Sore bums and spectacular views

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Geo: 24.7709, 110.487

Southern China has been experiencing some nasty weather over the past few days, Hong Kong airport closed for a few hours yesterday and there has been lots of heavy rain. So it says on the news, if it is true then we have been lucky, yes there have been some big thunderstorms the last two nights and this morning it was misty, overcast and looked like rain.
To elderly Brits like ourselves this seems like normal weather so undeterred we borrowed bikes from the hotel and set off across the paddy fields.
The pointy mountains described yesterday poke out of very flat valleys which are ideal for cycling, the local authorities have realised that foreign tourists like getting out on bikes, it makes them feel they are experiencing Chinese culture (whilst the Chinese zoom past in their cars) so they have built some cycle paths to link the traditional routes between the villages.

So we set out this morning on old fashioned ladies bikes with no gears, in preference to new fangled mountain bikes with hard saddles, and a jolly nice ride we had. What's more the weather stayed fair, or at least didn't rain. The only snag is we saw lots of things being planted, growing or harvested that we have not the faintest idea what they are. Lots of rice of course which is being planted at the moment, oranges and plenty of little fish farms, I suppose in the same way in medieval times each large house had a pond in which to keep fish so there was always a fresh supply they do the same here. But also lots of small holdings growing all sorts of vegetables in poly tunnels or under polythene sheeting.

We have not seen tomatoes being grown but those in the restaurants are delicious.

We had booked a trip cormorant fishing (for the less knowledgable amongst you a cormorant is a bird, the bird does the fishing and hands over the catch to his master on account of a bit of string round it's throat which stops it swallowing the catch). Apparently because of the heavy rains the rivers are too "yellow" which we presume means muddy, we might get a trip tomorrow but are not too confident but watch Gill and John Go East for further developments.

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Photos

Cycling along the lane
You would not want to cycle back along these lanes at night from the pub, there is always water on one side, often on both.