Hao!

We had a great day of riding yesterday to a small town called Wutai County. It was only been a short 72 km day but we did climb 600 metres as well as ride 16 kilometres on dirt road. In fact, it was one of our most amazing days of riding yet. We had to climb out of the valley that houses Wutai Shan and we were rewarded with breathtaking views of sharp mountain tops dusted with snow. The slopes were covered in stripey layers of snow as well as pine trees which were still awaiting their spring colour. We cycled passed a few villages on our ascent and very little traffic passed us en route. The road was quiet, it was fantastic. At first we climbed slowly on an easy gradient but soon the road turned into a series of hairpin bends. This enabled changes in pace instead of one long slog like we had a few days previously. At the top of the climb we looked out across Wutai Shan, I listened to the wind blowing through the trees and it could be heard from each of the cardinal points as it swooshed all around us. The road from there went up and down for a while but never really dropped too heinously, it was a gentle roll up to the highest point of 2100 metres. We both felt on form after having had a few days of rest from the bikes as well as indulging in high carbohydrate and protein rich meals.

We stood atop the highest point and looked down the valley below and looked at all of the switchbacks that we had to look forward to on our descent - the road snaked down and down. We had the most awesome downhill. We descended to a height of 1100 metres over a distance of at least 20 kilometres, starting with tight hairpin bends and a nice long gentle slope to keep us rolling along. We passed more villages and much agricultural land. There were farmers standing on the back of ploughs which were in turn pulled by very hairy light brown and white bovines. Soon we came to a crossroads where we had to make a decision. We could either take a left and continue to our destination on a main road or we could head straight on along a road that was not even worthy of being colour coded on our road atlas. We decided to take the latter due to the idea that there may be less traffic and less climbing. Yes there was a lot less traffic but this was because there was much less road. Within 1 kilometre we found that our road had lost all of it's cement covering and was no nothing more than a two lane width dirt road. After a little discussion we decided to go with it anyway. What a great choice! We were rewarded with some spectacular views on a very isolated route that took a windy course through small villages and around and up some smaller hillsides. The road was very dusty but sometimes there would be some great hard pack whereby we could rip it up as long as the bumps did not become too much for the racks and panniers. It was absolutely fantastic.

Much of the landscape that we passed was incredibly eroded, K's theory was that it had all been turned into flat or terraced agricultural land over the last fifty years or so and that all the trees had been taken down to create the farmland or they were used for their timber. The soil was very soft and without anything to hold it together the erosion was quite extreme. There were deep channels and ravines carved into earth and hillsides, some were as deep as 8 metres or so and joined up with other gullies. The landscape was a mess. Occasionally there would be 2 or 3 trees holding together a pillar of dirt, the pillar would raise up 4 metres or so above the rest of the ground. It was very strange to see.

We rode on the dirt track for quite some time, it was the first time that we had taken the 4500 WSDs on a surface that was rough and we were really happy with the way our equipment performed, we had no problems at all. Eventually we came back onto another road and we ripped it up to our destination.

When we arrived in Wutai County we had no hotel booked and we had no map of the town. We road through the main 'High Street' and had no problems finding something that resembled a hotel. It is quite confusing trying to learn the characters for hotel because there are so many different ways of writing it depending upon the classification of hotel. We stood outside the building and became confused when the only English sign said something about industrial contract services. I asked the nearest person where there was a hotel and he laughed and pointed at the building that we stood outside of. Hilarious! I managed to get us a room for one night with my terrible Mandarin and we were also given somewhere to lock up our bikes nice and safely.

We headed out for some food and as always we ordered what we wanted rather than try to order from a menu that we found incomprehensible. We ordered some Home Style Tofu which came with pork fat (mmmmm mmmm) and some plain rice and stir fried vegetables :-)

We really did have a great time, the riding was awesome and we had succeeded in our first day of entirely independent travel in China (Nobody had booked our hotel in advance for us) :-) :-)

We are happy!

Thanks for reading.