Around the World in 80 Days by Mark Beaumont

Author:Mark Beaumont
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2018-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

Day 28

After three hours’ kip we were up and off, without even bothering to film the morning video diary. Ahead lay a daunting final day. We had about 350km to Badaling and from there it was 60km to the airport. Working back from my midnight flight, we would have to be at the airport around 9 p.m., which meant leaving Badaling by 8 p.m. At normal speeds I could expect to arrive there between 5 and 6 p.m. But if the conditions stayed against me, that could easily be a few hours later.

The poor Chinese drivers looked battered, like this was the toughest shift of their lives. I had always been concerned about how much control we would have over these foreign drivers, but at the end of the day we weren’t allowed to drive ourselves in China, this service had to be provided by government-accredited tour operators. This wasn’t your average tourist trip, though. We all worried that if they started calling the shots, there would not be a lot we could do about it. If they’d refused to drive at 4 a.m. after three hours’ sleep, perhaps they would have been within their rights. This scenario certainly hadn’t been what was sold to them during the set-up period. And our translator was a young lad, perhaps in his early twenties, a likeable and trendy chap in his tight white T-shirt and black baseball cap, not someone who oozed presence, so I worried he wouldn’t have the respect of the drivers. Luckily they all seemed suitably overawed by the always smiling and physically impressive David Scott. I sensed they simply thought I was a lunatic.

The graveyard shift was once again into a southeasterly, but it was noticeably weaker than the night before. In the dark I was still focusing on the positives, that the road had to descend from over 1,400m to less than 600m, and also after the first four hours it would turn east at Ulanqab, at which time I’d hopefully pick up an advantage.

Dawn found me pedalling down vast four-lane highways, all but deserted, through a landscape of concrete buildings, cranes and construction. I wasn’t in a city yet there were buildings in every direction. Some of the towns did cause some delays – heading into the centre of Zhangjiakou rather than skirting it – but we barely stopped after four and eight hours, so by early afternoon there was a sense of relief among the crew that we had done enough. We would make the flight.

I had been following the Yanghe river, which empties into the Guanting Reservoir, downstream. Having left the industrial parts of Inner Mongolia behind, I was now in the heart of Hebei Province. Beijing is one of the most water-scarce cities in the world, to the point that the Chinese have debated the merits of moving the capital south, away from sandstorms and droughts. This Guanting Reservoir, a touristy waterfront with rocky cliffs and the foothills of mountains rearing up to my left, was the first attempt to store water for the city.

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