Chengde, 23/9/2005 at 18:30
Day 6: Miyun-Simatai by bike
Having gone all the way from Beijing on the major roads the day before it was a pleasure to go to Simatai primarily on country roads. We had almost no traffic and went through many small farmer villages with houses falling apart between the hands of the very poor farmers. We had our first encounter with Chinese authority as we needed to cross 3 dams on our way to Simatai. At the first dam the gates were closed and we had to take a detour of unknown distance to get around the dam. Finally it turned out to be not that far and we moved on to the 2nd dam. There the gates seemed closed as well but were opened as we got closer. And after having cycled another couple of kilometers we found ourselves in front of dam 3 with the gates closed again. The dam guard only agreed to open the gates when a car full of Chinese tourists helped us persuade him of the importance of letting us al through. Alternatively we would have had to back track numerous kilometers and plot out a new route. And our maps are not that accurate. If he hadn’t let us through, Jolanda would probably have thrown the bikes an bags over the gate to go the 15 meters across the dam. All day it was cloudy, perfect weather for biking.
Towards the end of the day we got the first sight of the Wall – the major goal of our trip to China, only a few kilometers away.