We were up early for our trip to the Great Wall. The drive there took a good three hours and we had a maniac driver who kept overtaking on the hard shoulder, bullying other drivers and constantly bawling into his mobile phone. This isn't so normal in China but we just seem to attract them. At least he was a minority though so it didn't feel as dangerous as Nepal - and at least the bus wasn't older than me either.
I spent quite a lot of the time peering through the seat in front to watch the Chinese girl, Maggie, who was supervising the trip. She had the cutsie fashion sense of many girls in Beijing and each nail was painted in a different colour with a unique array of gems decorating each one. I had chance to get a good look at most of them as she tapped away on the iphone that was wearing a giant plastic pink cat case. She wore big glasses frames but without any glass and a pretty pink wooly hat that she did not take off for a second, despite the heat inside the minibus meaning that Matt had stripped down to the bare minimum he could socially get away with.
More importantly, I was fascinated by the number a variety of different snacks that she was working her way through. Most of them were unrecognisable but I was rather charmed by the snack bar that just looked like she was munching her way through an uncooked slab of Super noodles. Perhaps Batchelors are missing a trick.
The walk we were taking was from Jinshanling to Simatai, a mostly uncrowded stretch with mostly original stone. As we stood at the top of the first hill and looked at it winding its way over the hills beyond, it looked spectacular. And long. And steep.
It was a beautifully sunny and crisp cold day and we really enjoyed tramping our way along the wall. Much of it was intact but crumbly and we had to stop occasionally to admire the view of the seemingly endless hills and valleys beyond because we were spending most of our time watching our feet.
At each of the 22 towers along the 6km stretch, we paused to appreciate the majestic ruins and the feat of strength and determination that had created it.
Some sections were quite precipitous and we had to be careful not lose our footing and come tumbling down. The steps were a real challenge too. In just one section the steps would be a number of different heights, from only a few inches to above my knees and it mader getting into a rhythm impossible. Now Chinese people aren't as short as people make out but I've no idea how they managed it in all the battle garb of the day.
To make matters worse, we were being 'helped' along by one of the farmer cum tourist tat hawkers who kept telling us how many steps there were at the bottom of each section. She had attached herself to our small group of self-designated 'slow ones' made up of Matt, myself and an interesting lady called Eileen. If she had told us afterwards that we had just climbed up 129 steps then we would have been proud, but to tell us beforehand did nothing for our morale. Neither did the fact that she was about 60 and yet was attacking it with the agility and stamina that we didn't possess.
However, by just after half way it felt a little like Christmas. It was something that I'd been really excited about and had enjoyed very much so far but the fact that the end was now closer than the beginning was was starting to loom. Chatting and enjoying the experience was making it fly by and I didn't want it to end. Thankfully, my knees know better than my head and so by the time we heaved our weary and sweating bodies up the final steep set of steps, I was about ready for it to be over.
On the way back, we stopped for the loo by another 'gym park' and I asked Maggie to help me identify the contraption that I couldn't work out yesterday. Turns out it was a calf massager - how could I have missed that? There were a few others I hadn't seen before too - including a cool Tai Chi spinning plates wotsit.
We went for a cup of tea (still not found a good one) with Eileen before she went to see the acrobats - another Beijing speciality that we'll maybe catch another time. She was originally from Ireland and had trained as an irrigation engineer but was now married to a German guy and was teaching students at Bonn University about the cultural differences in approaches to business. She'd been sent to China to deliver an exam at the Chinese partner university but had also spent some time beforehand trekking up the mountains on the border of Tibet and spending time in a panda sanctuary.
We met up afterwards for a beer and a giggle and talked about the fact that just when you get old enough to know how to deal with people who feel you up or make unwanted advances whilst travelling, you are also too old to attract the attention any more. She also told me that she used to do flamenco classes. I quite liked the sound of it so Claire and Jane, maybe you could look into it - at least we wouldn't need to keep dragging the poor boys then.
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