Cycling though China, Xuzhou to Tengzhou, Shanting and Zaozhuang 徐州 滕州 山亭 枣庄
During the national day festival golden week, where anywhere slightly touristy in China seethes with endless hoardes of Chinese tourists, we went on a three day bike ride across Shandong Province. We got a van and driver to drive us about 100 miles north of Xuzhou to Tengzhou. We then cycled in to the hills and around a reservoir, then on to a smallish 'town' nested in the hills called Shanting. We got a nice little hotel, one room didn't have a bathroom but the other room more than made up for it. It had an 'all the bells and whistles' toilet, heated seat so you could feel like someone else had just been using it, and a remote control to adjust the spray and blow dry, but the best bit was the bathroom had a huge window so that you could share the experience of getting your bum sprayed and blowed with your mate lying on the bed in the hotel room.
The second day we got up and walked to the lake, then set off cycling the scenic route through the hills to Zaozhuang city centre, we ended up taking the too scenic route rather than a nice road and got stuck in a sichuan pepper tree orchard. We had to carry the bikes up the rocky hill but somehow try not to stand up fully to avoid the thorns from the trees. Needless to say we failed, and ended up with lots of scratches on face, neck shoulders and arms and about a dozen punctures, I was even left with a piece of thorn in my big toe for a week. One bike's inner tube had so many punctures we couldn't fix it and we didn't have the tools to remove the wheel and put in a new tube, so we had to pump it up every 5 minutes until we reached some lovely peach sellers who helped us get the wheel off. We then set off and had an hour long uphill, with a nice little temple on the top, and then a 10 minute downhill past a strange solar panel farm on the side of the hill. Finally we got to Zaozhuang just as the sun was setting and sat outside for a nice dinner and beer.
The third day we cycled down out of the hills and across the countryside, through village after village, to weishan lake, where we met the driver who would take us the rest of the way back to Xuzhou.