nooks and crannies - something remote - every part of a place

I wouldn't put Guangdong as a destination of choice for epic motorcycle rides in China, but it's home, and over the last six years I've found some special places worth sharing. I'm not really good about posting ride reports, but I promised a few people that 2009 would be better, so here goes.

We all dream of fantastic adventures through restricted provinces, but the reality of life is that most of us living here do our riding on weekends, two or three days at a time. It can be exciting and frustrating. On one hand, you end up covering a lot of the same roads over and over, on the other, you become willing to try anything that looks like a cow trail on google earth.

Chinese new year makes for good riding. Half the population has gone home, container trucks and work crews no longer clog the roads. Weather is mild with temps between 10º-25ºC, no rain for three months, so it's a great time to hit mountain roads that get wiped during the heavy rains of the monsoon season.

The first area that I wanted to hit was the Xinfeng reservoir (WanLu lake / Evergreen lake / give it another name next year lake), 150 kilometers north-east of home (Dongguan). One of the four largest reservoirs in China, the lake (whatever it's called) holds about 13.9 billion cubic meters of water. An immaculate road borders the south and west sides. I spent four years trying to find it, but like so many other good roads, it was built from the inside out. The south and north entrances are very difficult to access, so nobody goes there . The road is so good, I made two trips just so I could ride it from each direction . Here are the two rides.

Starting down south in Dongguan, I headed for Y880 between Xichang and Heyuan each day.



A closer view of the good stuff.



I took the usual route out of town and won't bore you with the details. The first day I headed to Matou so I could enter from the north. I picked a little smudge that looked like a road on google earth and found X220. Not such a great road



Hope they don't catch me on those speed cameras



OK, so much for X220, blast up past Matou and grab X192 and X311. Nice roads with very little traffic as I cross the mountains that feed the reservoir.







I finally hit Y880 and it's awesome, smooth, clean, new, empty....MINE Stop, take picture...yeah, whatever, I can't believe this goes on for eighty kilometers





After two hours and a bunch of side excursions, I had only reached the half way point at Xinhuilong. Heading home was the safe bet, the second half of Y880 would have to wait until next time. I continued south on a crappy section of road that led to an even crappier section of road. Behold X224, twenty kilometers of kidney crunching misery, almost one hour wasted.



Back to some familiar roads, but it looks like I'm still going to enjoy a little night riding as I push to get home. Finally arrive at about 8:00 pm, two hours past beer o'clock, what a day. Here's more data than anyone wants know....

Day 1: 22-January-2009
Start Time: 9:32 AM End Time: 7:53 PM
Total Time: 10 Hours 21 Minutes
Moving Time: 9 Hours 46 Minutes
Distance: 526 Kilometers / 327 Miles
Average Speed: 51 kph / 32 mph
Average Moving Speed: 62 kph / 38 mph
Maximum Speed: Really really fast
Maximum Elevation: 469 Meters / 1539 Feet
Fuel Unit Cost (93 octane): 5.42 RMB Per Liter / 3.00 USD Per Gallon
Fuel Total Cost: 150 RMB / 21.96 USD
Fuel Consumption: 19 Kilometers Per Liter / 44.69 Miles Per Gallon

If you want to download a kmz file of day one for Google Earth, please click here.

Thanks for coming along, tomorrow I will post the second half of the Xinfeng reservoir rides.

Cheers!
ChinaV