Gubeiku-Jinshanling-Simatai Great Wall

How can you get lost when you are following something that you can see from space?? this was our thinking anyway! ever since planning to come to China we have wanted to walk and camp along the great wall. Once in Beijing we looked at a number of tours which allowed you to do this but they were too expensive! So..... armed with a map (in chinese!) and an itinery of the route which the tours take, we set off!

We took the train from Beijing to Gubeiku where we were the only passengers to get off! We gained ourselves some very confused looks from our fellow chinese passengers! At the station we managed to ask the station manager to call us a taxi (using all 4 of our phrasebooks!) to take us to the starting point and after convincing the taxi drivers wife that we were sure that this was where we wanted to go (by pointing to our tent and giving it a thumbs up!) we were dropped off at the bottom of a hill with some stones on the top of it! We decided we may aswell go to the top, and from there we realised that the "few stones" were the remains of the great wall and after a few hundred meters it was almost perfectly intact and snaking off over the hills and towards the horizon. As it was 5pm we set up our tent at the first spot we found, and after a dinner of potatoes and beans went to bed after the sun went down to get lots of sleep before our trek the next day!

China is freezing in febuary! when we woke up there was frost on the outside of our sleeping bag! We had an early morning visit from some chinese men walking their dogs (who surprisingly thought we had a good idea and gave a big thumbs up to the scenery!) and then set off on our way! The Great wall was built on the highest ground possible and does not lose any height by following contours! This makes it a pretty difficult walk especially with a rucksack - the views however make it completely worth it! (see photographs!)

On day 2 we reached Jinshanling which is another section of the wall which has been reconstructed but is not as touristy as Badaling. On the first day we had seen the wall getting higher and higher and at Jinshanling we saw it up close! Jinshanling to Simatai is a pretty tough walk - and pretty soul destroying when you use all of your energy to get up a very steep section only to have to go back down again on the other side! We did however make it! We arrived at Simatai around 4 pm and although our book said it was pretty easy to take a mini bus back to Beijing they must mean "in the summer"! In febuary on a Sunday there is nothing! Luckily for us a Japenese lady who was learnig English started to talk to us. We asked her if she knew how we could get back to beijing? Hurray there were free seats on their bus and they very kindly offered to take us! We were so happy! Jim gave them quite a laugh when he tried to join in with their warm down stretchs! It just isn't what he was built for!

The Great Wall lives up to every expectation and is one of the rare "sights" that looks exactly as it does in every postcard and film that you see. Everybody should come at least for a day! As Chairman Mao said a man is not great until he has climbed the wall

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