Moganshan
Our first weekend away from Shanghai since arriving in May was planned for the day Jamie's mother arrived from London. We were going to the Shanghai equivalent of Simla, Moganshan mountain, three hours from Shanghai and allegedly 5 degrees cooler than Shanghai. The plan was to stay in a house let by an English guy and his Chinese wife who ran a cafe restaurant on the mountain.
After collecting Eliot from his last day at school before the summer holidays, we loaded ourselves up into the car with the ususal paraphalia - travel cot, pushchair, lots of bags.
As we drove through the outskirts of Shanghai on smooth roads, we passed landmarks such as 'Cambridge Town' on the outskirts of Shanghai which looked quite impressive with genuinely nice modern houseing, and a large lake. Our marvelling at progress in China was rapidly halted when we crossed the border into Zhejiang province, the roads disintegrated and we bumped along, the children waking up with the jolts. Three hours and several toilet stops in strange places later, we arrived at 'the Lodge'.
What Mark, the owner of the lodge had neglected to mention was that the Lodge - the restaurant - was some way from the house we were staying in and that our cottage was accessible not by road but up a 200 step climb or a walk through a woodland hill - negotiable in daylight but something of a challenge in the dark carrying two children and all their baggage. Trying not to have a sense of humour failure, I walked grimly through the woods with a heavy Toby in my arms. The cottage, looked fairly comfortable but had no fans and was swealtering. I settled the children while Jamie, Marcy and our driver went to have dinner. After failing to deal with the large amounts of flying insects, I retired to bed. It was too late for our driver to go to his guest house so he dossed down on the sofa bed.
We woke early in the morning to find there was no running water. Marcy coped with this news gamely given that she had not showered since boarding the flight in London. I was less impressed. Jamie found a spring and filled up some buckets.
I did cheer up when a 20 minute hike led us back to the lodge to a rather splendid cooked breakfast but we were at something of a loss as to what to do given the lack of puschair walking. At one stage, we filled up an old paddling pool we found which we assumed belonged to Mark's kids, only to find that the hose had been used for petrol. We attempted to explore the mountain, getting hot and sweaty and found, at the end of the day, that a bucket of water can be just as refresing a way of washing as a shower under certain circumstances.
To be fair, the scenery was stunning and there was usually running water but the recent typhoon had interrupted supply. Without the kids, we would have been enchanted but.... On Sunday, we went down for breakfast. "What are you going to do today?" asked Joanna, Mark's wife and chief fry-up lady. "We're going back to Shanghai" we said.
Please note, the blogger will be on holiday in Europe for a month. Service will resume in September.
After collecting Eliot from his last day at school before the summer holidays, we loaded ourselves up into the car with the ususal paraphalia - travel cot, pushchair, lots of bags.
As we drove through the outskirts of Shanghai on smooth roads, we passed landmarks such as 'Cambridge Town' on the outskirts of Shanghai which looked quite impressive with genuinely nice modern houseing, and a large lake. Our marvelling at progress in China was rapidly halted when we crossed the border into Zhejiang province, the roads disintegrated and we bumped along, the children waking up with the jolts. Three hours and several toilet stops in strange places later, we arrived at 'the Lodge'.
What Mark, the owner of the lodge had neglected to mention was that the Lodge - the restaurant - was some way from the house we were staying in and that our cottage was accessible not by road but up a 200 step climb or a walk through a woodland hill - negotiable in daylight but something of a challenge in the dark carrying two children and all their baggage. Trying not to have a sense of humour failure, I walked grimly through the woods with a heavy Toby in my arms. The cottage, looked fairly comfortable but had no fans and was swealtering. I settled the children while Jamie, Marcy and our driver went to have dinner. After failing to deal with the large amounts of flying insects, I retired to bed. It was too late for our driver to go to his guest house so he dossed down on the sofa bed.
We woke early in the morning to find there was no running water. Marcy coped with this news gamely given that she had not showered since boarding the flight in London. I was less impressed. Jamie found a spring and filled up some buckets.
I did cheer up when a 20 minute hike led us back to the lodge to a rather splendid cooked breakfast but we were at something of a loss as to what to do given the lack of puschair walking. At one stage, we filled up an old paddling pool we found which we assumed belonged to Mark's kids, only to find that the hose had been used for petrol. We attempted to explore the mountain, getting hot and sweaty and found, at the end of the day, that a bucket of water can be just as refresing a way of washing as a shower under certain circumstances.
To be fair, the scenery was stunning and there was usually running water but the recent typhoon had interrupted supply. Without the kids, we would have been enchanted but.... On Sunday, we went down for breakfast. "What are you going to do today?" asked Joanna, Mark's wife and chief fry-up lady. "We're going back to Shanghai" we said.
Please note, the blogger will be on holiday in Europe for a month. Service will resume in September.
posted by The Heywoods at 11:05 am
