Sunday, 21st January
It’s one of those awful travel cliches but the world really is a small place – or at least, a large but strangely connected place. Hugo, who i’d cycled with yesterday, lives 10 minutes from me in London, close to Victoria Park. Jack and Barbara, who i’d camped with, taught a friend of mine, Marta, at LCC. It seems almost impossible to calculate the chances of us crossing paths, let alone meeting and sharing friends.
They’ve titled their journey Cycling The Paper Road – tracing the history of paper as they make their way from West to East. They kindly made Aeropress coffee for me in the morning and we talked for an hour. It was bright, and warm – even before 8. I’d slept terribly, maybe 4 hours. There’s a unique, horrible feeling of being too hot and slightly drunk in a tent that anyone who’s ever been to a festival will know.
It was also very windy during the night – I had to move my tent from it’s scenic spot close to he cliffs edge to a more sheltered place on one of the wooden platforms which the Taiwanese seem keen on camping on.
I had a slow start, but left in a significantly more positive frame of mind to the one i’d had a week ago. I headed first past Eluanbi Park to the Southern Most Point of Taiwan. A 500m walkway led to a deck which widened to contain a concrete sculpture shaped like a sail or a shell. I had a bit of a fascination for these ‘x-most of x’, or extreme points as I now know they are called. I could add this to a list which also included the the most western tip of Europe (Cabo da Roca, Portugal), the southern most point of mainland Canada (Point Pelee), and the closest point of mainland USA (excluding Alaska) to Hawaii (Point Arena, California).
With that achievement unlocked I continued around on the route 26 and was now well and truly on the east side of the island. There were some significant climbs ahead. And it began immediately – into extremely strong headwinds, until eventually I reached a windswept bluffs area with beautiful views over the Pacific and the outline of the coastline ahead.
The sea was a different colour to the last time I’d seen the Pacific, last summer on the other side of the world, here it was turquoise and almost artificial looking. The rocks were bright orange, everything felt raw and unspoilt, the West coast, by contrast, was distinctly man-made.
I headed downward – still into the wind, which clearly battered this coast pretty hard by the look of the trees and bushes which bent forward towards the land. The road swooped down back to sea level. I met another cyclist – Michael (Hong Kong) and we’d both struggle and overlap for the rest of the day.
I had a break at a small and faded fishing village there. I was able to order an iced coffee from a cart in the car park using Google translate on my phone and sat down to drink it with a view of red bridge crossing a small inlet where people fished and picnicked.
From here it was inland on the winding 199 road. There was a hiking trail along the coast, but no roads from what I could establish. Things starting feeling more rural – services were spread out, towns were small, everything felt like a little bit more of an adventure.
After an hour or so I summited to panoramic views of forest and the sound of treetop monkeys. Out of the headwind I could enjoy the freewheel back down.
The coastline was a little more desolate now. The weather was greyer and things felt more like Oregon and the Pacific there. The beaches were wide and windswept with larges pieces of driftwood and the remains of objects washed up from unknown places. The road narrowed and was quiet, hugging the coast, passing decommissioned military buildings, quiet harbours and solitary fishermen.
I decided to have a short day and stop at the end of the 26 and the base of the next section of the 199 – another long winding stretch up into the hills. It was 20 miles to the next town and i’d struggle to make it by sunset.
After attempting to camp at a roadside pagoda, opposite a police station, which I realised later was a bus stop, I moved on to a field a few minutes along the road. It was a campsite but you would not necessarily realise it on first inspection.
But the owner was friendly and we were able to communicate back and forth with her speaking into her phone, the phone translating it, then her showing me the screen, and me nodding yes or no. I negotiated the price a little and set up in a corner a little away from their home which was a wise move since they began a karaoke session at 6 which extended well into the night, echoing out over the field and mixing with the sounds of the sea and the jungle.
It would be a much cooler night, but probably better for sleeping as a result. I layered up and set an alarm for the morning.
Map