A Ride In The Country

At last ! The weather has turned. It’s cooled off to about 26oC and more importantly the humidity has dropped. Sky is blue. Air is clean.

This is the best time of year to cycle in the countryside around Nanjing. I have several routes that take me into the hills and fields on the outskirts of northeast Nanjing. Today I do one of my favorites. It’s a mix of villages, paddy fields, tea plantations, lakes, hill climbs, sweeping roads and mountain views.

When I first started doing this ride about 4-5 years ago you could get into the country within about 10mins and you'd see no real signs of the modern world. Just a few cars and the odd annoying quarry lorry. Every year it takes longer to get to the country. There are more cars & lorries but more upsetting is the skyline. It has many more high rise tower blocks all over it now.

The tower blocks just get built. I remember a couple years ago we came across 4 new tower blocks. They had gone up in a matter of months. No shops and no real roads or transportation around them. Just 4 tower blocks in the middle of no where.

Now all the infrastructure is there, including factories. The sad thing is that the pretty white farming villages in the area got raised to the ground. I assume they were all given new apartments. Yes - they now have modern housing, with basics such as running water & toilets in their apartment. The villages houses would have standpipes outside their homes. Some places still had communal toilets that were emptied by buckets onto the fields. But - as you’d pass through the village you’d see people talking to each other. Food being dried on the street. Kids playing. Parents working in the fields. All looked happy.

So I ask myself - are the tower blocks really progress?

My first target is the tea plantation and processing area with a beautiful lake. This way-point is a good rest area with a nice hill climb, but to get there you go down ‘Country Road’. This is the less enjoyable part of Chinese cycling. The road surface is pitted, with numerous sharp pot holes. It’s covered in dust that gets whipped up by every car or lorry. The quarry trucks give no prisoners as they trundle past, sometimes stopping abruptly as they play chicken with on coming traffic.

After the tea plantation, it's on towards the Tangshan mountains. The route winds underneath the High Speed Train Track to Shanghai. At one stretch I cross a river on an old iron bridge, that has a wooden deck that is falling to pieces. Above is the modern concrete structure that holds the train tracks. They are building a Garden Expo in this area, so the roads are starting to improve and there are some great stretches of smooth tarmac winding between trees and mountains.

The target destination before I turn around is a small temple in the foot hills of Bao Hua Mountain. You’ll never find it - unless you know where it is ! Then it’s back home. Main avenue back is a good road surface and I’m looking forward to the cruise back. Not my luck - half way home & my tire goes flat. With the pitted roads and debris, this is not uncommon. My worse experience was 3 punctures in one trip. So you don’t just carry 1 spare. I have 2 spares and a puncture kit. The good news, with all these punctures, is that I’m pretty good at changing tubes now. All done & home - 50km’s. On legs that didn’t want to get out of bed. I’m happy.