Thread: The Great Guangdong Adventure
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#1 The Great Guangdong Adventure05-10-2011, 05:13 AM
This is the first time Shenzhen's unofficial motorcycle club went for a proper bike trip.
CIMG4869 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
The plan: Leave Shenzhen early morning on the 1st of May, take the most scenic and twisty route possible to a town located on the border of Hunan, set up base camp (hopefully meet up with ChinaV and Rich) and from there we would spend a few days riding through the mountains enjoying the scenery before heading back to Shenzhen (okay so it wasn't really that well planned, but that was the gist of it).
First we needed a route, and who better to ask than ChinaV, the man with all the answers :)
Here's the route we got:
ggdamap by SerpentZA, on Flickr
We bodged together a gps mount and a few usb chargers with some late night drunken soldering and last minute fitment, but it did the job, we all met the day before up at our mountain lockup and set about checking the bikes and readying them for the trip.
CIMG4735 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
a bike trip in China (or anywhere for that matter) is all about preparation, you need plenty of spares and plenty of tools.
You have to expect that things will go wrong, so you must prepare for any possible eventuality.
It's much easier when travelling in a group as you can spread the load between however many bikes there are (tools and spares are heavy and take up a lot of space). Here are the bikes:
CIMG4745 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
From left to right:
My QM200GY (seen in the MCM logo) which has been ridden through China umpteen times, still going strong after a little TLC was ready to hit the road again, Martin's beast, the 250cc made to order over the internet no name brand bike which was quite the monster (size wise), Tom's Qingi Zhongshen Hybrid 125cc with a 250cc engine welded into the frame using dodgey engine mounts (one of which almost fell off), surprisingly the quickest of the three.
We left Sunday morning at 6:30am (mainly to avoid any run ins with traffic police, the streets are swarming with them due to the Universiade). Once outside Shenzhen (we went out via yantian past dameisha) we stopped for breakfast.
A lot of Southern China is unfortunately an urban wasteland, dull, dusty, busy, dirty and dangerous with people, trucks, cars and bikes everywhere. We would have to endure these conditions for a few hours before we broke free into the countryside.
CIMG4740 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
All of a sudden it was like we'd stepped into motorcycle paradise, long twisty treelined roads with almost no traffic, beautiful green rice paddies and mountains surrounding us as we opened up our engines, Tom in the lead with his GPS and street tyres (helps on the twisties), Me on the QM200 in the middle (carrying a passenger and lots of luggage), growing ever more confident and familiar with the bike (this is the first time I've ridden it any distance other than to the local bike shop and back), and Martin wrestling with the beast bringing up the rear (he's on tiptoes riding that thing, but somehow manages to control and tame it).
CIMG4788 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
Here's a picture we took on the side of a mountain around about the halfway mark.
Left to right: Tom, Winston, Martin
Coming soon: Paradise didn't last long, the weather and roads didn't quite play nice...
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#2 Re: The Great Guangdong Adventure05-10-2011, 05:21 AM
Oh boy, a Guangdong ride report and I'm not in it...yet.
More please sir
I've got to stop cleaning my chain and get my holiday trip report done.
Cheers!
ChinaV
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#3 Re: The Great Guangdong Adventure05-10-2011, 08:47 AM
Haha, looks like this is going somewhere interesting! Amazing to the MCM whore (your bike) back on the road again. Talk about hard-to-kill!
Keep it coming please!
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#4 Re: The Great Guangdong Adventure05-10-2011, 09:30 AM
This should be fun and interesting.
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#5 The Great Guangdong Adventure (Part 2)05-11-2011, 08:48 AM
Where we left off, Winston, Tom, Martin and the beer girl (Winston's passenger and fiance) were enjoying some beautiful scenery and humming along nice long twisty mountain roads in the countryside.....
CIMG4763 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
We were somewhere near Heyuan, winding around a big lake / reservoir which was incredible... however, paradise wouldn't last long, we started to hit patches of light rain... which to be honest can be really nice and refreshing.. but not when taking fast corners on knobbly tyres, the roads became a little slicker, and there were more than one "whoa that was close" moments as my drum brakes on the QM200 became lubricated by the rain (and the cheap shit brake shoes didn't help), however all that experience falling off bikes in my youth and a good dose of luck kept me from falling, and we all fared well.
CIMG4761 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
Things were however about to get a little more interesting, the roads suddenly turned to absolute shyte, landslides and mud covered the roads, and either the roads were under heavy repair or still under construction, either way we were now riding through slick, soft clay-like mud filled with water and very dangerous (especially to Tom's bike which is an on-roader and Martin's inexperience on the dirt), this part was taken slowly with everyone having near falls due to either losing grip on the front or rear wheel trying to negotiate the shitty terrain. (sorry too busy riding to get pics).
CIMG4757 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
once at the bottom of the mountain we were greeted with what has to be one of the worst roads in Guangdong, basically mud filled pot holes between bits of broken concrete, rocks and whatever remained of dirt and tar roads, this lasted for a few KMS, and was also being used by large trucks carrying construction material.... while the other two were cursing and taking it slowly I saw this as an opportunity to put my knobblies to use... about 20 minutes later and with a very angry (I don't understand why she didn't enjoy all the air and muddy splashes) passenger later I stood dripping with mud from head to toe on a tar road waiting for the others to arrive.
Our bikes were caked in mud (as were our clothes and luggage), and almost as an answer to this, the heavens opened up and we got a free shower all the way to our destination...
CIMG4768 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
We'd been advised to push on all the way to Xinfeng before stopping for the night so that we could take in the sights of the Chinese "Grand Canyon" the next day, and so we did.
The way we figured it we'd traveled somewhere between 350~400kms after having left at 6:30am and arriving at our destination at 5pm, we finally found a hotel with available rooms, did some quick bike maintenance (martin and I got our bikes cleaned) and we headed out for a well deserved drink... what an interesting drink that was...
CIMG4770 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
Sitting outside under a gazebo, lightning flashed about us and thunder struck as torrential rain poured down.. still we stayed put with waitresses running out with our beers getting drenched and their umbrellas getting blown away.. it was quite an experience (I got lots of video footage, I'll post links as soon as they're up on youtube).
Next on the Great Guangdong Adventure.. we hit more amazing roads, make emergency petrol plans, hit small technical issues and meet ChinaV...... stay tuned.
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#6 Re: The Great Guangdong Adventure (Part 2)
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#7 Re: The Great Guangdong Adventure (Part 2)
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#8 Re: The Great Guangdong Adventure (Part 2)05-11-2011, 10:55 AM
Hi Shenzheners, you didn't come acrossa any police checking sites in Heyuan downtown? Were you aware of the police issue but went with luck?
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#9 The Great Guangdong Adventure (Part 3)05-12-2011, 06:09 AM
Where we left off, the four of us were getting drenched under a leaky fabric gazebo at a dodgey little riverside restaurant surrounded by torrential rains but eating and drinking like kings (the videos will give you a better idea)...
CIMG4771 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
We finally made a break for the hotel when the rain died down (this was hours later), but it came pouring down drenching us on the way back anyway.
Being May the 1st we had gone from hotel to hotel looking for a room, but every place was fully booked (either that or they weren't keen on a group of mud covered foreigners messing up the place. The hotel that beer girl managed to find us was a small little place, but they were willing to let us park our bikes in the lobby (a messy mistake on their part).
CIMG4785 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
Next day we were to head out early, so in order to save time, Tom had the idea of packing some sort of instant food that could be cooked in the hotel rooms using a kettle (things like instant soup, smash, eggs to boil in the kettle... that sort of thing). So we ate some surprisingly good instant mash and soup before heading out (hungover but ready), we decided not to wear rain gear since the weather seemed fine(only beer girl insisted on wearing her raincoat)..... big mistake
about half an hour into the trip we got hit by one hell of a downpour, I was wearing my leather jacket and waterproof riding pants, but that didn't help, I was soaked through within minutes, my heavy leather jacket was now waterlogged as were my leather boots, socks and underwear were soaked too, the only part of me that was dry was my head being covered by my helmet, I couldn't see more than a few meters ahead of me and suddenly there was no Tom (he was leading the pack with his GPS), he had apparently taken shelter from the rain, but pulled too far off the road and by the time he'd turned around to try and flag us down, Martin and I had already passed him, so he hopped back on his bike and followed, we soldiered through.
about half an hour of low visibility torrential rain later the weather started to get better and we hit some rough roads, suddenly Martin decided that he was sick of constantly bringing up the rear and that he'd show us what his bike could do, so off he sped to the front I then noticed half a bungee cord dangling from the back of Martin's bike and dragging on the ground and luckily so did Tom, I was hooting and flashing the highbeams at Martin but he didn't take notice, Tom raced past him and cut him off so that we could see what was what.
CIMG4777 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
A bungee had gotten snagged in the spokes and then snarled up on the rear hub a potentially big deal if it had gotten jammed up in the rear brake, so first technical casualty...
CIMG4779 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
We stopped shortly after on a mountain side to have a quick rest and take a few scenic pictures.
CIMG4786 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
Martin and Tom
CIMG4787 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
Tom
CIMG4789 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
Me and Beer girl
Still completely drenched, we pushed on for about another hour until we hit a small town and settled down for some lunch, wrung out our socks and T-shirts and put them out to dry.
CIMG4795 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
Beer girl playing with some chickens...
One thing I've forgotten to mention is that on Day one during our lunch stop, Tom had noticed that the main bolt holding his engine in had worked loose and the nut had fallen completely off (luckily gotten jammed down next to the engine) so that was actually our first potentially bad technical issue.
CIMG4856 by SerpentZA, on Flickr
****** Intermission time *********
More coming after the break
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#10 Re: The Great Guangdong Adventure (Part 3)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
- Location
- now in china
- Posts
- 49
05-12-2011, 01:00 PMgreat keep it coming, love new good ride reports
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