D18: 建瓯→南平

October 24, 2019

An absolutely brilliant retro advertisement for a feelsgood oldey timey new brand of baijiu

Not wanting to take the National Road south to Nanping for any amount of time longer than I absolutely had to, and also wanting to get my daily distance up some as, once again, the next confirmed available lodging after Nanping was a bit too far to do in one day but just going to Nanping by the straightest quickest route was a bit too little, I decided to take the Provincial Road on the east bank of the Min River up and over some nameless mountain and then back towards the Min on farm roads alongside some little nameless bit of water.

I'd still have to spend a good chunk of the day on the main road but at least I'd get some decent detouring in the countryside done.

Of course my provincial road turned out, once again, to be a national road.

It also turned out to be completely free of traffic, so that was okay.

I believe I mentioned something about velvet headboards with rhinestone upholstery buttons being a thing at glitzy hotels?

On the Provincial Road, take note of the woman used the sidewalk on the bridge to dry rice. She had to specifically come up here with bags of rice and tools to do this.

I could get spoiled by traffic like this

What wasn't okay was my bike's refusal to stay in the granny gear. The granny gear already isn't as low as I want it to be and now, much more than two or three pedal revolutions after I've changed into it, it changes right back out again. Inelegantly, but effectively, I've found that if my handlebar bag is open, I can catch the very edge of the brifter paddle on the top edge of my handlebar bag after which it will stay in place but I'm hoping to have someone proper qualified take a look at it in Fuzhou.

Although there potentially may be bike shops between here and Fuzhou I'll wait until Fuzhou though. While I'm in Fuzhou, I'm going to go see China's "Godfather" of Cycling Mr. Q as well as at least one CCA commissaire who I'll pretend to remember as well as he remembers me. That foreign translator who used to show up at races being far more unusual and memorable to everyone else than yet another person too busy to actually talk to me was to me.

An unusually artistic rendition of the introduction of Road Management Laws that almost manages to rise to being actual art except for being located somewhere where it will never be noticed or read

Half a house because why demolish the bits that aren't in the way of the new building?

I crest the hill and soon find myself an unpretentious little turn off that looks all kinds of promising as the signs at the intersection mention a greenway, an ancient bridge, and a farmhouse restaurant. The greenway, like most Chinese greenways, turns out to be a very short stretch of what might generously be called a cycle path if it went anywhere; I never notice the farmhouse restaurant; but the ancient bridge, oh the bridge, the bridge is amazing.

Now I'll grant you, I'm a bit of a bridge geek. Like all good random topics that one is knowledgeable about for no apparent purpose, this started accidentally. First, because bridges are the best place to get unobstructed views of scenery; and, second, because road detours to avoid dangerous bridges provide an amazing amount of information all with nice easily readable low level vocabulary. Once I'd realized I was getting rather a lot of pictures of bridges, I started intentionally taking pictures of bridges. At some point on the 2012 Tour, I started trying to guess the ages of bridges before I saw the inscription stone; and by 2014, I was going out of my way to look for the inscription stone.

I think these are information about the donors

It's a partial stone arch bridge with a stone deck, benches, and a covered corridor. Judging by the stonework on the central pier, it either isn't very old or was very dramatically rebuilt in the last 10-15 years. The woodwork looks a lot older than 10-15 years so I'm going with very dramatically rebuilt. There's a half sized temple building at surface level about 30 meters away from the bridge, a tree shrine on the concrete ramp leading up to the bridge, a shrine at the bridgehead, another shrine at the center of the bridge, and a huge incense burner at the opposite bridgehead.

I run out of energy to spend on taking photos and puzzling out the content of handwritten inscriptions (I don't even do English handwriting very well) long before I run out of things to look at.

The only thing that disappoints me is that the name of the village where the bridge is located is 普通村 or "Ordinary" and searching for an "Ordinary" Ancient Bridge gets me all kinds of hits that aren't the Ancient Bridge in the village of Ordinary.

It's a lovely ride along the farm roads after that including another interesting shrine or two but none of it, even the rather old bridge and the really cool protective pylons for flood debris, really compares to the Ancient Bridge.

This year's new theme appears to be pictures of signs related to protecting telecommunications cable. Which, by the way, have no copper in them, so other than generally protecting them, really aren't worth stealing.

A more traditional way of drying grain involves bamboo mats that allow the drying grain to be put on all sorts of surfaces. (Which ultimately seems a lot more hygienic than getting the road dust out.)

Only one statue and he seems to be off in a position of less importance than the banners for the statues that don't exist

Out on the main road, there is very little traffic. There are signs and portents that once upon a time this was not the case. But once upon a time there was no expressway and all the traffic came this way. Now it goes on a newer faster Road without so many stops and curves and houses and people and things.

This isn't the first time I've found myself on a truck route that no longer had trucks. As with the other times, the scenery is incredibly pretty. At least this time though, there were enough people and places between Here and There to justify the existence of restaurants and services for reasons other than the Road. It's not at all fun to go miles and miles of biking past closed mechanics, closed restaurants, closed hotels, and closed shops that provided services for the people who used to work for the people who traveled the Road.

Gee, what a big surprise, a picture of an old bridge (likely to be late 70s early 80s by the way)

Notice the semi-modern concrete pylons upstream from the bridge.

Large late 80s / early 90s bridge as I recross the Min back to the National Road

I get into Nanping as darkness is falling. Within seconds of the last gasp of sunset making things just dark enough for my headlight to be useful, the streetlights come on.

For a decent stretch of time, I'm on the wide flat road between the last of the buildings and the start of the river wall. Nanping is built so high up above the water that I hesitate to call it a dyke. Even having seen what a major Chinese river looks like during flood season (or having seen the concrete pylons built to protect an older bridge from flood debris) I find it hard to imagine that the waters ever come that high (though they might). Eventually though, I have to go into the city.

I'm kind of sort of heading for the hotel where Joe and Anna and Anna's son and I stayed the night before we got to Wuyishan in 2009. I'm only kind of sort of heading there since they were stairs from the sidewalk and I don't want to carry my tour bike up the stairs but I'm pretty sure I've found them on the map and there's a whole cluster of cheap places near that so it seems as good a place as any to go.

I get lost in the concrete canyons of Nanping. Back in the day, before great big earth movers were such a thing as they are now, there wasn't a lot of flat ground to build Nanping on and there wasn't an easy way to make flat ground. So they built close and they built narrow and they built tall. Few roads are more than one lane in each direction. For us to have parked the pickup truck ten years ago, the sidewalks must have been even narrower than they are now, or perhaps the street was one way? I don't know. I don't remember. In lieu of alleys, there are stairways linking different levels of Nanping. Roads turn into bridges that seem to randomly emerge from between buildings off to go to some other level.

The Road Gives and the Road Takes, in this case we are seeing a closed gas station and a closed restaurant whose truck parking is now being used as a place to dry grain

The painted words on the wall say "住宿" or "Lodging" but I think that's no longer the case.

It's not hard to imagine Nanping as one of those places where wheeled traffic took a while to get a strong foothold.

I find myself dinner less than a block before the hotel from 2009.

I find myself a hotel as I'm walking my bike along the sidewalk in that direction.

And this time, it wasn't really the police who were being assholes so much as it was the front desk girl. Though she also seemed to be having a really stressful day even before I showed up and started bullying her.

An expressway bridge that I photographed 10 years ago while it was still under construction and a ferry

Same bridge, note the fisherman on the bamboo boat

Is it a hoe or a carry-pole? You decide.

Today's ride: 71 km (44 miles)
Total: 1,207 km (750 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	3
Comment on this entry	Comment	0