Friday, March 10, 2006
My wall is better than your wall!
Today we have taken part in different great wall events.
I have been, what I like to refer to as, Extreme Walling! I have been Remedial Walling! Or the man's wall and the lady's wall. That's not fair as I was desperate to do the Extreme Walling but I didn't think exposing my gammy foot to 70 degree inclines was quite what the doctor ordered. We don't know what the doctor would order because we haven't been to see one and if we did we wouldn't understand a word he was saying.
The Remedial Wall was the idyllic picture postcard image you see of the wall. My tour consisted of an Australian couple, Dave and Erika, (who had been travelling since 1998 and were in no rush to settle down and get jobs), a Polish-Norwegian guy called Marius (who had run away to escape from National Service) and 2 Irish girls, Helen and Racheal, who we had already made friends with at the hostel a few nights before. Luckily for me, Helen and Racheal were in no mood for breaking-into-a-sweat walking so were happy to plod along with me and my gammy foot (at a pace both my grannies could have rivalled) while the other 3 set off into the distance.
It took about half an hour to climb the steps to get onto the wall. I shunned the leisurely if somewhat life-threatening ski lift and persisted with the stairs ignoring my foot which was probably screaming "Get me onto that chairlift now!" (Childhood memories of a summer in Annecy being on a ski-lift with my mum and sister came flooding back!) The view from the top was amazing - the wall just stretching as far as the eye can see in both directions. It truly is an awesome sight and the weather just added to its beauty. We did walk a fair old way and I was feeling particularly pleased with myself by the end. We had lunch on the top of one of the many watchtowers dotted along the wall and after about 3 hours got the luxury closed-in cable car down to where we first began. Well, I say luxury, it was until we emerged from the safety of the boarding area, gathering speed, and were literally hurled off the edge of the wall, our lives in the hands of a piece of cable!! We lived to tell the tale however and it will be a day to remember.
Now over to the Extreme Walling version with tales of wo and manly feats which obviously far outweigh my achievements!....
The extreme (Man's) wall was un-restored and overgrown and consisted of steep inclines of loose dusty rock. It had a path cut through the trees that was just wide enough for someone who isn't as wide as me! I kept getting hit in the head by branches and such like as I climbed up and then slid, some times un-willingly, down the various sections of wall. The group consisted of 9 adrenaline junkies ready for action. 4 Dutch people, 2 Canadians and 3 English. Our English speaking guide spoke as much English as I speak Chinese. He was about 68 years old, wearing dunlop green flash and carrying and axe. He gave a demonstraion and description of what his axe was for. We took it to mean that if one of us gets hurt he will just cut off the offending limb and we will carry on. EXTREME! In all we walked 3 towers of the wall. It's was really good to stand on the top of a deralict watch tower and see the wall disappear off over the mountains as far as the eye could see in both directions. The climb was pretty tough going in places. 70 degrees scrambling up the loose rocks but the view from the top was amazing. From the last tower we slid our way down to the bottom of the valley and walked across some frozen lakes and streams crossing collapsed sections of the wall. Our tour ended having lunch (late luch after a long walk and I was starving) with the guide and his family at their home. His family spoke no English either. It was a really good day. Even a 2 and a half hour bus ride back to Beijing couldn't dampen the spirits.
# posted by Rhodri @ 4:43 am 
