The Great Wall’ker

I started walking at about nine o’clock. The last days of walking along irrigation channels put me a bit too far West, so the first 3-4 kilometres I walked Westwards to get to the starting point of the suspected Great Wall in the area. I walked Westwards along a dirt road surrounded by farmland. Walking past several suspected beacon towers, without finding any evidence of them, made my heart drop a bit. But a few kilometres later, I found the Great Wall in pristine order. It was probably about six metres high and continued for a stretch of about a kilometre.

Trying to follow it’s track was difficult because there were buildings right beside it on one side and, in some places, fields with corn on the cob on the other side. I tried to walk through a house yard, but was effectively stopped by two very aggressive guard dogs. They were chained, but had a look in there eyes that said I wouldn’t have lasted very long had they not been chained.

After getting to the most Western point of the Great Wall in this section, I backtracked, walking in the streets of the small village, and stopped at a small shop to buy something to drink. Ice Tea as usual.

Heading Eastwards, the sun hit me right in the front. I notice very well how I heat up most when the sun is in front of me. From the sides or behind, it doesn’t hit as large an area of my body. Soon I was sweating intensely. I started asking villagers if they had seen any Ming Dynasty Great Wall and they confidently pointed in the direction I was walking.

After a while I hit the Great Wall again. It had shrubs on top of it and was not very evident some places. After walking for a while, it became higher, and there was no doubt - I could see the remains of beacon towers too. I followed it for approximately 8 kilometres before hitting the road on which I hoped to get a bus to Yinchuan.

After waiting for a while, I saw that this particular road was only trafficated by lorries and the occasional car and motorbike. Therefore I started walking to get to a larger road. Then I got lucky and a motorbike with two adults stopped.  The driver asked if I wanted a lift. Here in China I have seen up to three adults and two children on a motorbike, so three adults and a large rucksack was no problem at all. The helpful driver was going in the same direction as me, and dropped me off right in front of a bus that was going to Yinchuan. I was very grateful and offered to pay him for the ride, but he said he didn’t want any money. Many thanks to him. I was really tired when he picked me up and the extra walk would have zapped me a lot in the heat.

Many thanks to the members of the Great Wall Forum for feeding me with information on the probable route of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall in this area!! Andreas - I will write a summary with coordinates in the Forum tomorrow. I also plan to add some pictures from the day here.

My friend John sent me this a few days ago.

As you probably understand, he doesn’t have very high morals and therefore he is not my friend any longer… Well - the truth is he has a good sense of humour!!

PS - I set off to walk the Ningxia outer loop tomorrow. I hope to make some findings that members of the Great Wall Forum have pointed me towards.

I got off to a fairly early start today again and walked the remaining stretch before the five day section starts. It rained most of the time and sometimes fairly heavily, but it was great to walk, for once, without becoming too hot. I tried to follow a large irrigation channel, but some places there was too much scrub vegetation, so I had to walk around.

A good day in the rain and now all I have to do is wait for a cooler spell to continue walking the Great Wall. The next section will take about 5 days.

I walked 23 kilometres today.

Today I got off to an earlier start and was walking the Great Wall at about half past seven. It was fairly cool, which was a great improvement from yesterday. Walking the Great Wall was fun today. The first section was on the border of the desert. As it was cooler, I had enough energy to get the camera out and take quite a lot of pictures. The sun made interesting patterns in the sand since it was quite low on the horizon.

In one section, I walked in a large man-made forest. (It could have been made by a woman of course, but I only saw men there today.) This was ideal walking terrain as the ground was flat and the trees provided shade!!! There were even large patches of green grass under the trees. I was so happy to see grass again that I sat down and took a break, just to look at it.

About half way during the walk the Great Wall entered a valley with fields.  The Wall became more difficult to follow. There were lots of rice paddies and maize/corn plants. It was fun to see the rice paddies up close. Some of them were in about 50 cm’s of deep water, so I had to be careful to keep my balance when walking on the thin strips of land between them. Rice paddies are mosquito-land, so I have donated blood to quite a few of them today. The maize plants were so high that I couldn’t see anything when I walked through them.

After having lost The Wall trail for five minutes, I re-discovered it and started heading towards it. There was a mud house on top of it and a dog started barking it’s head off. I climbed onto the Great Wall and saw that the farmers were harvesting and drying Chinese Wolfberries. The area is well known for this berry. The dog continued barking and soon the inhabitants of the house came out. They invited me inside, as it was getting pretty hot by this time.

One man found a watermelon, cut it in half and offered it to me together with a pair of chopsticks. I thought it best to just go on explaining why I was there, as I have little experience eating watermelons with chopsticks. Luckily another guy picked up the other half and used the chopsticks as a knife to loosen the meat on the inside. It was delicious. I had forgotten to restock on water, so it was great to get some fluids into my body. They were very nice people and I showed them a printed page explaining what I was doing. (Thanks for the translation Sue!) They seemed to like the project and invited me to stay for a warm meal. Unfortunately, I had to decline the kind offer as it was getting hotter outside by the minute.

I left soon after and stepped straight on to the Great Wall from their front door. The dog barked me farewell. Towards the end of the day I really started noticing the consequences of walking 23-24 kilometres on just half a litre of water and half a watermelon in July in Ningxia. It was a good lesson for the coming days that are going to be more challenging with regards to the distance between villages and water supplies.