Day 1: Rolling in from Beijing to Langfang

Distance: 59.3 km Travel time: 03:12

The first day of our China bike tour takes us just under 60 km from the south of Beijing to Langfang. For this we converted our old MTBs into touring bikes, with all the advantages and disadvantages (fully-mounted bikes remain fully-mounted).

The route consists mostly of well-developed cycle paths, much better than we expected. One section goes along the river called Liangshui, then the city is finally behind us and it becomes rural. The temperature rises to 35 degrees, birds and cicadas make noise from trees and bushes and we arrive in Langfang sweaty but relaxed.

Our hotel is in the middle of a shopping center on the 9th floor - who could have known that in advance? All entrances to any kind of wheeled equipment are blocked off by narrow barriers around the center. Together we lift our bikes over them, then squeeze into a narrow elevator (there are 5 of them, but they are all narrow). Unfortunately, the hotel cannot accommodate us because we are foreigners and they do not have a police registration system.

We learn: Before booking a hotel, make sure to check whether tourists can check in there! Thanks to Trip.com, we book another hotel and go down the narrow lift, over the barricades with the bikes onto the street and off to the new accommodation...

PS: When transporting our bikes, well protected by Evoc bags, the hydraulic hose connector on the lever of my Reverb seat post broke off. This means that the seat post can no longer be extended. The search for a workshop that happened to have a suitable spare part in stock was unsuccessful. Now I'm travelling with the Reverb pushed up over the stop, which just about fits (and saves me having to buy a seat post ;-)

PPS: Well, sometimes you're just unlucky... When I locked my bike in the middle of Beijing, I actually lost the key. That hasn't happened to me in the last 50 years. How do you open a lock like that? You carry your bike to the nearest Giant store, where a friendly salesperson hands you a pair of side cutters. You can imagine the result. The salesperson just laughed, then he organized a small van for us, helped us load it, and we went back to our place. Once we got there, we were able to get a pair of bolt cutters from the caretaker in charge, which Zhaoyang used to cut through the steel lock like butter.