Be careful what you wish for.....a.k.a rain, rain and extra downpours (on route from 义务 (Yiwu) - 白石湾(BaiShiWan) - 浦江(PuJiang)

          I am looking forward to next week as another festival looms (Dragon boat festival - 端午节)。 The school gave us some treats to celebrate the festival. It would be nice if I could find a boat race but I guess that is more of a Suzhou thing. In the meantime, I have some fruit to eat.

The dragon fruit is a tasty treat but it leaves purple marks all over the table.

Best tasting fruit, though.

Dragon boat festival should happen once a week.

This food is pure energy.

      Anyway, last night I checked the weather forecast and it stated that today's weather is heavy rain. Usually the weather app is spot on but I was looking forward to getting outside for the weekend,
True to form the app. wasn't wrong (dang). I have never seen it rain constantly for 8 hours straight (in a heavy downpour)like that before. It was still good to cycle, though.

So this is why the area around Yiwu is so green.

   

Nice weather for certain animals, though  (I wonder if they hate the sun?)

It is always cool to see lots of fruit and vegetables. What I didn't expect to see was the array of flowers that seem to pop up everywhere.

A lot of colours here

Apologies for the rain on the lens

Following the flowers to the villages

At one point, it was getting quite hard to see the road (with the strength of the rain) I decided to take off the glasses and just focus on the road. After a while, I thought I better play it safe and go on the smaller roads.

I can see (due to a contrast of green and purple ....More purple, please)

I saw some odd things on the side roads. At one point , I saw a load of white looking cones. I am still not sure what they are but I think they are used to keep the water away from the main road.

                                    

Initially, I thought I bumped into a load of sheep legs. 

Nice house to go to if you want to check out the water service.

Where the water from the water service room comes from.

I also bumped into a scarecrow.Oddly enough, I have seen a few scarecrows in Yiwu. I had never seen scarecrows in other parts of the country.

Wurzel Gummidge has nothing on this guy.

Usually, when I am cycling on the back roads , at some point I will run into a graveyard and this was no different.

A solemn place

All I need is a cup, some milk and sugar and I could drink tea for the next 400 years. 

I thought I should get back on the main road. The back roads were getting fairly slippery and it looked like I might be cycling into the clouds anyway. 

Note to self: Buy cycling goggles

Eventually I made it to BaiShiWan. At that point I realised that I could drown in rain if I stayed at that area. I decided that I will return to this place on a date when I can see more than 10 meters in front of my face.. Before I left the place, I took a quick shot of the mountains (BaiShiWan has quite a few things so this picture does not do it justice.)

BaiShiWan has boat rentals, temples, the millennium tree ,promenades, meditation areas , friend stone , windmills and  some nice toilets. 

Anyway, after a quick  (traditional burger eating ) stop in Pujiang, it was time to head on home before I got washed away in the floods.

That log in the water was moving at some pace.

I arrived home famished and subsequently had to go out to an all you can eat buffet (always hits the spot (Well, to be honest it hits the spot too much , so I tend not to do the all you can eat place too much anymore))

Saturday night at the 自助餐 (self service) restaurant.

(I must remember to stay away from the Red Bulls, though. )