Day 5 to:Sonid Yougi, 120km, 561km to date, 395m up, end elev 1138m

Day 3 of 6 in a row.  A hard day.  Fairly strong wind, always right on the nose.  The bad news is that we will have  a similar day tomorrow.  My goal for the remainder of the day is to survive past dinner before I fall asleep.

The countryside is now very flat brown “prairie”.  Seems to be all range land, mostly sheep with some cattle and some horses.  We rode the full 120km almost totally with nothing manmade in sight.  In fact there were no “corner stores” or “coke stops” the full day.

I was delayed a couple minutes whilst a 200-300 sheep flock crossed the road:

Mike and Frieder having a nap at the lunch stop:

We had another fantastic dinner tonight, although we had to walk 5 blocks in a sandstorm to get there.  There were a group from a dance school having a dinner in the restaurant, after many many pictures (grey/white hair seems to be a real novelty…), we had a wonderful performance, both of a couple doing Chinese very fancy ballroom dancing, then a singer - excellent!

Day 4 to: Xianghaungyi, 160km, 440km to date, 559m up, end elev 1396m

Day 2 of 6 in a row.  A fairly long day, 160km.  Fairly strong wind, however mostly from the side or back, although there was 20k that was uphill straight into the wind.

A couple shots from yesterday that connection problems wouldn’t let me post:

yes, a farmer plowing a field with a mule and plow.  What a contrast to the large “factory” farms

Today the scenery changed from the hilly country typically associated with the great wall, to the open flat grasslands, very similar to our prairie, complete with bareback horseback rider.

Also saw my first yurt, what I believe will become very commonplace.

We are getting away from areas where foreign, white haired, round-eyes are seen, so we are now the tourist attraction.  Twice today people simply stopped their vehicles to greet us and take pictures.  As is the case everywhere, the vast majority of people are very friendly.

We had stopped to take a picture and this guy stopped, didn’t seem to be concerned that his front end loader was blocking one lane of the road.  Big smile and wave.  First thing he did was offer us two cigarettes - this was an offer of friendliness.  Then another car stopped - we were the tourist attraction.  I have our cycling route on my phone (in maps.me) - it is quite good at communicating where we started and where we are going.  Also where home is.  This morning the three of us that stopped at a small store in a village were from South Africa, New Zealand and Canada - made for a fun “conversation” with the shop owner.

A couple other pics from the day:

First yurts:

The road signs here feature a bit of English, Chinese and old Mongolian.  I say old Mongolian because this area of China (Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region) still uses it, however Mongolia itself has moved to Cyrillic (Russian).

I believe every square cm in China has been farmed, built on, dug or whatever.

Day 3 to: Zhangbei, 60km, 281km to date, 980m up, end elev 1423m

I am having internet connection problems, so this post will be a bit messed up and missing stuff - I'll see if I can fix tomorrow.

The meal we had last night was probably the best meal I have eaten in China, that is saying something since the standard seems very high.  Afterwards we wandered a bit, at the end of the street beside our hotel seemed to be a combination disco/red light/gay gathering/general party place.  We didn’t stay long.

Today was the first of 6 riding days in a row (prep the Camel butter/butt grease).

Just at the start of the day we stopped at the Dajing Gate, a gate in the Great Wall of China, this gate was effectively the gateway to Inner Mongolia.

(Cut from Wikipedia)

      Among all the sections, the Dajing Gate is the most famous and best-preserved. The four characters 'Da Hao He Shan' (Grand 

     Mountains and Rivers).  The gate used to be the boundary line dividing the Han people in the Central Plain and the nomad tribes

     of the frontier areas in the Quing Dynasty (1644 - 1911).

    The Great Wall is a grand military defense line in ancient times, whose construction work had been implemented in many 

    dynasties. Due to the strategic location, nearly all of the dynasties took the area as a vital military stronghold and built the 

    Great Wall there, measuring 1,121 miles (1,804 km) in total and occupying two thirds of the whole length in Hebei Province.

    It is the most overlapped section. Many parts were built on the foundation of the older sections from the previous dynasties. 

    Some parts in the Batou area, for example, consist of multiple layers built over five dynasties.

The major part of the ride today was a very rough hard climb.  

At the ridge at the top of the climb was a major wind farm, the turbines stretched as far as one could see.  The wind farm feeds a large energy storage complex, the largest in the world I was told.

The town/city we are in tonight appears to have been recently built, is still being built.  I have seen that elsewhere in China - the master planners decide that a city should be built here - so it is, all in one go.  I’m convinced they have standard plans for a city of 3 million.

For the Chinese the number 8 very very good, lucky.  So, take a guess at the Wifi password for the hotel…   Yes, 88888888 i.e. 8 eights.

Whilst I am writing this, there are fireworks in the background - a very common thing, at weddings, at the completion of a stage in a construction project, just for the 'ell of it, etc.,

Also, there is always someone singing, right now it is on the street outside the hotel, almost always in any city square.

A typical lunch stop

 

Day 2 to: Zhangjaikou, 131km, 221km to date, 828m up, end elev 761m

I am having arguments with the internet connections in the hotels, so my posts may be less frequent than I had hoped.  I’ve also changed to a Macbook, although everything works, I’ve got a fair bit of a learning curve to get to the dexterity level I have on the Windows machine.  Very frustrating when you know it is a simply keyclick to do something but you don’t know the keyclick.  Also most of the help requires a web connection…

The ride today had some beautiful sections, but unfortunately most was not pretty, lots of heavy truck traffic on the road, very dirty.  Went past a huge coal-fired power complex.  The road seemed to be a continuous stream of light and heavy industrial complexes.

Although we have only rode 2 days, we have a rest day - prep for the 6 days in a row coming up.

Some pics: 

Odd to find a park with classic greek statues and a guy fishing from the landing:

Nice riding:

Tonight's dinner?

Winter Olympic village under construction:

The power plant:

This very unassuming little store was the highlight of the day.  Not only were the double ice-cream cones the equivalent of $0.20, but she insisted on giving us 3 water bottles when we left and wouldn’t take any money,  Many pictures were taken, especially with her granddaughter.  

Day 1 to: Yanquing, 90km, 90km to date, 524m up, end elev 506m 

We rode as a convoy out of Beijing for the first 7k, then on our own.  Although not long, a fairly hard climbing day.  Seeing the Great Wall was the highlight.  This is a major restored section of the wall, in other areas the wall is reduced to small mud piles, the outer rocks have all been reused for other building. This is the major tourist site for seeing the wall coming from Beijing, large crowds of people.  Interesting in that where I was today is the very same place where Maureen and I ended our 18k walk along the wall some 12 years ago.

Some pics from the day:

great wall

Why are these moats around the trees?

Beijing hosted the summer Olympics in 2008 and will be doing the Winter Olympics in 2022 (I think).

In Beijing:

I have now arrived in Beijing, all happy.  My bike and all my stuff happily arrived with no problems.  The bike is re-assembled, all the repacking is complete and I’m ready to go.

Our first day riding is tomorrow, an easy day of about 90k with only a small bit of climbing.  The first 15k or so we will do as a convoy, 

Having spent some time in Beijing 12 years ago, I didn’t do any of the tourist things, other than I did visit the Olympic village - as is the case with most things in China, the facilities are geared to handling a lot of people.  The open gathering “square” in front of the main venues is probably 2 km long.  

Interesting in that there is now security getting into everything:  bags are scanned getting on the subway, access to Tiananmen square and most other major sites also require security checks, and the Olympic Village.

I also noticed that way more cyclists wear helmets today than 2 years ago.

Some quick facts:  China has 20% of the world’s population - and that doesn’t include Richmond.

I didn’t sense any air pollution, however there were a fair number of people wearing face masks.  Possibly some form of fashion statement.  As I noticed two years ago, I have yet to see any sort of vehicle belching smoke, many of the moped’s and other small vehicles are electric - this is a problem when on a bike as you cannot hear them approach from behind you.

a couple pics from the day:

The Birdsnest and around the Olympic site

The "park and ride" at many subway stations are aimed at bicycles:

Greeting our dinner before we ate it:

:

Ready to ride start of day 1:

Last minute prep...

I'm in last minute panic mode with all that I need to do so I can leave.  The packing has now started.

My intention is to post fairly frequently, but there will be periods, normally not more than a week where I will not have internet access to post.

They have changed the route this year, replacing the 4,300kms that I did last time with the start now in Beijing, going NW across the Gobi Desert, across Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan then connecting with the route from last time at Sary Tash.  See following picture.

In case any of you don't know, if you click on the picture you will see the hi-res version of the picture.

OK, I've proved that I can still post to my blog, so now back to prep'ing and packing.

...Ron