It’s day 2 of the national Chinese holiday and I was up bright and early to meet a friend at Lingyanshan where we were going to walk over the a few peaks to finally reach the Black Pool at the end of the walk, but half way there as I was sitting on the bus listening to the BBC she called to say that she had to cancel.

Ah well shit happens and so I didn’t mind too much because I’m sure she would have have slowed me down because she never wears the correct footwear which is what most Chinese women do and of course this is also a male problem too. I mean if you have travelled all this way to climb a large hill you would think to yourself, “I’d better put on some good walking shoes”

Today there were many Chinese snaking up the mountain tracks and to be honest it was kinda stupid coming here at this time but you know the sun was shining and I fancied a stroll. Once you pass the temple complex you will then move onto the path through the brush and the first bit heads down the hill over mainly rocky terrain coupled with really slippy loose fine gravel which makes it interesting indeed. I’ve been in the first bit a few times and so I know how to navigate it quite well. There are always water and food stops but today they had multiplied at least 5 fold. Many have shade cloth and chairs to entice the weary travellers to stop a while and eat and maybe buy a walking stick. The Chinese love this, any excuse to stop and rest. Many don’t do this kind of physical exercise well and these resting areas are essential. I keep going I’m not interested in anything they have to offer.

I reach one part of the walk and there is a traffic jam, we are slowly moving up the hill and it’s not old folk ahead, it’s in fact young folk with stupid shoes and unable to gain traction and on top of that they stop in the middle of the path to rest, they are so fucking stupid.

Further up near the top of the second ridge I meet a group of guys with remote control cars driving them down this bumpy mountain track, there must be about twenty of them young and old with a variety of model jeeps and strange looking vehicles.

The higher you go the fewer people you encounter which is great. The path looks a lot more difficult than it is I think and so maybe that puts many people off and so it was finally nice to walk for a bit with some space around me.

I came to a fork in the road and I wasn’t 100% sure of which way to go but you will never get lost in China because all you have to do is follow the trail of discarded food wrappers and empty plastic bottles that litter almost everywhere. I took the left fork and then disturbed a young girl doing the toilet just off to the side of the path, at least go into the bushes a bit.

At the end of this walk you end up at a recreation park where many people have come to enjoy the weather, eat food with their family and of course to play games on their phones. I’ll never understand why you make the effort to come all this way and then just sit glued to your phone. So many couples were sitting beside each other more interested in their phone than each other. Just stay home.

I quickly exited the park and jumped on one of the free City bikes and headed home. I was going to cycle the 26km home but decided that after 10km’s that I wanted food and that my poor body was running on empty and so I parked me bike and jumped on the metro and headed to the wee place that sells beef and potato with rice. I could have scoffed two plates but I decided to keep some room for chocolate instead.