Oops! There was a clatter of sandy gravel, and John Barrett came sliding past me and on down the hillside. Luckily the run was nearing the end; the bus was parked about 500m away on a dirt road at the bottom of the hill, and when we got John down to road level there was a little shack which, after some misunderstandings involving our regretfully rejecting Mr Wang's fine selection of fireworks and bananas until next time, provided our wounded runner with a soothing cup of tea. Soon the bus turned up, and we bathed the wounds with bottled water, a spot of Savlon, etc. and the incident was soon forgotten, especially once John had sunk his teeth into his first Carlsberg.....
That was on the Sunday, our last day in China.
The first run had taken place the Saturday afternoon of our arrival and Bob (HSBC) and Roger ( a Kiwi) had set it. Although the terrain round about was mostly flat (and boring) rice paddies, they had decided to set the run directly from the hotel. As they didn't need our bus, the Sunday run team (Chunder Chan, our only Chinese member) and I, were able to use it to look for a suitable site somewhat further afield for the second run.
To some extent I was just a passenger to begin with, as Chunder and the driver settled down to natter in Cantonese as we drove off down the dusty road. Just as I was beginning to think they were talking about the state of the HK stock market or something (China had no stock market then) and forgotten all about the run, I noticed we had reached a rather promising area of partly wooded low hills. It proved to be perfect. Sandy paths led up through attractive country to a series of ponds. The ponds had steep sides, so you had no choice but to run through them. It was about 25c so we thought the harriers would appreciate a little cool down after panting up the hills.
Generally our runs were circular: i.e. ideally they ended up where they started. Otherwise you need transport to get runners back to their bags, etc. In a strange land this can be problematic, especially for those such as me who have little sense of direction, and Chunder if anything had even less. Our other problem was lack of time - we had both to find a runnable trail, but also to mark it for the runners to follow the next day. We went a little beyond the ponds, and saw a road at the bottom of the hill. Despite our being in the most crowded province of the world's biggest (in population) country, we had seen no-one to ask. But we seemed to have come vaguely in a circle, and we thought, well, there aren't many roads in the area - it must surely be the one where we'd left the bus. We decided to go back and mark the trail, dropping blobs of flour as we went.
At least we were right in one respect - the bus was on that road; but unfortunately after our brilliant water feature, there was no real path, and the hillside sloped ever more steeply downwards. The trouble is, of course, that one can't exactly pick up flour once you've marked the route. We did eventually emerge, slightly scratched it has to be said, on to the road, and just kept our fingers crossed that the pack would enjoy the scramble too - after all, it wasn't a race, more of an excuse to have a quiet convivial drink. As related earlier, we almost got away with it......
You would be forgiven for thinking that the whole weekend could have been almost anywhere: we'd had minimal contact with the locals apart from the very friendly hotel staff. This changed somewhat right at the end of our break: we were to return to Hong Kong by train, and said goodbye to our driver at the station which was heaving with people, mostly staring at us, although whether it was because we were foreigners or because we were heading for freedom, we never found out.
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