So on the weekend I went with a few people on a hiking and camping trip on the Great Wall. Coming into I wasn't quite sure what to expect (apart from the Great Wall I guess).
All the photos on this page plus a HUGE number more are here
https://picasaweb.google.com/david.mutton/GreatWallTripDay1?authuser=0&feat=directlink
So we showed up at our front gate at 9 on Saturday morning and up comes this guy (Robert, not his real name :) and says he's here to take us on the trip. We all pile in the bus and head out. The drive is about 2 hours to Gubeikou where we join the Wall. The weather was fantastic, really clear and warm, a few clouds around and a slight breeze just to take the edge off the heat.
Once we got to the car park, we all piled out of the bus and started preparing. "Everyone gets a stick" said Robert pointing at the walking sticks, "and everyone needs to take water." So once we were ready we started walking up to the Wall which we still couldn't see. It was about 30 minutes to the Wall from the carpark and the whole time I was expecting to see heaps of people but there really wasn't anyone around. Then we finally got our first proper view of the Wall
The wall here was pretty ruined. Mostly just the gravel and stone core with most of the cut stone facing gone (particularly on the inside). The landscape is incredible, so different from Beijing which is ridiculously flat. Here it's all hills and valleys, some of them quite steep and jagged (dragon spine mountains). This section of wall starts quite near where we joined (there are really steep mountains that way so it doesn't join up with the rest of the wall)
We're following it all the way to Simatai which is around 16-17km away. It's not clear whether that measurement is the walked distance or as the crow flies though. My feet and legs still suggest that we walked a lot further :)
After walking for an hour or so, we stopped for some lunch in a ruined tower
After some lunch we found out that we had to leave the wall because there's a military base right against it and no one is allowed to continue along the wall in this direction. The nice thing was that we were walking on the "Mongol Horde" side of the wall which I had been itching to visit
We ended up being off the wall for about 2 hours, walking through valleys, over hills and through corn fields before we rejoined the wall at the start of the Jinshanling section. Please note the barbed wire where the base is!!
Jinshanling is one of the sections that has been mostly repaired and it's where most people go to have their "Great Wall Experience". I found that it was nice to have the contrast between the repaired section and the original 15th century wall that we'd been walking on so far. Although it must be said, the repaired section made for MUCH easier walking :)
Incidentally, the really steep section way in the back of that photo... That's where we're heading, to the start of the Simatai section!
Also, this photo shows the whole section of the Jinshanling Wall. We stayed the night in the Square Terrace near the bottom.
It's funny because there's a distinct point at which the wall changes from this:
to this:
So we'd made it to the section we were staying at and our guide asked us if we wanted to take the first exit down and we naturally said "no, we'll take the long walk." Poor guy, he'd struggled with the walk a bit today and I think he wanted to rest.
So we wandered a little further, then down off the wall for a brief rest and a quick drink. We ended up getting a lift from the restaurant owner down to the main carpark in his tiny van (which could drive past the boom gate without needing to get it raised which caused much amusement from everyone including the gate guards) so we could pick up our stuff for the night. Which was good because it was starting to cool down a lot! Then back up to the wall to watch the sunset.
People had staked out spots with their tripods and stuff. The amount of expensive camera gear there was incredible ,made even more so because most people had their cameras in automatic mode and really didn't know how to use them. Oh well.
The change in light with the sunset was stunning
After the sun went down
it was time for some dinner, so back down to the restaurant. We shared our meal with some of the other people doing the reverse trip from us. For some reason there were about 20 of them and only 4 of us. Our guide mentioned that they were also going to be camping in the "Dark Tower" and was that ok. We must have looked a bit concerned because he then offered us an alternative which was camping in a different tower but "it has no roof". He was clearly expecting us to say "no roof, are you mad? This is some kind of madness you are talking" and was a bit surprised when we all said we wanted the empty one with no roof. Lucky it wasn't going to rain but we were starting to rethink as it got colder and colder (and we were mostly still wearing shorts!)
So after a nice dinner and a few drinks, we collected our sleeping bags, ground mats, all our gear including water for the next day and a few more drinks and made our way up the steepest, narrowest, darkest (we had torches but that's it) track you've ever seen! Quite how no one fell over I'm still not sure. Anyway, we made it to our tower and setup up our gear. Which involved unrolling our mats and putting down our sleeping bags.
We then proceeded to attempt to take some night shots which became much easier as the moon came up
It was very bright!
and there may have also been some silliness
Then it was off to sleep as our guide was coming back with breakfast at 6:30 and the sun was supposed to rise at about 5:45.
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