It was the second time that I took the arranged bus out north of Beijing for cycling. This time we went to the Chang Ling Tomb parking lot. The cyclists split up in three groups, I joined the medium group (B riders) for a 85km ride. We cycled up Fen Shui Ling and then down through a little village where me and Vincent almost crashed into an ascending truck that cut the corner. Also my bike was sliding as I pulled the breaks because the street was all wet. Then we continued in a nice valley and passed the Huang Hua Cheng Great Wall before we went up to Si Hai. That was a really nice and long climb.
It was quite chilly at the top despite the weather forecast having said it should be 22 degrees Celsius. All weather forecasts had also said that it should be blue sky and sunshine the whole day with very good visibility. Somehow that was incorrect. This was the view that we had:
Then we went back on the same route. But by now most streets were dry so we had no issues with the long descent. But we were going at a quite fast pace in the valley and one of the guys had a bumble bee smack against his cheek.
Unfortuneately we had to wait a very long time for the group A riders to return to teh parking lot. They did a more challening route with 5 climbs (we only did 1 big one and 2 small ones) and had one guy fall on 2 descents.
By the time we were ready to drive back to Beijing many weekend tourists were also on their way back which resulted in massive traffic jams. At least I was able to take a picture of the nice blossoming trees out on the road back. Beijing went from brown color to green and white/pink/yellow within the week that I was gone. Sproing has finally come!
