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Friday 3 July 2015

Day 184 of 365 Day Challenge

Today was the highlight of my trip to Beijing. A 5 hour hike along the Great Wall. We had an exceptional guide with us, Peter, who spoke excellent English and was very knowledgeable and interesting.

We started off with a steep 30-40 minute climb to the wall in a wooded area and I wondered at that point whether I had been a little ambitious in my choice of hike. However once we were at the top, the rest was very manageable. The beauty of starting where we did was that we saw the older unrestored parts of the wall and there was only one other small group of people. From here we walked towards the restored areas of the wall where there were quite a few tourists. It was all downhill or steps down and when I saw the number of steps you needed to climb to get to the point we were, I was very glad we had done it the other way around!

It was an absolutely glorious day and we could see for miles which is very fortunate when the smog can often result in no view at all. At the end our guide gave us a usb stick of photos he had taken of us along the way, a fantastic memory of our trip. 

I had so many great shots it was difficult to choose today's photo but thought I would show you a piece of the unrestored wall which you don't get to see plus a few others.

Unrestored area of the wall.


The line in the distance is the continuation of the wall.


Some parts of the wall are almost vertical and without steps. This restored area now has steps but as you can see the horizon is fairly straight so you can get a feel for the angle of the wall. As you can imagine ordinary concrete wouldn't have worked so the concrete they used was a mixture containing sticky rice of all things which prevented the bricks from sliding.


Restored area of the wall.




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