The Great Leap Forward

We have been making excellent progress recently, but seem to have spent much more time on the main road than I would have liked – at least the rubber shoes have made it more comfortable. However we were able to spend some time riding along the side of the Great Leap Forward Canal which presumably dates from the time of Mao’s Great Leap Forward in the 1950s. Hua hoped it would enable us to live up to its name, but we ran into obstacles too often and were forced back onto the road.

An unexpected treat was when we came across an ancient Tang dynasty Buddhist temple complex sited against a bluff above the canal at the end of a crumbling section of the Great Wall. The Shi Kong temples were absolutely stunning and virtually unvisited.

Hua is shown round ancient temple by equally ancient retainer.

Hua on Bajiu – yes the little crumbling remnant at the top of the bluff is the Great Wall!
Having problems accessing my blog at the moment, so posts may be erratic – I am now having to e-mail text home.

Hurray For a Hot Bath

After a sweaty day in the saddle, a good scrub is a necessity and I have become very adept at having a bath in a plastic bowl. The photo above shows my usual daily hot bath. Hot water is normally provided in a thermos wherever we stay, and cold water can be obtained from a tap or hose outside, or from a Shanghai jar inside.

Every so often we have the luxury of a shower. Some of the larger truck stops have shower rooms, and the photo below shows one of the grander ones, although the shower heads here were in fact taps! But who cares when the water is hot. Unfortunately at this premises the door to the shower room was only a curtain - as I did not want to give the truckers a nasty shock, Li May had to stand guard.

Return to the Not so Great Wall

Today we met up with the Great Wall of China again for the first time since leaving Hebei. Only an outlying spur but the real thing nevertheless - there were signs to prove it!

As you can see, these remnants are considerably shrunken compared with the Wall further west, and from now on it is constructed of earth.

1111 kilometers

1111 kilometers from Beijing! Of course in fact we have gone much further as we detoured into Inner Mongolia and have kept off the roads where possible.

Ningxia Here We Come

We have left Inner Mongolia after nearly a month. Here are Hua and Li Jing in front of the Mongolian style toll gate into Ningxia.

This part of China is developing fast, and we have been forced to ride along busy roads through country littered with industrial concerns - power stations, iron and steel, concrete and chemical factories. Everything is coated in a thin film of coal dust, and makes me glad we heeded advice and avoided the industrial coal mining areas of northern Shanxi, which the Great Wall passes through. The second crossing of the Huang He - not a pleasant experience.

New road construction means suffering stretches of road like this.

Sneakers R Us

The horses have all been fitted with brand new sneakers in the form of shoes made out of old rubber tyres! We started off in Guyuan with conventional shoes, which lasted us to Baotou, where the horses were reshod with traditional Chinese iron shoes. These have not been a success as both Zorbee and Shandan had loose and bent shoes after only ten days, so we decided to take advantage of Peng's rubber tyre shoe kit. I had already seen rubber tyre shoes in action on Peng's own horses in the autumn, and they seemed to work very well. Li Jing says he has ridden 1000 kms with one set.



So yesterday afternoon was spent sneaker fitting and we are now all padding softly along the road. Above is Bajiu being fitted - the guy in the orange helmet (was Bajiu really that bad!) turned up from nowhere and pitched in - apparently he was some sort of lay farrier of which there are a lot in China - happily he seemed to know what he was about.


Here is the finished product on Bajiu. They may look rough and ready, but the horses feel happy and comfortable. There is some overlap on Bajiu's set as he has a tendency to drag his toes and we were concerned about the wear on the front of his hooves - one of the reasons we opted to change to rubber - hopefully this will help solve the problem.

On the banks of the Huang He.

If you are wondering why there have been so few photos of Li Jing recently, it is his own fault. Since he reclaimed Zorbee (it was only a matter of time) he has usually been a speck on the horizon. To prove he still exists, here is a suitably enigmatic photo of him and Zorbee on the banks of the Huang He.

And one of me on Bajiu

And Hua on Shandan with Wuhai in the distance.