We woke up as instructed at 6am, (that's 2am UAE time, so jet lag was officially underway!) and had breakfast. It was a 2 hour drive to the start of the wall section we would climb that day.
The section we started on was the home to the Great Wall 5km, 10km and marathon runs which just happened to be taking place that day. There were runners everywhere (and a fair few hobblers as well). We saw people with bleeding heels from their blisters and men with bleeding nipples which were obviously rubbed raw by their t-shirts. There were hundreds and hundreds of steps up and down . We stopped and had lunch near to the marathon finishing line at a small hotel. This is one of the only tourist areas we visited on the trip. After lunch we went to a section of the wall called Heaven's Ladder. This is a set of stairs of around 300 steps, uneven and different heights and at a 70 degree angle. For a first day, this was tough, I was worried about what was coming up in the next few days!
Walking along a slightly flatter piece of wall, we saw a family with a young girl who screamed and cried when she saw us. We had been told that for a lot of Chinese people, we would quite possibly be the first westerners that they had ever seen.
We continued through bushes and shrubs, along a narrow path when someone at the head of our group shouted "mind the poo!", adrenaline kicked in and suddenly dog poo was the funniest thing in the world! utter hysterics ensued as we continued downward through trees and forest to a clearing we used as a meeting point. After around 30 mins, we carried on our journey walking along roads through high sided valleys where the slate mines were all around us, to a small village. There was a tiny shop that sold basic provisions, kids playing table tennis and basketball in the street and a man wearing pyjamas!
Bernd bought beer from the shop and the rest of us did our stretching before getting back on the bus which had come to meet us and drive us another 3 hours, through a huge thunder storm, to our accommodation for the night. We had a late supper and went straight to bed with the thunder cracking outside and rain pouring onto the roof of our chalet.
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| Crazy Marathon runners! |
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| Where we stopped for lunch |
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| Like I said, 100's and 100's of stairs! Very, very steep. |
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| Heaven's ladder from the bottom |
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| Heaven's ladder from the top |
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| Arriving in the village. One make-shift home. |
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| Kids playing in the streets |
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| Bernd buying his beer in the small shop |
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| Little dude playing basketball! |
