Energy

Your correspondent has been remiss in not reporting that this week is Autumn Golden Week in China, when essentially 1.4 billion people go on holiday. This, unsurprisingly, has consequences for hotel availability and road traffic. The first has been dealt with by upping the budget (sorry, kids); the second, by avoiding the highways. This means we have shared the backroads with lorries only, and not much else. Occasionally this has meant going off-road, as reported yesterday.

We had another “off” today, which caused quite a lot of

stress in the Vauxhall. Nigel and Hugo showed enormous patience and sympathised with our predicament, carefully escorting us and providing multiple options to break away. Our centenarian “mate” found the going to its liking and charged off into the yonder, followed hastily by Ham’s Lagonda, driven by David (surprise?). Anyway, the limping Vauxhall and the nursing Lagonda eventually made their way through, and we found ourselves in the midst of another Chinese engineering masterpiece: a brand-new coal-fired power station, followed by an enormous solar park (estimated at 5,000 acres) and then a seemingly endless wind farm. We have since discovered it is the largest of its kind in the world.

All of this was experienced in a howling gale, the likes of which we experienced rallyists have not encountered (good use of noun, adjective and verb) since Tierra del Fuego (yawn, Ed). All very elemental.

Meanwhile, a geology question has arisen amongst us. Despite having a Cambridge graduate in geography (surely akin to geology?) in our midst, none of us knows the answer: why did we find the desert mostly or partially covered by black sand, but only as a thin layer? Tyre tracks show the yellow sand beneath, and a little wind seems to adjust the density. Any views? (Photo below.)

A point of admin now: some of you kindly send in the occasional comment. Most arrive from an encrypted account generated by WordPress (presumably to stop me stalking you), but plenty of you think I have the faintest idea who you are. I don’t. Please add your name.

Tonight is Joe’s last night. It promises to be quiet — I expect we’ll be in bed by 9 p.m.…