Yucang mountain!

We have some time this week in Lingxi just relaxing, no pressure, and
so we have been getting out and seeing some of the places we had
always been meaning to but never got around to seeing!
The first on the list was YuCang mountain, the mountain CangNan is named after!
We left in the morning winding through up out of the town and into the
nearby mountain, it took about 2 hours to drive there (with some
photography stops along the way), when we got to the base of the
mountain we had some food and then started our ascent!
All the way up we saw frogs, lizards, a snake (to elaines horror) and
some kind of parrot like bird in the bamboo rainforest folliage. As it
was a week day there were not too many people which was great and a
bit more relaxing, as we climbed higher the views started to get very
beautiful.
Like most Chinese mountains it was mostly steps but later on it became
steps with a huge smooth rock face next to it for climbing, they
stated it at the bottom "the coefficient of friction is very high so
it is safe and not slippery to walk on" and so we put it to the test
and climbed up.
There were many amusing signs too spotted on the way up, some of which
I took photos of for later blogging!

When we reached the top we took lots of pictures and admired the view
from the first peak and then worked our way around the top of the
mountain to a "sky walk".
This skywalk was built a good few years ago and consisted of a very
dodgy looking metal walkway bolted using a few poles onto the side of
the cliff over a serious drop! It took a lot of courage but I managed
to walk down onto it and walk along (it was of course much studier
than it looked) and then Elaine ventured out and walked along, Chris
however looked at it and chickened out! Refusing to come onto it and
admire the view and after much threatening with blog ridicule only
managed a quick foot on, photo and retreat style entrance, not very
impressive for the 'climber' of the group! haha!

After looking there we walked around the mountain top some more before
taking a route back down the other side which ended in an 'experience
zone'' a kind of outdoors obstacle course which was fun and then a
'sea of stones'.

The sea of stones was a huge pile of rocks, big rocks, sitting in a
big valley and you could walk and scamble over them, very cool, but
the most cool was in several places there were gaps and you could drop
down underneath the huge stones into the old stream bed below which
had been turned into a path under these huge house sized stones,
again, very cool!
At this point Elaine and I looked around and Chris had wandered off!
doh! I called his mobile but he hadn't brought it, and so we waited
around, eventually he called us saying he had already walked all the
way back to the car to get his phone! Silly Chris! we walked around
and met him and went together to check out this cool temple in the
evening light, we got there just as the sun hit the hills and turned
everything golden, it was beautiful, but after I had taken 2 or 3
pictures the sun went behind the mountain and it was over, a magical
few minutes of beauty in a deserted temple on the hill.

After this I drove back down to Lingxi for dinner!