The Great Wall of China

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Setting our alarm is something we were looking forward to not having to do, so when my alarm went off at 7.00am i wondered what was going on until i remembered today was Great Wall day. Clothes on, grabbed our bags full of water and off down to the lobby to catch our booked tour to the wall. We had a choice of tours and we went for the least touristy one but for that we had to travel 4 hrs out of Beijing to a secluded and unrestored part of the wall. The coach turned up and about a dozen of us got on, we then preceded to drive to a few other hostels to pick up other wall goers including our train buddy Ant (his other half Lisa was feeling ill so didn't come). The journey wasn't too bad and we stopped to get a few supplies at the half way point, for some reason we thought chocolate would be a good idea (NOTE 30deg heat!). When we arrived at the wall it was a secluded part although it was set us as an official entry point onto the wall. There were a few shops and i treated Lisa to a new hat (see pics), she had seen this style of hat before and was very pleased we saw them for sale. Our guide showed us the map of where to go and what time we had to be at the bus and off we went. It didn't look too far on the map....how wrong! Once we trecked up to the wall the view was stunning, seeing the wall just go on for miles and miles in both directions had to be seen to be believed. So off we went, walking the Great Wall of China. The walk was hard going up and down 70Deg inclines will little or no footholds, sometimes we got steps but more often than not it was more of a scramble. There were about 30 towers between us and our destination and in each one were hawkers selling water and souvenirs, they even followed us like camels, upping the price of the water as they saw us getting hotter!!! We had however planned pretty well and thought we just about had enough water to get us to the end if not close, but it was handy to know water was available even at the hiked prices. (when i say hiked prices i mean 28p rather than 14p) you kind of get use to the cheap prices very quickly. We walked and we walked and the view just got beter and better, the pics don't do it justice, however after the 10km we had walked the view of the zip wire to take us down was pretty good too! Once off the wall we did have an option to walk a further 25 mins or zip wire down for a couple of pounds each, we took the zip wire which was cool (ant has zip wire pics on his camera so will upload them when he mails them to us). We then took the 10 min bus ride to where we had lunch arranged as part of the tour which was realy tasty, especially washed down with a 21p large beer (the cheapest so far). After food and all the straglers had turned up it was back on the bus to our hostel to pack as we were checking out the next day eady for our overnight journey to Xi'an.............Hard Seat!!!!

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Photos

Chinnese man who charged for having his photo taken
Gra gave a total of 1 yen- about 7p!