I Want To Ride My Bicycle…

..You’ll look sweet, upon the seat…

Saturday, another beautifully warm and sunny day with blue skies and wonderful views of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, so we decided to go cycling!!

We found a place hiring bikes and after discovering poor old Will was too short to ride his own bike we came away with a bike for Ellie, a bike for me, and a tandem for Matt and Will!!!! This caused much amusement for the Chinese people as Will was’t able to reach the pedals properly!

We cycled out of Lijiang on the road towards the mountains. Will sang in Matt’s ear all the way, and kept asking to go faster! He decided he would have preferred his own bike so he could pedal fast! Ellie entertained us with a rendition of Queen’s “bicycle” and we enjoyed being out of the city. Even if Ellie’s route took us through the local tip!!

She’s got her Grandads knack for route-finding

After a while we reached the pretty little village of Baisha. As we cycled along the cobbled streets avoiding chickens, dogs, children playing marbles and people carrying baskets of corn on their backs I was really reminded of trekking in Nepal. The snow capped mountains peeped over the roof tops of the wooden houses and mud bricked buildings. We stopped here for lunch before we continued our bike ride back to Lijiang.

Once out of the village we were able to take the back streets and came to another pretty village called Shuhe. It was quite like the old town in Lijiang, with lots of guest houses and shops selling colourful weaving, crafts and clothing. Here lots of mules carried people along the cobbled streets and over stone bridges.

Our ride then took us back into Lijiang. There seems to be so much building work going on, even in the smaller villages. The nice thing about the new buildings is the fact that they are built to look like the traditional courtyard houses, with carved wooden windows and pretty shaped rooves.

The bikes were a great way to explore more of Lijiang and the surrounding villages, and I think we all really enjoyed being out in the countryside. We are now going to Dali, a couple of hours on the train from Lijiang. Dali is situated on a lake, so we are looking forward to spending some time exploring the countryside around there.