The Great Wall’ker

No internet connection yesterday. This is written the 7th of June

The humidity has been pretty high today. Luckily it has not been very warm and there has been a nice wind blowing.

The day started along a road that followed the Great Wall. After a couple of hours, The Wall went straight up a ridge. It had high cliffs on both sides. At the top, I found myself battling through thick shrubs that were as high as myself. Beside The Wall, there was a sheep path. It was difficult to follow as the shrubs blocked my view. The sheep only need a 50 cm clearing to get through, while I had to contend with all the branches above. After a while I found the best way to follow the path was to feel my way with the walking sticks slong the ground.

For the first time, my left walking stick buckled under pressure. (It became about 5-10 cm shorter) I rely heavily on the sticks, so this wasn’t good news. There is a screw on the locking mechanism that I can tighten slightly. I hope that will help.

I got to a village about half past two, had a good meal and then visited an internet cafe.

The evening stretch was also in the mountains. Again there have been thick shrubs. I also started coughing a lot - particularly if I tried to pull a lot of air into my lungs. Have never had a problem with allergies, but my exposure to pollen has probably been pretty high today. Hope it goes away.

I don’t have a lot of drinking liquid left as the stretch in the mountains has taken longer than expected.

23 kilometres today

I found out this morning that there is no bus from Huairou to the place I left the Great Wall. Too many mountains in between. Instead I had to take three busses and a taxi to get here which took a fairly long time.

On the last bus I talked with a 20 year old girl who sat beside me. She had a Canadian English teacher once. We talked English and Chinese in every second sentence. She wanted to know my age, and I asked her to guess. She guessed 22. That made my day! To her defence, I am the second wayguoren she has ever spoken to.

To practice English, I asked her questions. Instead of the broing ‘What is your name’ and ‘Where do you come from’ I asked: Which qualities would you like to see in your future husband?

“He must be sunny” she answered. What a good answer

I got off the bus and walked the short distance back to the Great Wall. Had a bite to eat, and then walked eastwards until it was almost dark. The Wall runs parallel to a road tomorrow, and then does a couple of turns into the mountains.

6 kilometres today

First - a big Happy Birthday to my sister. Hope you had a good day   

In Zhangjiakou we did a half day session with the local news station there. It resulted in a 20 minute interview which was broadcast yesterday. They sent it to the National CCTV news desk, and the story got two and a half minutes of coverage!

This was great fun. Many thanks to Maggie in Zhangjiakou for organising this!

News report about the walk