Last Saturday a group of us walked from Laoheshan in the north west of Hangzhou pretty much all the way around Hangzhou to get to Wushan Square in the South. The route is a hilly course, to say the least. The ‘8 hour’ route we were following is described here (In Chinese, 线路九). I’ve mapped the route (fairly approximately) on MapMyRun here, you’ll need to switch it to satellite view for it to make any sense.

It was a totally amazing day, we set off slightly later than planned at 09:00 and made good progress over the first few peaks to North Peak in about 1.5 hours and stopped for a snack there. From North Peak we went over the next couple of hills heading south making ok but not great time on what was always going to be the toughest part of the course in terms of terrain. At this point we had to do our first frustrating drop all the way down to road level and then all the way back up to the ridge that boarders Longjing to the west. We arrived at Longjing about 4 hours in and took our time over a lunch of sandwiches, TimTams and strawberries sheltering in a tea field from the wind. We were engaged by a couple passers by during lunch the most memorable of which was a gentleman who seemed positively irked by the fact we were having a lunch of sandwiches at the top of a hill. He told us in no uncertain terms that this was just wrong and we should be eating in a restaurant. Excuse me but sandwiches at the top of the hill are the best thing about hiking.

From Longjing we headed south all the way down the ridge to Nine Creeks. We arrived at Nine Creeks about six hours in and stopped for a rest and most of the remainder of the food before heading up to Huapo Houshan. Here we were accosted by a local who, seeing us looking at the map was eager to lend a hand. “Where are you trying to get to?” she asked, “Wushan, how do we get there?” we replied. “By car” she said, slightly missing the point.

By the time we came down into Hupao itself it we were starting to lose the light. Unperturbed we headed off up Yuhuang Shan only to get completely turned about on this Escher painting of a hill. We came down the other side finally in complete darkness, or as complete as darkness gets this close to such a large city.

One last slog over a few more fairly low peaks and we were down on to Wansongling Lu. From here it was a quick hop, or would have been for fresher legs, over Wushan into the square. We arrived finally in the square at 20:00, eleven hours after setting off and piled straight into taxis to Maya Bar.

Hungry, thirsty and weary like I’ve not been in a long time we ate peanuts, nachos, chips and burritos in Maya before the days exertions and few beers finally took their toll and we staggered off home to bed exhausted but victorious.

Most of the day was a bit fuggy for photos but what I did get are on Flickr here.