I'm hosting this bird named Pooey from ADV rider, thought you guys and gals might enjoy a little ride report since most of you are sitting in snow.
Pooey and I spent the week plotting routes and checking the weather. It's winter, but southern China usually stays mild with temps around 16ºC (60ºF). It seems most of the other China riders have already gone into hibernation, so we headed out solo. The goal was to hit 5 provinces over a long three day weekend. Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Jiangxi and Fujian. According to "The Google", it should be 1,781 km (about 43 hours) of riding. I figured 3 days, 600k a pop and we should be back home. Being winter and all, the days are short, and there's only about 11.5 hours of daylight. Night riding is a big no-no here, so we've got to make every minute of sunshine count.
Here is the route we took. You can download a kml file here.
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Day 1:
We're on the road at 7:00 and make good time out of the pollution pit, I was pushing hard to beat the morning traffic and we cleared the worst of it by 8:30. The sun was finally breaking through so we stopped to warm up little.
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A WeeStrom milestone... 30,000 kilometers and still running great, also noticed we covered 373 kilometers in just over 4 hours this morning. Pretty damn good time for China roads.
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Around lunchtime we finally reached the Guangdong/Guangxi border. I guess it's the border... I'm illiterate when it comes to reading Chinese.
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Continuing on through Guangxi towards Hunan on some nice roads. It was one of those perfect days, you know the kind.
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We moved in and out of Guangdong and Hunan for the rest of the afternoon and finally hit the town of PingShi just before nightfall. After 738 kilometers, we were both exhausted. A bowl of noodles and couple beers, we were snoozing by 9:00.
Day 2:
There's no heat in most of the buildings here and I can see my breath as I wake up early and prepare coffee. It feels much colder than yesterday and the moon is still shining as we hit the road before 7:00.
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The temp is down to 3.9ºC (39ºF), not extreme for many of you, but pretty much the coldest I've ever ridden in Guangdong.
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The mist slowly burns away as the sun comes up.
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Crossing the border with Hunan again and just around this corner, the road turned to complete crap. This morning it's an icy mix of gray sludge and I'm fishtailing all over at even the lowest speeds.
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I come out of this long corner going sideways and somehow manage to get it going straight. Whew, that was close... woops.... thud. Hmmm... I'm still standing, but bike fall down go boom.
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I wrestled the Wee into position and got it back up, everything's OK, SW-Motech crashbars did their job. Double check, myself, Pooey and the bike, we're all good to go again. Phew, that could have sucked.
The scenery lifted our spirits and we happily motored on towards Jiangxi province. We spent the rest of the morning rolling through the mist.
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and warming up in pockets of sunshine.
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By late afternoon we had crossed Jiangxi and entered Fujian. We still had a long way to go to reach our destination for the evening so we only made one more stop for the day.
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We managed to reach Wuping just as it got dark and I found the only hotel in town. Pretty beat up and overpriced, but at least they had safe parking for the bike. Another great day and 617 kilometers covered.
Day 3:
With less than 500 kilometers to go, we headed out on the final leg home. The morning was cold, but rewarded us with this great sunrise.
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It's appears to be orange season and the trees are packed. Pooey and I stopped for a sample and a few pics.
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We were back in Guangdong, making great time, and enjoying another perfect day of winter riding.
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As we started to get closer to home, I figured we had a little extra time to explore. We headed off the map and GPS for a new road that I thought might exist. Started out nice enough with 25 kilometers of concrete.
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Then it turned to dirt.
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Got steep.
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Followed by rocky.
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And ended.
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Oh well, them's the breaks, we turned around and backtracked out. Some day it will go all the way through, and I'll be back to try again. That's the fun part about China, so many new roads always popping up.
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We finally made it home around 5:00, just in time for a cold beer. A bit tired, but really happy with our accomplishment, we had covered over 1800 kilometers and manged to see all 5 provinces. It's great having Pooey along for the ride.
Cheers!
ChinaV
