CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 128 km round trip from Kunming - roughly 1 h 50 in the saddle. On the way it passes Chengjiang Fossil Site and back through Chengjiang Fossil Site. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Kunming is called the Spring City, and the title is earned. Set at about nineteen hundred metres on the Yunnan plateau, it has mild weather almost all year, with warm days, cool nights and a long season of flowers, so that you can ride in a light jacket in January. Dian Lake, the big freshwater lake on the southern edge, spreads out under hills hazy with distance, and gulls from Siberia arrive in winter to feed on bread thrown by the crowds on the lakeside. The city itself, with more than three and a half million people, is a lively and rather modern place of tower blocks, tree-lined avenues and parks.
Read the complete Kunming write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kunming is where the day begins. Next is Chengjiang Fossil Site.
About 518 million years ago, in a shallow sea where Yunnan now stands on a high plateau, a sudden mud slide buried a community of soft-bodied animals so quickly that their outlines survived as fossils. Those fossils, found in the Maotianshan Shale near Chengjiang, are among the most important ever found, because they capture the Cambrian explosion, the rapid appearance of most major animal groups. They include early arthropods, worms with spiny legs and some of the oldest known relatives of vertebrates, preserved with details like eyes, guts and gills. The site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a small museum and viewing area explain what scientists have found.
Read the complete Chengjiang Fossil Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chengjiang Fossil Site comes up 33 km in.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chengjiang Fossil Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
66 km in you reach Chengjiang Fossil Site. Next is back through Chengjiang Fossil Site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chengjiang Fossil Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Chengjiang Fossil Site, late in the day. Next is Kunming.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kunming write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Kunming. That is the ride.
Kunming → Chengjiang Fossil Site is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Chengjiang Fossil Site → Kunming is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.