way to Moon Hill. When we arrived there were many tourists who were either enjoying the views, shopping, eating or planning to take a trip up the hill. It was getting close to 4pm by this time and we’d been cycling for the past 4 hours so decided not to climb the hill. But we did stop for some fresh corn and a few photos of the random tourist attractions such as a monkey dressed in an Asian suit posing along side happy holiday makers at what cost we didn’t stop to find out.

It only took about another 45 minutes or so to get back into Yangshou mostly on the high way which was in no way as satisfying as going through all the villages and countryside. When we got back we opted for a spot of Chinese food at another Lonely Planet recommendation Kelly’s. The food was fairly good and we weren’t charged too much for it either. Afterwards we went o Monkey Jane’s for a few drinks just to get familiar with the place before the big bash the following night. They also do really cheap beer!! We met a group of travellers who invited us to play cards with them…8 games of Shithead later and we were ready to call it a night. We had a good link with one of the guys as he’d been traveling with someone we’d met in Dali, I picked up on his Irish accent after Jane had said we may bump into them. Small world this traveling lark!

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)

Related posts that may be of interest to you:

  1. China – Dali bike ride 21st – 22nd December We went out for a bike ride with one of the Chinese girls’ Sylvia who was staying in the dorm with us, she was friends...
  2. China – Yangshou – New Years Eve – 31st December When we arrived in Yangshou we’d heard that the main cooking school ‘Yangshou Cooking School‘ offered some great half day classes so we booked this...
  3. China – Yangshou – 29th December We were picked up at 8am by the taxi to take us to the tour bus in the centre of Guilin where we were met...
  4. China – Yangshou – 1st-2nd Jan 2011 We had a slow start to the new year, not a lot was done at all. Helen had quite a hangover for the first part...

One Comment

  1. Andy Moore
    Posted 1 Feb ’11 at 12:39 pm | Permalink

    Still Loving the updates and pic’s !! keep it coming.

    Emma & Andy

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>