Great Wall

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Got up very early to travel to a remote section of the Great Wall. We were all really looking forward to being off the tourist track so that we could fully appreciate the Wall without being bugged by touts.
Little did we realise just how off the beaten track we would be...

In order to get up to the wall we had a steep climb up some slightly crumbling steps - a very knackering start! But the views were amazing - wall as far as you could see. The first third of our walk took us along the wall, lots of climbing up slopes and then coming down the other side, with nice shady towers every so often to rest our weary legs and take photos of the fantastic views. We were the only people up there!!

After lunch we embarked on the next stage of our walk. Earlier when we had asked how long the walk was, Qiming our guide told us that it was around 15km but that it would only be 8km because we would take some short cuts. We had been a bit confused becaused it seemed that once you're on the wall there was no way to go except along it.
We were wrong!

It's quite worrying when the local guide you're with says 'Be careful, it's steep and slippery here.' - it was. We made our way down into the valley by very tentatively and sometimes a bit too quickly walking down the scree covered slopes. This was particularly hairy at times (Jen has the scrape on her arm to prove it) and made us think that all the hard climbing along the wall earlier had been a doddle!
Once in to the valley we walked along quite pleasant flat farmland, meeting one possibly mad farmer hermit on the way!

Unfortunately, once you're down, you have to go back up again! And so came the next dangerous installment of our Great Wall walk! Sometimes walking along bits of rock that were only a foot width wide we made our way back up to where it was possible to get back onto the wall.
We walked along another small section of the wall which was in complete disrepair before we came to the part that has been reconstructed for tourists. It was flat and smooth, and your could fit more than one person side by side! Amazing!

The Great Wall was an stunning place to visit, especially when your group of 12 are the only tourists around for miles and all that you can see is wall and vegetation! In the end we'd walked about 10Ks in about 5 hours. It was a treacherous route to take, but well worth it!!