Qinwuyao

Early start and relatively little traffic got us up to the wall by 9:30 am. The drive up was fascinating small towns and an area that is a popular resort area for chinese people to visit at the weekend. We passed "picking farms" and fishing spots and many places were subtitled in English. "The Meat Shop", "Household necessaries and goods" "professional Chef cooking fish". Apparently in spring this whole area is pink with blossom from wild apricots, wild pears and the cultivated fruit too. The roadside stalls mostly had just hawthorn fruit and chinese dates now though. At the wall were could have walked up but opted for the cable car, 40 minutes walk our guide said....not for dad and I; the climb to the cable car station made us huff! The ride p was about 4 minutes and sadly we just missed the car that proudly proclaimed Clinton rode in this car in 1998. Our guide took us up took some photos for us and left us to wander. The car brings you to watch tower 14 and you can either head up to tower 20 or down to about number 8. We thought it more sensible to head up whilst we were fresh - either way you have to get back to 14 for the car down. A flight of 8 very high steps had to be climbed on watchtower 14. Then to get down and on to the wall proper was a vertigo inducing steep flight of stairs, I could only negotiate these by clinging to the edge and not looking over the wall at the mountains and valleys stretching away below. once on the wall the surface was good and the wall undulates over the mountains sometimes stepped, sometimes flat and sometimes there is a cruel sharp descent and ascent down to and up from bricked up archways. Occasionally there are watchtowers you can climb to look out across the landscape, one of these had an enterprising souvenir seller in it. when he offed us his range of teeshirts we said we didn't want to carry them up with us. The wall climbs gradually in a roller coaster fashion until watchtower 19 where it ascends steeply to the last accessible tower in this stretch. Unfortunately that ascent takes around 25 minutes and so we could only get part way up before having to turn round to rendezvous with our guide at 12:15. Obviously otherwise dad and I would have bounded up there like little spring lambs. We sat for a while about a third of the way up watching the crowds increase as it got later and marvelling at how fit small children are... some of them were skipping up that long flight of steps. Eventually we started our descent and ended up in the tower with the souvenir man - who recognised us...Dad had been debating the "I climbed the great wall" teeshirt but on hearing the price decided it was too much (200RMB) as we headed out the price fell to 100 and so Dad was pursuaded. Mr Souvenir then insisted on having his photo taken with Dad, taking mine and dad's photograph and then ushering us on our way with a variety of enthusiastic farewells, as we disappeared out on to the wall he appeared again pressing a rather nice key ring into Dad's hand....we must have paid well over the odds for that T shirt!
The crowds were much larger on the return leg and we were pleased to have seen it in a comparatively quiet moment. All too quickly we were back at the shuttle bus with Nia.Read more