Day 34 The Great Wall of China

When Chris and I bought a house together in Brighton just over 10 years ago, we sat down and wrote a wish list about our future....a list of places we would like to visit together either locally  or further afield. By chance,  I found that very long list a few weeks ago and 2 places jumped off the page:

A walk up Brighton Pier....never achieved.....and......

A walk up the Great Wall of China!

So there we were yesterday, in a coach, in the smog, heading for this most iconic of sites.

The first 2 hours of our journey were alarmingly bad. The air conditioning in the coach didn’t work and the outside fog enveloped us in a warm insulated jacket of pollution. At first we could just about see through the windows.The scenery consisted of endless miles of flat reclaimed land with intermittent blocks of flats and unfinished buildings.

 Then the smog grew so dense that the road in front of us was closed. The driver turned the bus round and drove very fast for several miles on the wrong side of the congested carriageway in minimal visibility beeping his horn at the oncoming traffic. I felt my life pass before me. We were all extremely relieved when the coach stopped after an hour for a ‘rest’,  even if the only available facilities were the typical Chinese ‘squat’ toilets.

After 2 hours anger was replaced by despair.

Then, quite suddenly, the fog lifted and the flatness disappeared. Motorway turned into narrow hillside lanes and deep green mountains sprouted on either side of the road. As the height of the peaks grew, our spirits lifted.

Half an hour later, we caught our first glimpse of the Great Wall of China.

There was no disappointment. The scene was a perfect replica of the travel book pictures. The endless length of wall meandered steeply through the mountain tops like an everlasting game of snakes and ladders.

We were desperate to go up there, to climb the steps and become part of this amazing feat of early engineering. 

It was fun. It was also hard work! The steps were uneven in length and depth. The incline was steep. The air temperature had risen to the mid 70s.The wall was busy, but not uncomfortably crowded. However, every so often the climb was punctuated with a small temple or dark narrow tower which ‘bottlenecked’ the walkers into a precarious line of 2 way climbers and descenders. Despite the addition of several ‘Princess’ tour loads the vast majority of visitors were Chinese.

After a respectable walk, I left Chris with the bags and ascended a few slopes further. Once my calf muscles threatened industrial action, I too turned back. The return downward with no rails to support my balance was far more challenging than I care to admit.

So we did it! We climbed a part of the Great Wall of China.

And we were so tired on the way back, we barely noticed the smog.