China - Yaoziyu, XiShui Valley, Huanghua Great Wall Section

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Sunday 16th September

I get up and take a taxi at 7:30am to the kapinsky hotel where there is a pickup for a hiking tour of the Huanghua section of the great wall. This section is only a few years known as each year new sections are uncovered. We head to the chestnut capital of China where it's harvest season. A local tour guide meets our tour (in which we have a young Chinese guy who speak perfect English) meets us. We are told its a 4 hour hike and then will have lunch with a local family before returning to Beijing. So we venture off. Walking along a road track for 15 mins. Then all of a sudden the 60year old local guide wearing a jacket, long trousers and hiking shoes walks off the road into bushes. The group of 12 internationals and the young tour guide follow home through the rough bushes. He picks up local chestnuts for us all to peal and eat. Tastes really good btw. We now starts heading up the hill through a forest full of spiky bushes and no path what so ever. The guide is breaking buses as we pass for us all to navigate through safely. After 25mins walking uphill through these rough bushes we reach the top and come out to such a great view. We then head over the mountain and now heading downhill and 15mins later we end up at a lake. This used to be an old fortress called the yellow flower fortress. After a brief stop we walk around the mountain to the base of a ruined great wall section then is submerged by the lake. We now start claiming the tough wall which is not like the other day but one thanks totally ruins and full of trees and sticks that would scratch your arms and legs as you pass. We head vertically and come to the top after 3 hours. A few people in the tour looked like the would die it was so tough. The tour guide said that in a scale of 1 to 5 that this hike rates at 4 to 4.5. Views from the top were so amazing that I would recommend this to anyone ever coming here. Pics of this will follow in a follow up mail. An hour or so later we came down the wall and end up at a local family who runs a small restaurant for locals. They put out a buffet meal for us all but only after downing 2 x 600ml cold iced beers. Food was the best I've had all week too. All ingredients are local produce too even the fish which was caught in the river just an hour earlier. Now was time to head back to the city and for me to ave a shower and get ready for my pickup to the airport for my 1:35am flight in London. Flight duration 11.5 hours. So thats it a quick run down of what happened here and an insight for anyone who will be coming to Beijing. Now it's time to board my flight and gets some much needed sleep after the long days hike.

Zaijian (Goodbye)

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