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Sorry no photos yet. No idea why but hopefully have some for you soon. We've seen them and they're great. Well worth the wait.
Paul - So last night, rather fantastically, we go upstairs to our room and on the television is Arsenal Vs Wigan!! Brilliant!!! Even better - they are showing all the goals from the other games as they go in! Suffice to say, Laura was well impressed and even managed to ask if Thierry Henry was playing. After 10 minutes it was 1-1, great game and Laura was so enthused she had fallen asleep. Well, we were going to the great wall today so I can JUST about understand.
Got up bright and early at quarter past 6 and waited twenty five minutes for FLASH to get out of the shower. Apparently washing your hair is a tough job. Bought some cookies for the coach (which quickly turned into our only meal until 3pm because there wasn't much food but that didn't matter as there were enough cookies!) and clambered aboard. Spoke to a couple of Aussies for a bit about their travels and settled down for a pleasant 4 hour drive. Lovely. You hear stories
about teeth rattling coaches, this was definately one of them. The driver was permenantly glued to his horn and seemed to have little regard for any sort of traffic laws - undertaking, overtaking on the hard shoulder, chatting to a guy in a taxi whilst travelling at 80mph and cutting across four lanes of traffic to get to a service station when there was a perfectly good one on our side of the road. Bloody thrill seeker.
Got off the coach in one piece and strode on to the path up to the Wall. In a good turn of events we met up with Caitriona and Bryan and they were doing the same hike as we were! Bit of an unexpected bonus! The guide book then told us there was 10km of scrambling ahead of us! We didn't believe that at the start!! We do now!
It was a bit misty as you can see in the photos but we were so high up it was unbelievable! The wall was incredible. Every bit as good as you hear about in the guide books. We definately picked the best part to visit as there were hardly any tourists and
not too many touts ("you wanna buy a t-shirt? 30 yuan! postcard? 10 yuan"). It was a lot of fun scrambling up the faces of the walls and surveying the scene at each and every guard post. Mongolia on one side, China on the other! It's hard to believe that someone actually built the thing as it's pretty damn high up as you can see in the photos! Apparently the Emperors would work people to death to have it built! They obviously realised I would be visiting in the future and needed it to look its best! Most amusing was Laura daintly skipping down even the most veritcal of sections. Then having the cheek to turn around and ask if I was ok! She wasn't the one carrying the bloody water and video camera.
I think this was my favourite part of the trip so far. It was lovely to get away from it all and it was nice to seem like the only people for miles around at times. Also the sight of the Great Wall snaking off into the distance is something that I'll remember forever as is climbing up and down some pretty hefty rock faces
on the wall itself.
Got back to the hostel after a "fun" drive back and had some tea and we'll be off to bed pretty soon I suspect!
Laura - I don't think Paul emphasised enough how much of a nightmare the journey was. Apart from the crazy driver, the seats were soooooooooo uncomfortable and even my short legs were squished in. Fortunately I managed to sleep through part of it (I was not happy with the 6 am start - I thought this was meant to be a holiday!!!). Keeping my eyes shut was a good idea though as everytime I saw what the driver was doing my life flashed before my eyes.
It was such a relief to get there and I have to say it was definitely worth the hellish journey. The part of the wall we climbed has not been reconstructed so it's very old and really spectacular. We really did have an amazing day, although the trek was quite precarious at times. At one point we had to lower ourselves down from an 8 foot high window in one of the watch towers. This wouldn't have been too bad in itself (although
it was a bit tricky for my 5 foot tall self), but it was an almost vertical slope that we had to lower ourselves onto! Scary stuff but really good fun.
It took us around 3 and a half hours to complete the trek in total, but it went really quickly because we enjoyed it so much. By the end of it though we were pretty tired and I almost couldn't hack the final 100 metres or so as it involved climbing steps as tall as my waist! We may suffer slightly for it tomorrow!
Anyway I suppose I'm probably repeating part of what Paul has already said. We'll try and upload some photos as soon as we can. Hope everyone is well. Oh and just so you know, you CAN'T see the wall from the moon. Apparently they used to tell the Chinese that but since a Chinese guy went to the moon and discovered the truth, they are rewriting the history books!
Paul - And to Marr, more interestingly, there was no short cut involving jumping over the wall but some locals did try and lead us ROUND some bits. Maybe they were playing the wrong course? Definately wasn't Wario Stadium. Bloody locals.
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Worried mother
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Seat Belts
I hope you used your super duper seat belts or are they in the same bag as Paul's hat??? Today sounds great but I bet you will be sore tomorrow - good job you put in all that effort with keep fit before you went laura - knew it would come in handy.