We awoke to find football highlights on the TV in the room and caught the whole second half of an impressive win by England. Then it was time for the tearful goodbyes as Dave headed off for his bus. He was heading to Wuhan to fly down and meet his girlfriend in Bangkok. I consoled myself by watching an awful American B movie about superhero kids before packing my bag and heading for the train station. I arrived and found that, despite the Lonely Planet’s claims to the contrary, there was no train down to Changsha and the harassed ticket lady ushered me away with a ticket to a place called Wuchang, nodding vigorously whenever I asked if I could get to Changsha from there.

I retired outside to sit with locals in the shade to wait for my afternoon train and search the Lonely Planet for where on earth this Wuchang place was. I looked all over the map and read through numerous descriptions of provinces where I thought it might be to no avail. I was starting to get rather worried and resigned myself to the fact that only hours after saying goodbye to Dave I’d managed to buy a ticket to nowhere. I started to read the entry on Wuhan to try and work out whether I’d be better off cutting my losses and buying another ticket to Wuhan instead when I realised that’s what I’d already done. Wuhan was originally 3 towns which had merged to form one city. Wuchang was merely the town the train arrived in from Yichang. Panic over, I knew where I was going!

After sitting with the locals for a couple of hours with the locals it was time to board the train, a ‘hard seat’ awaited me but I found the description was overly gloomy and my only complaint was that the back of the chair was bolt upright, meaning my less than perfect posture didn’t fit it very well. I can see why you wouldn’t want to spend an overnight journey that way but for a 5 hour journey it was fine. The scenery outside was fairly uneventful and I arrived in Wuhan a bit bored and tired.

Travelling alone seemed to spur the touts on to far higher levels of aggression but I fought through them and after a few hundred metres the final moped-rider admitted defeat and left me to my walk. I failed to find the hostel I was aiming for but managed to negotiate a heavy discount on a room at a small hotel and decided to call it a night ready to head to Changsha in the morning.