After a warm up 5 km cycle we hit a huge 11km climb gaining over 600 metres in altitude
The climb although steep was doable because the foliage offered this time some form of shade. Jacquie's effort to summit was particularly character building !
A lovely cooling descent followed before we undertook a really tough 20 km ride to lunch in oppressive conditions on dusty roads competing with oncoming traffic for not much available road space !
Our arrival had most of us diving for ice cold cokes - Andrews effort in making it this far was a huge one given his stomach bug condition yesterday !
Riding to our lunch stop restaurant Linton and self became separated from the group. We had nearly cycled out of the city before we rang one of our group leaders to say that we were lost !
What was impressive was not that our Chinese guide eventually found us but that Linton's first phone call was actually answered by someone in China after he'd realised that he'd used last nights wifi password no and not our guides phone number !
Back with our group after an extra 5 km it was a hurried lunch and a few more cokes before again hitting the boiling cauldron with still over 65 kms to go !
Our first stop after 20 kms had a few of us including me heading for the support van - it was just too bloody hot !
Linton hyper after the 5 cokes he'd drunk battled on despite sweating nearly twice his body weight ! Kev loves the heat so was having few problems while Viv was determined not to succumb - the Sandler True Grit !
Marysia joined legends status by completing the 100+ km journey despite her aversion to heat and with the group crossed the finish line at Longsheng just after 5.15 p.m. a long and tiring day !
Tommorrow is only a short 30 km ride with a 1 hour walk required because of landslides near our destination !
Ps seeking to avoid another night of Chinese noodles and vegetables I wandered down the road and secured a tin of Pringles - the flavour - you guessed it, Noodle !
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