The Great Wall’ker

A long days walk today. Got off to a slightly late start. Lots of local fog in the morning that cleared up by noon.

The area I am walking in has lots and lots of rivers and ditches going in different directions. There are large rivers that are not marked on my map or GPS. I may have been able to stay closer to the route today, but if I had I would have been taking chances and could easily have lost valuable time. My Chinese isn’t good enough to decifer the answer to questions about directions. At least not when we are talking about this maze of large and small roads, dirt roads, ditches and rivers. So I played safe and followed the road to Taian.

The cars, mopeds, tractors and trailers whizzing past spewed out a lot of pollution. I switched sides to the right hand side of the road to stay out of reach from most of the fumes.

Very few rests today, but it looks like my body is getting used to longer distances.

No electricity in Taian when I got here. Hopefully it will be back soon. I want to check the route for tomorrow more thoroughly.

41 kilometers today

There was dense fog the first couple of hours of walking today. Then the sun broke through and warmed up things. I was excited to reach a part of the route where there probably was some Great Wall.

I got there, and first followed a ditch in the landscape. There were some signs of a wall now and again, but it looked too modern to be Great Wall. Then I followed a road and dirt road for several kilometres. Every now and again I would walk from side to side to see if there were any signs of a wall. There were none.

This looked like one of those finds that are easier to see from above on Google Earth than from the ground. Perhaps in some years they will find something here if they start digging, and more importantly they are looking! The route continued over some fields, and I walked from side to side looking for signs of the Great Wall, but found none unfortunately.

The landscape here is flat. Lots of really large fields with mostly corn on the cob plants. The farmers are more than half way finished with their harvest. I’m seeing a lot more mechanised farming machinery now. Larger tractors ploughing the fields, whereas before there would be people with spades. There are more trees around, and they get to stand longer and are mostly untouched. In provinces farther west, there has been heavy foraging of trees for firewood and animal food. In many areas the trees were left with only a few leaves right at the top. Not the best practice if you want to keep the world’s third largest desert at a comfortable distance.

From the maps it looks like I will be walking primarily in farmland from now on until I am at the most northern point of the route in Liaoning. The coming days have a lot of quite large rivers. They might force me farther off the route than I would like. But when there are 3-4 rivers to be traversed in one day, and they are most likely impossible to wade over, then I’ll have to use large bridges.

From the most northern point on the route to North Korea, there are lots of mountains! It feels so strange to write North-Korea in a sentence knowing that now the border is very close. Not some distant destination far away.

35 kilometers today

First a big round of applause to my brother Jon! He has been helping me on this walk from the very start. In fact we walked the first weeks together in the desert during the early summer last year. Since then Jon has made sure that the GPS point I send out in the evenings magically appears on the Great Wall Route on this website. He also keeps a watchful eye on the ‘Pictures from China’ site making sure that there are enough pictures, and that a new picture appears magically each day.

Jon has lived many years abroad - amongst others three and a half years in China, so he knows how nice it is to have a little chatter with a familiar voice from time to time. Even if only for a couple of minutes.

Many thanks for your support in this project Jon! Looking forward to seeing you again.

Today was a nice walking day. I tried to keep my walking speed lower than usual, and kept an eye on my left shin. Looks like the problem is over. All systems functioning again. Thank God for that.

Nice warm weather, clear blue sky and almost no wind. I came across some Great Wall like structure today (heart beating very hard as I discovered and approached it) but it turned out to be ‘just’ a small town wall.

As I am on a pretty tight time-budget, I decided to save some time walking an hour to and back from a point we expect the Great Wall to have been several hundred years ago, and instead use that time on a section tomorrow that has been identified as very probably Great Wall. This seems to be the last known section of Great Wall until I hit Dandong, so I want to record it properly.

After that I will continue asking people I meet if they know of any old walls in the area. They will most likely shake their heads and tell me I am in the wrong Province, but I don’t mind looking like a fool - there are probably still many Great Wall sections to be found here in Liaoning.

A little footnote. It is a great pleasure to observe the farmers bringing in their last crops to safety before the winter hits for real. Looks like most of the work is done, and that it has been a good season. A lot of cheerful faces to be seen which makes me cheerful too.

37 kilometers today

Woke up late and was amazingly feeling good again. No more high temperature. The shin felt better.

I went to the largest pharmacist in town and got Ibux painkillers and a thick cream. Painkillers for the shin, and cream for my heel and two fingers. The climate is getting very dry. So dry that my skin is cracking up making for semi painful cuts in the skin. From now on I’ll be massaging thick cream on my heel so the skin doesn’t crack even more.

The walk today went better than I had hoped for. The shin hurt a little in the beginning but warmed up and stopped complaining. Although I kept a watchful eye on it, I was able to walk until one hour after it got dark.

Big thanks to sister Tone to whom I spoke to yesterday. She lifted my spirit and gave hints to help the shin problem. Many thanks Tone.

26 kilometres today

Small observation - ever since I got to Liaoning when I ask for a Gong bao ji ding, they say they have it, but then come back and say they don’t have chicken, but would I like another meat. I would of course, but it’s strange that consistently they don’t have chickens at the ready. I walk past lots of chickens every day Perhaps they don’t use chicken that much in Liaoning?

Have walked 29, 40 and 0 kilometres the last three days.

Yesterday I was in bed all day long with a high temperature, and getting better from a strange tendonitis in my left leg.

Luckily the fever is over today, and the leg feels a little better, so I will head back to the route and walk for some hours and see how it goes.

Will write more this evening.

Walked hard trying to keep up my new pace. With no sun and a strong wind, it was really chilly. On the first day I felt a pain on the front of my left lower leg (the shin?). It got progressively worse during the day but was still walkable at the end of the long day.

On the second day, the shin got worse and was downright painful. The last ten kilometres I was pushing my way forward wanting to get some proper mileage out of the day.

Towards the end of the day I knew chances were that I would need a full rest day to let the injury heal. Not good news when I am on a tight schedule. I was pretty depressed at the outlook and couldn’t understand the sudden reaction when there had been nothing before. In addition I was coming down with a really bad cold (high temperature and chills). The only good luck at that point was that I could use time efficiently by recovering from two ailments at the same time!

Later I remembered bumping my shin against something a couple of days ago. I checked the injury and it was from a very specific point. There was a small sore on the skin too.

Sunday 24th of October

I used a driver today who told me that a massive reservoir will be built here (near my end point yesterday) in 2-3 years time. His house will be submerged, as will his relatives and a few tens of thousands of other people’s homes. Asking him how he felt about this he seemed cheerful, so it looks like they are getting a good compensation for the move.

China is in great need of energy, so I can understand that they wish to make as much hydroelectric power as possible - being a very clean source of energy.

Pretty strong wind blowing from the north today. Then rain and then snow later on. I saw and photographed a couple of free standing watchtowers today.

Beautiful landscape, but pretty hard walking. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. Walking these long distances makes me really tired. Funnily enough I physically feel like I could have gone on walking each day for another hour or two if it were not for the dark. But I’m tired between my ears. So will eat now, and then sleep.

41 kilometers today

Had a pretty good day today even though I got off to a slightly later start than usual. Although the weather report said nice weather for today, it was very gray, and at noon it started raining. First quite heavily, but it eased off. I ended up walking in the windproof jacket which was more comfortable than the lightweight Gore tex coat. I walk pretty quickly so the Gore tex soon  becomes very clammy.

Once again I was stopped by a river with a strong and deep current. I spent more than an hour to walk eastwards to get over it.

At a little before 4 in the afternoon some really dark and threatening weather rolled in on a strong wind from the North and I decided to call it a day.

34 kilometers today

Friday 22. of October

I started walking early today wanting to get as far as possible. It starts getting dark about five o’clock and it is getting to the point where every hours counts. My visa runs out in the beginning of December, and I have decided to try to complete the walk by then. This is a pretty ambitious plan, and just a few days of illness or other problems may jeapordize it. Therefore I will try to push the envelope extra hard the next couple of weeks perhaps to get a little buffer of precious time.

I passed another section of suspected Great Wall today and documented it on the GPS and with photographs. It is exciting to see places where people haven’t recognised remnants of the Great Wall, perhaps for generations !!

As much as possible I tried to follow dirt roads along the ancient route of the Great Wall in the area.

Because of the very long distance today, I got quite a bad chafing between my legs. The trousers I’m using are the heavy duty type, and this results in friction.

At a small village, I decided to ask for bandages and talcum powder. Unluckily for me the local school finished just as I passed it, and I was accompanied by thirty curious youngsters as I opened the door to the local Pharmacy.

A good example that there is little understanding of the word Privacy in China. I was tempted to tell them that a major incident was happening to my unspoken parts, and if nothing was done they would soon fall off. All as a social experiment to see if my spectators would come to the conclusion that I needed some privacy. I refrained though, and was able to buy bandages. Thanks to Sherry for translating the word talcum powder for me. I don’t carry a dictionary now - to save weight. Unfortunately, they didn’t have one.

45 kilometers today

Thursday 21. of October

I took the high speed train back to Huludao. It is a joy to use such an efficient means of transport. The contrast was huge when I sat on a bus to get to Huludao city center afterwards. The first 20 minutes went very slowly, between 20 and 30 kilometres an hour, looking for more passengers. A common practice among the privately owned buses here.

The walking was good and I was happy to cover 21 km by the time it got dark as I only started walking at about one o’clock. It definitely seems that many of the rivers are not dried up in this area. The path I was following today crossed a fairly small river, but there was plenty of water in it, even though it has not been raining much lately. In most of the provinces so far, rivers with a much larger river bed would only have had a little trickle of water in them.

21 kilometers today

Please look down the page to see updates from the last days. There are pictures from the 15th of October when I found traces of the Liaoning Great Wall.

I head back to walking the Great Wall of China tomorrow and hope the right heel does better this time around. Ready for another long haul hopefully.

0 kilometres today - Instead I’m going to see the English version of Wall Street at the movies.

Sorry for not writing for a while.  I have been trying to increase my walking distances over the last few days. I get up pretty early and am walking until it starts to get dark. Then it’s time for food and sleep.

Because of three blisters on my right heel plus cold wet weather, I am moving base camp equipment to Shenyang today. (Extra shoes, boots, warm clothes and sleeping mattress amongst other things). Going to try a Chinese high speed train for the first time, and looking forward to it. This will be the second last move of extra equipment and should give my heel a short rest.

Will write reports for the previous days on the train, and post them from Shenyang.

The forecast said rain today.

I have had three blisters on my right heel the last few days. Started walking down the high mountain a week ago with one under my heel. I used some second skin plasters on the blister. Two days later, the crease from this plaster gave me a blister on the edge of the back of the heel. (Between the horizontal and vertical part) Used another plaster for this. Now I have a blister on the back of my heel.

My left heel has no blisters, while the right one has had three in a week. After doing some thinking while walking today, I think the whole problem may stem in the fracture of the left toe joint. Because of the fracture and slight pain from it, I am still favouring my right leg more, and sparing the last part of the left leg’s thrust in every step. Therefore the impact of the right heel become harder than usual. This is only a theory, and I hope it is proven wrong.

Anyway - after waking up from a freezing cold uncomfortable sleep just by the river I decided to take a short walk, and then head back to Qinhuangdao. With rain heading in, and a heel that is ‘beyond repair’ it seemed the sensible thing to do.

5 kilometres today

Cold and pretty miserable day today. Clouds + wind = freezing cold. I took only one picture today which says a lot. Walking 40 kilometres takes about 8 hours, but then there are always some small breaks here and there that add up. I also took a break to eat a noodles package in the morning, and some biscuits in the afternoon and evening.

Toward the end of the day I was looking for a small guesthouse, but found none. Went on walking till it got dark. Ended up by a river bed. The highest sand dunes were completely dry, but looking around it seemed they had been covered in water not long ago. So I didn’t take the chance, and was forced to camp on the side of the river bed. This meant I was a lot more visible. By this time it was dark, but there was a half moon out.

Thanks for a nice talk with my sister this evening. I fell asleep right after having set up the tent, so it probably sounded like I was drunk when I answered the phone. Not many bodily comforts today. Cold, long walk and little food.

40 kilometres today