So, I'm not going to Guilin. Despite the stunning karst scenery, it's been described to me as a 'Chinese Blackpool'. I don't know if they sell 'kiss me quick' hats there, but Yangshuo, although a good hour away, and a little overdeveloped in its own, more backpackery way, sounded more my cup of (green) tea. There's quite a few places on Xi Jie, but I ended up plumping for a private room at a Dutch-run hostel in a converted farmhouse some miles away, mostly because I wanted to cycle round here, and reckoned if anybody will help me to do that, it would be some Dutch ex-pats (I wasn't wrong). It was called the Giggling Tree.

They'd booked me a taxi to take me there from the airport, which is now mostly on expressways. In the dark, in the wet, there's little to see, except for the cunning through-the-fence route the driver managed to avoid a tollbooth on. The road from the airport's not quite finished, but the journey's pretty easy either way.

Being a farmhouse, and the weather being rather inclement, it's absolutely freezing, so I'm rather glad to discover that they've put two big, fat duvets on my bed. I'm really hoping this rain will die down...

...but it doesn't. I hole up in the common area, around a huge wood fire, with several of the others staying there (a friendly bunch) for breakfast and tea, until I decide that enough is enough, I'm going to make a break for it while the rain's a little lighter. So I grab a bike and head down the dirt track towards Yangshuo (a good 20-minute ride), avoiding the rather deep puddles on the way.

And I'm so glad I did. The scenery is breathtaking, from the moment you look up while in the hotel. The karst landscape is other-worldly, particularly when the peaks are shrouded in low cloud, as they are today (see, the rain isn't all bad!). The 20-minute ride into town takes more like an hour, as I stop and start, or dart off down interesting-looking side tracks (sidetracked, you could say). Yangshuo itself is a small town, and definitely backpacker central, with plenty touts to take you to hostels or boat trips. It's a good place to stop for lunch, though, and I find a Sichuan restaurant serving up some only-just-this-side-of-painfully spicy beef. Great stuff. Lots of wandering and coffee follows, but a boat trip is not happening. The Li River is high - too high - and it quickly becomes apparent that the only people operating in these conditions are the last ones you want to trust to operate in these conditions. They're all very keen to take you to the landscape depicted on the back of the 20 Yuan note, but I'm not biting.

The rain hardens again, but I notice all the people on bikes (and there's an awful lot of people on bikes) are very well covered. By the car park (you have to leave bikes in municipal car parks here - just a tiny lock secures them, and you leave them on the kick stand) there's some hardwarey looking shops, where I manage to mime myself one of these superb PVC capes, which I put on, and which keeps me absolutely bone dry. It's great - not only covering your head and body, but it also fits over the handlebars, basket and, if you wish, panniers, with clips to keep it from flapping around. Excellent stuff! I decide to head off towards the Dragon River, recommended as a quieter but even more scenic alternative to the Li, for a circuit round back to the Giggling Tree.

Cycling in China is... Interesting. I'm used to cycling in a number of places - out in the country, commuting in London and Amsterdam, and I'm pretty relaxed - I never get dressed up for it, wouldn't dream of getting one of those daft polystyrene hats that endanger more than protect, don't care how fast I go, and revel in finding the most vintage bikes I can - and this has partly put me in good stead, but there's a leap of faith I just can't take. If you want to pull out, you pull out. If you want to turn, you turn, even on the rather popular roundabouts. You don't bother looking back. I just can't do this! But it works. All the main roads have effective 'slow vehicle' lanes anyway, which the bikes share with carts and tractors when they can. And if you pull out, the traffic will fit round you - if it can't, then it'll beep. There's a flow to it that you have to get into to get anywhere at the big junctions - and it takes some nerve (if you've ever done the Velib thing in Paris, imagine constantly circling the Place de la Bastille) but all seems to work - I saw fewer near misses here than I would do on a standard London commute.

Anyway the road takes me off, past some hilariously gaudily decorated 'butterfly caves' (there are no live butterflies - they all died due to how the caves were touristifies - but there are many, many panels of dead ones pinned to boards) and reach the Dragon River. The farm track I was expecting to follow has been concreted over, in a very 'New China' fashion, and there are some 'river retreat' resorts under construction at the beginning of the track. A few minutes later, though, and I'm in proper countryside - nothing but some smallholdings (mostly small fruit growers), a gentle river, this track, me, my bike, and endless karst scenery. The odd farmer on a bike, or bike-with-trailer passes. It's wonderfully serene, and every time I look up, the view alone gives me a big grin.

But time here is short. Time everywhere is short on this trip. As night falls, I retreat to the sociability and warm wood fire of the Giggling Tree (they've a decent chef, too), and as day breaks, I only have a couple of hours for a walk a little further upstream before heading back to Guilin airport.

Some photos of Yangshuo here.