planned to visit the city walls and hire bikes and go around the top of them, again much road crossing, this is definitely the most mad road crossing I have ever made, I picked out my Chinese locals and stuck behind them until we were safely over the to the other side! We hired a tandem bike and wobbled off, Rob at the helm and me trying to keep up with his peddling rhythm all was going well until my dearest made a slight ramp choosing error, instead of choosing the bike ramp he went for the old wall ramp, we had already gathered pace to get up the thing and once at the top - bump I was off, there was a large dip or crack or something which the tandem couldn’t cope with and poor old helly off to the side and the next thing I know I have extreme knee pain!!! I am now sporting a lovely big bruise on my left knee but worry not its only a minor bump - it had already crossed my mind I was chancing my arm getting on the back of a tandem with Roberta at the helm - hee he!!! (hrrrrmph! - Rob!!). Undeterred we

carried on, I wouldn’t say Xian was the most picturesque town I have ever seen but it did have a good buzz to it and has got some nice old parts to it. After the wall we found the old street which was lined with market stalls, its hard not to buy things, we have done well so far, I guess we are just very realistic about stuff, but it was getting near to Sophie’s birthday so it was very nice to being looking for something for her, as the stuff for kids is ace, so pretty and colourful I know she will love it. The next thing we know its time to start heading back to our hotel so we can get to the station and get our next overnight train journey, this time to Yichang which is the start of our Yangtse river cruise.

There was the same usual chaos at the station and this train was definitely I no frills affair! As with the Gobi train the air con was the windows which is alls well and good, but jesus