Monday 16th September Breakfast at Tiffany’s well the Ibis hotel in Pingliang, I spotted the cereal last night, nice bowl of bran flakes and warm almond milk very good, then an omelette, fully western breakfast for me, Keith and Linney stayed with the oriental breakfast.
As we got the bikes ready, it was the same old banter all down hill today, 74 miles to Changqingqiao, we have heard it all before. Nice and easy out of the city though one straight road on to the 318 minor road. As we thought it was slightly down hill, with a nice wide hard shoulder to ride on, however this soon changed, heading for the rural soft fruit area, the road did get worse, nothing to bad, just a few pot holes and bumps, bit like riding in East Kent. Not only the roads, also the fruit growing in the fields and poly tunnels, mile after miles of strawberries, grapes and melons, as we rode through the small villages. We had a little stop at a derelict footbridge across the river, just looking to see if we could cross it, it was a bit too dangerous even for Keith, but did bring back memories of crossing a similar bridge in Germany on a previous tour (nowhere near as bad condition though). We rode onto the town of Jingchuan for lunch, just as we entered the town, we came across the temple museum, very ornate buildings, unfortunately it was under refurbishment so we could not go in, very impressive complex though.
After lunch we rode out of town, still in the belief that it was downhill all the way to Changqingqiao, with a few road works, we soon hit a new section of road, not open yet, as before we just rode on, the workers taking are picture and videoing us as we started climbing, just a quick 4 mile climb as they had re-routed the road, all good though with no traffic it was really good, but seemed to go for ever. After the climb that’s should not have been there the rural landscape reappeared this time with miles and miles of apple orchards, again like Kent, never seen so many orchards, Keith & I got caught scrumping only took a few apples as we did not have and desert, not sure what the Chinese guy said, he did not sound too pleased, we just smiled and rode on with the apples. We soon hit the what must be the capital of the apple growing world in this part of China “Changqingqiao”, Linney had actually found a place on booking.com, so we all thought it would be a breeze getting into the hotel / hostel, still a bit of a palaver, first with the owner, then with the police turning up with the tourist documents, all sorted in the end.