Monday 22 October – Today we hired three Mobikes and with our tour guide Ryan went off on a tour of the centre of the city using the back streets and the narrow alleys of the Hutongs and cycle lanes.

However every so often we had to cross large roads and that is where you take your life into your hands.  With traffic coming from all directions, plus buses, scooters and cyclists all going at the same time.  Its totally chaotic and a little heart stopping but we survived.

Surprisingly you you don’t see a lot of Police in Beijing.  But when we arrived at Tienanmen Square there were lots of them everywhere.  You can’t stop to take pictures as you go past the square, if you do you are immediately approached by a security guard and told to move on.

To get onto the square you have to go through a security gate, show your passport or for Chinese their identity card and put any luggage or rucksacks through an x ray machine. You are not allowed to take bikes onto the Square so we had to leave these a few streets away.

The square itself is rather unremarkable, no benches, just a very large square, with the Tienanmen Gate (the building they always show on news reports on the front of which is the big picture of Mao) at one end and Chairman Mao Mausoleum at the other.

We leave Beijing tomorrow on the Bullet Train to Shanghai.

Things I will take away from my trip to Beijing: how clean it is, tonight around 9.30pm when we arrived back at the house we are staying at there were still people out sweeping the street and narrow alleys around the Hutong keeping them free from litter and leaves.

The lack of taxis for such a big city.  Taxis are very cheap but they are very hard to find and you are lucky to get one.  Didi (the Chinese version of Uber) are no better.  So we finished up taking buses and travelling on the metro for the most part.

The smog that covers the city day in day out and stops you from seeing anything in the distance.

The two highlights from our time in Beijing, the Great Wall and cycling in Beijing.