February 16, 2016
Rucheng via X011 and S324
a bit of a wild goose chase
The place selling steamed mantou buns is just a hole in the wall that you’d walk past without noticing, in the older part of Reshui, just a couple of blocks from the few-year-old, new-build area which reminds me of a European ski resort out of season. There are lots of restaurants and so on, but hardly anyone around. It’s a good job Rebecca, the young, demure receptionist on duty at the Seventy Eighty Hotel this morning, offers to walk over there with me instead of trying to give hard-to-follow directions. It's a nice 10-minute stroll in the morning air.
You’d not get that kind of service in many places in the world.
And she insists on paying for my two mantou, which I eat as we return. She then makes me coffee, from the proper ground stuff poured through a paper filter, as we sit in the lobby. I have three cups. It's free. You can’t beat that. Perhaps it’s because the place is only a year old, or that I'm the very first foreign guest: Whatever.
During our chat I glean from her and two other helpful members of staff that there's an old building in Rucheng which they say has a slogan left over from the Cultural Revolution painted on the front elevation, with two characters on each side of its grand entrance. They show me a photo of it on something like Baidu, and its location. I take a snap of their cell phone image. That is the day’s goal.
At gone 10:30, it's time to make a move and head out into the cold air. Cold, yes, but a degree or two warmer than yesterday; streams of sweat occasionally dribble down the surface of my glasses as beads drip off my forehead. Unless you wear specs you’ve no idea how annoying it is.
The climb begins on the very edge of Reshui - once I’ve got my bearings in the new area of town where my hotel is - and find the X011, a nice, fairly new and broad road that swivels up through the pine- and bamboo-clad hills that surround the hot spring resort. You can see Reshui has had some cash spent on it.
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The concrete marker near the top states 11km, so that’s what it is down to the junction where the X011 ends and the main road starts - the S324 route which will lead me west and then south to Rucheng. Nothing is flat. My Gortex is on for the fast descent.
The town at the junction, Yijiangxiang, has an air of abandonment about it. New homes are being built, but there are hardly any people around. I don’t stop for a bite to eat as it seems a bit depressing. Those two steamed mantou will just about keep me going.
The fairly flat G76 highway can be clearly seen as I climb higher up the S324. Only the odd car drives along the bigger road, towards the entrance of a long tunnel which tells me that the small road I'm on must climb pretty high.
Mine is equally quietRiding a whereas I’d imaged lots of traffic on these S roads. And it's scenic, with rugged rock faces looming up and conical mountains in the distance. Although it's an overcast day, the vibe is good.
This S road drops me down to the north of Rucheng and I follow it into town, occasionally asking people about the ancient house with the painted characters. Eventually a group of teenagers say they live near it and offer to escort me there. It's just 10 minutes’ walk away.
When I see it it clearly isn’t the same building. Nothing like it, really. They then walk me to another a one a couple of blocks away, but it's also the wrong place. After consulting their smartphones it's found, and a GPS route gets displayed which, unfortunately, doesn’t mean a great deal to me. Apparently it's 30 minutes’ ride away, so I set off in the general direction as the clock ticks towards five-thirty.
Eventually, as I head south, I see a new government building of some sort, so pop in and ask the staff in the lobby. They say they know where it is and a guy gets on his scooter to escort me there. We go back the way I’ve just cycled: exactly, turn for turn, and come to a stop outside the old place I’d left a while ago. As if to rub it in, he then takes me to the other old building I’d visited with the teens. It's a wind-up.
After looking carefully at the smartphone image I have on my camera and playing with his phone, a new GPS route is displayed, and the location turns out to be to the north of Rucheng. It's a place I’d cycled through a couple of hours ago as I came down the S324. That's that. Enough of wild goose chases. Get me to a hotel.
Today's ride: 45 km (28 miles)
Total: 872 km (542 miles)
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