21/9 The Great Wall

Wednesday 21 Sept We walked on the Great Wall of China

We opted for western brekky today. All the usual sausage, egg, bacon, fried rice . . and broccoli. We are going to go OUR way today. We now know the stations round the Loop Line by name. Tiananmen, Tutankhamen, Twoandahalfmen, Allthekingsmen . . .OK Janine’s turn.

We followed Lonely Planet advice and caught the fast 916 bus, not to be confused with the slow 916 bus that leaves from the same place but takes an hour longer.  Luckily there was a helpful bus station person who told us which to catch.  Lonely planet tells us to get off in Huairou and take a mini bus rest of the way.  Unsure where to get off and where to locate minibus, but we are adventurous.  When our hour travel is almost up and we are in Huairou, up jumps our helpful bus station man. What was he doing on the bus? He starts announcing stops and ushering people off the bus.  Oh he is a conductor?  Cool, he will make sure we get off at right place, which he duly did.  But, he got off with us and the bus drove off without him! Wierder and weirder. Next he gets out his car keys, his car is right here, he will take us there for ?Yen.  Bit of bartering and we agreed to a price and off we went, although wondering “what is this guy’s business model?” Is he a bus employee or a taxi driver or a kidnapper? He spoke quite good English and pointed things out to us on the way to
the wall.  Arranged to meet us back in same spot in a few hours and assisted purchasing tickets for entry and cable car.  So off we set on this beautiful warm day, uphill.  Quite a climb just to get to the car.  Smooth ride straight up with views of the wall, mountains and valleys.  Beautiful.

 We have come to Mutianyu on the recommendation of a bloke we met in Chengdu and he was right, a beautiful section of the wall and hardly any people.  If you ever get here, remember to come midweek and never on a national holiday.  We arrived lunchtime hoping most of the tour buses had left to take their patrons to lunch.  After a moment of “Here we are on the Great Wall”, we headed right to the highest tower, then decided to go back the other way as it went uphill first and when we returned it would be easier to travel downhill when we were tired. 

We chose a target tower quite high up the mountain but were prepared to turn back before if we felt we couldn’t get up there.

 The surfaces/steps were in pretty good condition and the shade in the tower sections was a lovely cool respite spot. We did make it up to our target tower, overtaking some of the younger, seemingly fitter people.  Certainly was a good workout. STEEP!

  Took a million photos, such wonderful opportunities to frame the scenery. The camera is rapidly filling up with Chris’ Lotus poses and he has now “planked” The Great Wall now that everyone else has stopped doing it.

 Trotted back to the carpark, buying the obligatory “I’ve climbed the Great Wall” T shirts.  Quick bite of lunch.  Found our driver who had collected 2 French girls to share the car back to the bus stop.  He safely saw us back onto the ‘fast’ bus and we made our way back to the hotel.  We are slowly ticking off the 7 wonders as we wind our way around the world.