Hiking on the Great Wall

Yesterday was certainly the highlight of our stay here in China so far – the Great Wall!

We caught the subway very early in the morning to the meeting point of the Beijing Hikers Group. From there we caught a bus (there were about 20 of us all up, some tourists but mainly other expats) out to “Little West Lake” which took about 3 hours! We now know what Beijing traffic jams are all about – today is Tomb Sweepers Day, a Chinese holiday, so Beijingers were wanting to head out of the city, just like us!

After finally arriving, we began our climb up the side of a mountain for about half an hour. The climb was steep and the path overgrown, gravelly and with loose stones so it was bloody hard work! I was worried that if all of the hike was going to be like this, I wouldn’t make it! Luckily it wasn’t – once we were on the Wall it was hilly but not too steep for the majority of the way. This section of the wall is unrestored so it’s overgrown with shrubs and crumbling bricks. Many of the sides had fallen away and there were some sections where we walked alongside a sheer drop of probably 20 metres! We had to be really careful. There were parts we needed to go down on our bums, and backwards – it was great fun! The views from the wall are stunning, the mountains very desolate, and the wall just goes on and on!

I was enjoying the walk so much that I thought it can’t possibly be rated ‘3’ (I’d heard ‘3’s were quite challenging), and of course I was right because the final kilometer was a semi-restored section and uphill – it seemed to never end and it was so steep! I didn’t enjoy that section at all! Then we had a final descent – very steep again – I don’t think the photos do the terrain justice! I was so busy admiring the views of the town and lake below that I missed one of the markers at the turning off point and continued another 100 metres down the steep wall until someone called out to me. Then I had to get back up again! I was so exhausted! Thyson, by the way, was waiting down at the restaurant for 30 minutes. He was like a mountain goat and loved every minute of it. Once we reached the bottom we had a meal at a local restaurant at Huanghua (5 km from our starting point) before returning to Beijing. We got home at 8pm, a very long day! The hike along the wall lasted 4 hours, the rest of the time was travelling there and back, and dinner.

Wow, I’m so sore today!