Rapha - Summer Ride

In the season of many rains in the city, cycling will be harder for many cyclist. Taking chances to sneak out when the sky is clear but in most cases spending time with trainer and get together sharing personal experience. Topics from helmet to clip shoes, saddle to tires, city route to hilly climb. 

With the weekend approaching many would spent time plan best ride for the week, month, year or in their life. For cyclist in the city like Shanghai will only have miles of flat road to chase which is too dull. Only way to achieve something more than Shanghai city can offer cyclist would go as far as Shengzhou to explore something new. Shengzhou (Chinese: 嵊州; pinyin: Shèngzhōu), formerly Shengxian or Sheng County, is a county-level city in central Zhejiang, south of the Hangzhou Bay, and is the south-eastern part of the prefecture-level city of Shaoxing. It is about 2.5 hours drive from Shanghai city center. (Information from Baidu 26^th August 2015)

Leaving the city soon after Friday work in office everyone reaching the resort which was pre book. Some of us were caught in the massive traffic of people moving out of the big city for weekend. Though many of us are tired from the traveling and week long work but thinking of the excitement to come tomorrow make everyone eager to see sunrise. 

Sunrise was 5:30am and many of us are awake as early as 6:00am. Getting out of the little hut we slept last night and got amaze with the surrounding. (Most of us arrived at the resort late evening hence not knowing where we were) With the mobile phone snapping few photos of the resort in day break ray then proceed to have something fill our stomach before setting out.  

Briefing to everyone where we will start our ride and what to expect from the ride. Water station, regroup point, support car, bike repair material, all in place and make known to everyone. Then everyone get back to little hut gearing up for the ride.

Rolling out from the resort, passing through small little village then get onto China National Highway G104. Heading south to find our ways to climb up a hill leading us to Tianzhu Temple. Ride alongside to a river, cruising through a tunnel get into another small town called Xianyan town(仙岩镇) which is our first water station. From here on we have an average of 4% climb going toward foot hill of the climb we look forward to. Reaching the foot hill Xiejiazhuang Village (谢家庄村), again filling up the water bottle and short break. 

Next section of climb is about 8% in average where the end was Tianzhu Temple. We climb and climb but not forget to try something interesting like crossing a narrow walkway across an old dam. Due to the heat we did a brief stop when we see spring water. Occasionally we were rewarded with some rain to cool down our body and we did have fun. Though amount of rain is not heavy yet going downhill with rain need more attention.

Took the same way back to resort and get ourselves pamper with a big feast in the resort. Spent the rest of the time in the resort relaxing before heading back to the busy life of big city in Shanghai. Overall we had a great route with an overall climb of 600m along an average of 8% gradient route. Looking forward to next surprise ride....most likely with snow.

  

Photograph by LYK and edited by Alex Xu.
Word by RS.