Never ever have I taken my tent down and packed my bags as fast as I did then. We were just sitting in front of the tent, enjoying the evening, talking, blogging, waiting for the dusk to settle and the temperatures to drop at least a bit before we would crawl into the tent to sleep.
We were relaxing after a days ride – going pretty much only uphill in the morning until we had a long break at a café at the edge of Yuantouzhen. From there to Zhongshan we went fast – enjoying a long and graduate downhill that allowed us to up our average speed by more than 2km/h. Just before Zhongshan – as the name predicts – we had to go uphill again, but not in a bad matter.
Most of the day we had spent following the G-Road, with a lot of trucks, noise and dust from trucks that were carrying split and always loosing some. So we really enjoyed the times, were we left it to go along the village road.
So – here we were. Off a pathway from the smaller road that led through the mountain area, beautiful, kind of quiet – and still packing our stuff as if we were going for the world-record in speed-packing. A thunderstorm just started and whatever you would call our camp – idyllic, quiet, picturesque, relaxed, beautiful, kind of hidden – ‘safe during a thunderstorm’ just wouldn’t come to your mind.
We had 30k in the dark until the next hotels, which we were racing for. Rain came with thick, cold drops, and Niklas could see even less as his glasses got wet. 25k to the hotels, when we got to Yangtouzhen – and our new campground in front of a store. The lovely Zhong Qiuxiang from the restaurant next door organised that spot for us. It was so nice meeting her and we were really happy for a safe spot. Even though we got up at 5am so we would be gone when the store opened in the morning. Inside the tent it was hot as the concrete heated up during the day and didn’t cool down, dogs were barking outside and we were right next to the G-road, something we didn’t think about when we were just glad about not having to race through the rain anymore.
Please take in the beautiful-blue, not-thunderstormy sky we had all day!