It’s been a pleasure the last couple days riding as a guest with an English Cycing Tour group. Actually, I’m more of a shadow rider with the Thai Cycling Club hosts who’ve been lucky to escort this tour group for the last several years here on their home turf.  Not having been on a cycling tour since the Eurtrip days of the 70’s in Germany, it’s been fun riding with a small touring group again.

Chris Ellison, who has been running a cycle tour thru and around Trang for the last eight years, among the many other cycle tours he leads out of England, has been gracious to let me ride along. His group this year numbers 13, and they started in Bangkok with a 16-hour overnight train ride to Phatthalung (65 km and one mountain range east of Trang). We met their train, and with the help of the Phatthalung Cycling Club escorted them over the hills and into Trang for their first day’s adventure.

Since the train was late, a couple of the Trang Club members took me to the house of a friend in the Phatthalung Club, which was actually a bakery for Thai pastries.  It was only after consuming three different Thai sweet treats did I realize there was a pork vegetable rice soup served followed by a pineapple and kale soup.  Top that off with chestnuts and sweet sticky coconut balls and I was happy the train was still delayed another hour.  Mr Yao and I took a 25km ride out to the lake front and toured a popular waterside temple long before opening time, which helped to dissipate the fullness.

After off-loading the 12 bikes (Chris leaves a bike here, like me) and securing a breakfast for the group, we headed for the hills, stopping to view still another cave Wat (temple) I hadn’t seen before.

This one’s just off the main highway and must get bus-loads of tourists because every inch of the cave was “paved” with paving stones and featured lots of very narrow lighted passages to various chambers and shrines.

Our group easily got spread out in all the caverns.  The climb over the hill was hot (93°) and tiresome for the travelers, who’d managed very little sleep on the train, but a short rest at the hilltop shrine and a long downhill made the climb only a past memory.

The next day Stanna and I accompanied the group to the west coast, about a 45-km ride, where they embarked on a two-day trip to Libong Island, where they’ll visit the famous Emerald Cave we swam into several years back.  I’ll cycle with them tomorrow back to Trang and then next week Stanna and I will get to ride with them out onto Sukorn Island, which I described in a post from several years’ back as a cyclists’ paradise.