Chinese New Year Solo Ride from Shanghai into Zhejiang.

[Metalmonkey]

This CNY, on the first day of my holiday, I got up, packed my bike and rode out. I picked up a backpack for the laptop and a flourescent, Hi-vis jacket from Decathalon. Unfortunately, a new friend and rider couldn't come, so this would be a solo journey.
BikerDoc, another member on here had given me a long list of places to explore in Zhejiang. Thanks for this. This is what I used as the basis for the trip.


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The bike by an abandoned house on the endlless route out of Shanghai (it does end, only after about four or five hours). This shows I went quite light with the packing this timne with only one 40 litre dry sack from decathalon and a 20 litre backpack. No panniers.

The first hurdle was crossing the river to the South of Shanghai. Scratch that, the first hurdle was to leave Shanghai- it's massive.

I rode South and hoped there would be a ferry to Ningbo or Zhoushan in Zhejiang. After asking locals, I gave up on this and went along the river to find the fabled elevator bridge across the Qiangzhen River. Before this, I ran out of petrol and converted my camelbak into a syphon. Luckily a Chinese guy on a scooter arrived and offered to sell me some petrol. I now know what petrol tastes like.

Next day was the bridge crossing.

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The bridge- the Jiang Dong Da Qiao. The road across and approach road are a GaoSu- Expressway or GuoDao so no motorcycles allowed. However there is a road alongside that leads to two towers with steps and an elevator that is used to ride across the bridge. Many other posters on here before me have used it, but this info was instrumental in getting to Zhejiang.

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This guy was an absolute life saver. He came along on his scooter and assured me that he had enough petrol to help me out. We tried different ways to get the petrol from the scooter into my taller dirt bike, even putting his bike on a two foot high manhole cover. In the end, the expensive Camelbak had to be sacrificed, But I was grateful for his kindness and after paying him for the two litres, we wished each other a Happy New Year (the next Day was the EVE of Chinese New year and I headed off into the darkening evening to find a petrol station and a bed for the night. Next day, bridge crossing.

* as an adendum to this, I've gotta point out that I knew the tank was only 8 litres and that this event was totally my fault. The bike, during winter, had had some starting problems and only seemed to want to idle with the fuel petcock turned to reserve, so I must have started the journey with it set this way. A bad habit, which left the tank bone dry miles from a petrol station.