It's a wonderful China riding trip during the 1-3 July!! Althought there has some rain, it still has a lot of fun!! Hoping have another happy trip next time with you all!!! :D 5 July 2005
Yes it is a wonderful trip. It has almost everything for a good cycling trip.
The night when we arrived at ShunDe (¶¶¼w) it was already 11:30pm yet almost everyone went to the restaurant for some of the famous dessert. Great ShunDe food and dessert!
The first day of cycling we rode from ShunDe through some beautiful quiet roads along the river to a small island NE of JiangMen (¦¿ªù) called ¼é½¬. The island has a lot of Euro feel, very quiet, clean, and with a lot of flowering plants planted along both sides of the roads. The park on the island is beautiful and with some nice historical buildings. The other great thing about this park is that it is totally free, something very special in China. The restaurants facing the river have great scenery, great environment, great food, especially the roasted geese which we don't mind waiting for an extra hour after placing the late order. Even the waiters and waitress are rather unusual: they are on roller skates! The weather that day is perfect for riding, neither too warm nor too cool.
The second day at XinHui(·s·|) is very special. I had never got up so early in order to join a morning ride in China. Climbing almost 450m by pedaling the small clipless pedals with my running shoes is another first time thing for me (my cycling shoes have been locked in the support truck and I had forgotten to ask the driver to take them out the night before). All those who had joined this morning ride have very good appetite afterwards for the breakfast. The ride later in the day is also very exciting. The weather has been changing very quickly between good and bad, and we had to sprint for shelter from the torrential rain on one moment and then time trial on the roads the other moment.
The third day is also great for riding. The roads in ZhuHai(¯]®ü) are wide and have a lot of vegetation along them (that creates an environmental issue though: heavy use of pesticides). The greatest excitement however came from shopping in the two bike shops in ZhuHai. We could never imagine before that a nice looking aluminium seatpost only cost RMB20! The great Pearl Izumi Gel-Lite gloves only cost half their prices in Hong Kong. Many of us end up with bucket-full of cycling goods.