Looped it yesterday. Including the distance from the Green Lake area to the lakeside road and back, we clocked 130km.

We did an anticlockwise circuit: Dianchi Lu, pop a right down to the promenade by Caohai, across the causeway, follow the old road alongside the highway to Haikou, ride through Haikou, pop a left over the Tanglang River bridge, follow the new road alongside the Anning-Jinning highway, take a left just before Jinning (this section seems to not be officially open, but is sealed), catch a tailwind along the east side, walk through the short tunnel near Chenggong (after which there's a short diversion to the right around a construction area), and return to the city on the north side of the lake.

Carry water on the east side, there's not many places to refuel. There's next to no climbing, though there are a few bumps that'll slow you up a bit. It's less sheltered on the east side of the lake, so anticlockwise makes sense if you want to get most out of the potential tail wind. The surface is a bit shoddy around Haikou, but all the newly-laid road is glorious. Get yer skinnies on!

@moondog
too right! slipped past the proofreader too... error corrected.

There's been some renaming of the roads in that area. The bus station is on Caiyun Bei Lu (formerly Xin Kunluo Lu). A timetable I have from Jan 2010 has five buses to Yuanyang per day - one in the morning, and four in the evening. The map point on the listings page was a little out - i've just repositioned it.

www.gokunming.com/en/listings/item/mei_31317/

the travel tag link will help you find travel-related stories: www.gokunming.com/en/blog/tag/travel

and (albeit brief) hotel descriptions are on the listings pages for the hotels: www.gokunming.com/en/listings/itemlist/yuanyang/hotels/