Great Wall of China

---

Today I went to visit the Great Wall. I managed to go to one of the further away sections from Beijing along with two friends, so there weren't really many tourists and therefore we pretty much had a 10K section all to ourselves. We walked a 10K distance along the wall from Jingshanling to Simatai which was really interesting because unlike some of the other more tour-group focused sections much of this part had not been restored so we got to see the original stonework.

The Simatai section of the wall is in Gubeikou Town to the north-east of Miyun, Beijing, about 3 hours out of the city by minibus. Simatai Great Wall is separated into eastern and western parts by a valley, with a pretty ricketty chain bridge you have to cross to reach the end of the walk. You walk through 20 watchtowers, most of which are in pretty good condition. The eastern part of Great Wall, after the dodgy bridge, is even more impressive with 15 watchtowers spreading up over mountains which are thousands of metres high, its pretty stunning!

Under the bridge are the Mandarin Duck Springs, hot springs which warm the water just enough to prevent it freezing right here, but not enough to actually make it feel particularly warm. The Great Wall is also know to Chinese people as the longest cemetary in China, as the bones of all those who died while building it were buried in the construction.

It was really impressive, obviously everyone knows its big (haha!) but I didn't realise quite how enourmous it would be, and it is completely amazing it was even possible to build a wall of any size on that terrain as its really mountainous and at some points it was so steep it was actually really difficult to walk on. I took tonnes of photos so have posted a couple here for everyone to see.

---

Photos

Great Wall
The Great Wall stretching away seen through the window of a watchtower

Near Simatai
The wall is really steep at this point

Madarin Duck Lake
Formed by a hot spring joining a cold river, the lake never freezes completely, unlike surrounding waterways

Looking back
The section we had just walked, looked back on from about half way to Simatai

In the distance
The Great Wall snaking across the mountain tops

Comments

[Mum]

Photography
Your photographs are excellent and capture the atmosphere of the scenery- each one could be a painting

[Cat]

Wow
Hi Kat, this looks utterly awesome. I'll bet your legs were quite tired after that day! Unbelievable scale of construction across such rugged terrain. Mandarin duck lake has made me hungry for crispy duck pancakes though.