Day 20, 110km:( by Amy)

Our early start was hampered by the fact I left the key from the hotel in my pocket. Chris took pity on me and cycled 2km back to return it.

The rest of the day was spent on beautiful country roads. Hardly any traffic weaving up and down little hills with rice paddies and satsuma trees. At one point a lady on a moped insisted on escorting us 10km to the next village which saved asking at every junction if we were going the right way. She also scrumped some satsuma's and insisted on giving us some! 

Me buying bananas and describing our trip with the use of the map and our printed Chinese explanation.

It ended up being another long day. Mainly because in the afternoon the road followed the bends of the river and was long. Also because they were reconstructing the closest bridge into Leshan so we had to go around. The dusk plus slow speed (because of the unsurfaced construction road) meant I got eaten by mosquitos and now my legs are very itchy.

: Lovely country road

Day 19, 78km:

Im not sure if traffic lights in China are a safety feature or a population reduction strategy. When they are green for straight on, it is also green for everyone turning left across your path. This means each intersection is a chaotic, horn serenaded dice with death. At one such junction cycling out of Chengdu, while we lined up with other targets such as tuktuks, tricycles and mopeds, we met a traffic police man. He pointed at my trailer and said 'this is dangerous!' - considering all the crazy things we witness daily on Chinese roads, not to mention the traffic lights, I instinctively laughed incredulously at him. Amy had to use all her charm to turn the situation around. We were released, and by the afternoon had finally left the city and found a quiet country road. Unfortunately we spent a lot of time searching for it amongst the orange mud of building sites as the Chinese government continue to plough up the pretty rice paddies and orchards to build massive roads and huge high rise buildings everywhere. We followed a river, which like most in China was brown and smelt of sewage, then cycled into some small hills where we were overcharged for a hotel room.

Day 16-18, Chengdu Rest Days;

The main reason for stopping in Chengdu is it has a world renowned breeding and conservation centre for pandas (both giant and red). Pandas were my favourite childhood animal and Chris being a zoologist was interested too. The Pandas were cool! Also as panda breeding season is spring there were lots of cute babies that had just grown fur and not so cute bald newborns in incubators.

We also met up with Zhang, a lovely lady who helped us get maps for China and is also a keen cyclist. She lives in Beijing but is from Chengdu and happened to be in the city. She spoilt us and showed us the city from a locals perspective, we went to Dofu's cottage (for those from Cardiff it was like a Chinese St Fagan's) and chilled out in a tea house. Then in the evening went with Zhang and her family to where people from Chengdu like to eat out. The restaurant was packed and the food was yummy (although we weren't brave enough for the spicy duck heads!).

Baby panda, just starting to grow fur

Cute baby pandas now with fur!

Day 15, 114km:

We tried to get off the busy big road this morning and found a lovely quiet back road through the countryside. 8km on we found out why it was quiet. The bridge over a wide river had been washed away. Rather than go back, I waded in and pushed the bicycles through the brown water which smelt slightly of sewage. Amy escaped wet feet by arranging a piggyback. It rained most of the day and we passed more collapsed bridges destroyed by the recent floods. Gravel tracks over concrete pipes had been built around the ruins. We rejoined the main road further south where we cycled past numerous 'government spy cameras' which flash and take pictures of all that pass. With the incentive of a rest day tomorrow, Amy wanted to try and reach Chengdu by the end of the day so she peddled as fast as her little aching legs would allow. After 114km we made it with 5minutes of daylight to spare. We now have three rest days to look forward to :-)

Day 14, 76km:

This morning our route passed through the ruined city of Beichuan.

 It was destroyed in a earthquake in May 2008. 7.9 on the Richter scale

 killing 70,000 people in the region. They have made the ruined city into

 a museum. Stabilising what is left of the buildings and putting placards

 in English and Chinese with photos and stories of people who were rescued. 

It was pretty eerie and felt a bit like a ghost town. One story about a

 little girl who loved ballet had been rescued from the buried middle 

school losing her legs in the process made me cry. 

 
In the afternoon we descended from the mountains, our small road 

turned into a newly built dual carriageway which thankfully had a cycle path. 
 
We made fantastic time as it was all downhill. We stopped at a guesthouse

 in a big town on the plains. I was taken (still in my grubby cycle gear)

 by the friendly hotel proprietor to the police station to register our stay,

 which basically involved photocopying our passports and visas.

Day 13, 52km:

I was up till past midnight pump filtering tap water for tomorrow as it is not considered safe to drink and needed to give our bicycles a good service in the morning so we had another late start. Unfortunately a car-load of police turned up while we were outside. None of the locals bothered us which was completely uncharacteristic and the hotel owners were hiding in the back rooms. We really hoped we hadn't got them into trouble for harbouring foreigners and made a quick get-away. Nothing much happened today. We cycled through some mountains, asked for directions from Chinese people, defected in some bushes and I accidentally ordered raw pigs ears on a bed of shredded carrot for dinner.

Day 12, 80km:

In the morning we followed another river downhill. 

We picked up supplies at a town crowded with teenagers as it was the first

day of school. 
After this we climbed another huge pass in the mist and drizzle.

 There was increasing evidence of landslides on the road. On the descent

 I was stopped by a guy on a motorbike saying we couldn't pass the road

 ahead and suggesting a huge 3 day detour. We said we would like to see

 if we could pass before turning around. He took some convincing but

 eventually let us move on. It turns out the worst floods in 50 years

 hit this area less than a month ago. Over the next ridge the descent

 down a spectacularly beautiful valley was marred by the fact big chunks

 of the mountain (and road) had simply been washed away. In places a river

 now crossed the road and you could see water marks on the first floor of

 the houses that hadn't been buried with sediment and rocks.
The road was passable (tracks had been created to bypass the missing bits)

. People were still so friendly, waving and saying hello as we passed.

 The town at the bottom was relatively unscathed although pretty deserted

 (we think most people were still evacuated). 

We stayed at a lovely little family run guesthouse and had dinner

 in their noodle bar.