The Great Wall (4th - 7th June 07)

Any visit to China has to incorporate climbing the Great Wall. So instead of joining one of the very easy organised tours at our backpackers, we headed off on bicycle for our own exploring.

While the Great Wall sounds like it is one long continuous wall, it is actually in numerous parts. So you get a different Great Wall experience depending on what part you go to. We decided to visit two parts at the Wall - Huang Hua and Simatai. These two were relatively close to Beijing, while not being 'over-restored' which takes away the feeling that you are walking on part of history. So off we set firstly to Huang Hua.

Beijing to Huang Hua
Distance - 80km
Average - 17.1km/h

Riding out of Beijing was pretty confusing, as it was a bit of a gamble getting on the right road. But after a few different attempts we found the road we were looking for. The outskirts of Beijing were pretty ugly - the usual outer city scrawl.

But then once we were well and truely out of Beijing things turned beautiful. The sky started to turn from the grey colour we had seen for the last week, into a gorgeous blue (it looks gorgeous when you havent seen the sky the whole time in Beijing due to the pollution). The road we were on was also nice and quite, which weaved up and down hills with nice rock-faces and trees. Once we were into this part of the ride we realised that it was a great decision to get out of Beijing for a few days.



When we arrived in Huang Hua, we were a little unsure of how to access the wall, as the entrance was no where to be seen. Then we saw a sign that said that this part of the wall was closed for restoration - gutted. But we needed to stay there that night before heading on so we had to start looking for a guesthouse. We didnt see any English signs for 'Hotel' so we started asking locals by pointing to the Chinese characters for Guesthouse in our guidebook. The first people we asked just happened to be in the hotel business (as Im sure most people are that live by the entrance to the Great Wall). Their place was brand spanking new, but really nice. So for 60 Yuan (10nzd) we got a beautiful room with a bed big enough for 3, and lovely staff to look after us.

For dinner with not speaking a word of Chinese on our behalf, or them not knowing any English, we pulled out our guidebook and pointed at the list of common Chinese dishes. They went through and pointed at the ones they could cook for us, and then we picked which ones. It was a pretty straight forward process despite the massive language barrier.

When we left in the next morning we were really impressed with our first 'rural' (not that rural as at a tourist attraction) experience, and hope the rest of China is the same.

The most frustrating thing about this time in Huang Hua was that we later learnt that the sign we saw was wrong and that part of the wall was in fact open. We were kicking ourselves as we should have gone to the entrance ourselves to double check this, rather than believe a blue sign by the side of the road. But we went to another part of the wall instead so all was not lost.

Huang Hua to Simatai
Distance - 125km
Average - 17.5km/h

The first part of the road to Simatai, the second part of the wall we wanted to visit, was beautiful with lots of trees and landscape. But then we hit motorway and things turned into horrible trucks and buses. It is amazing how your motivation to ride diminishes once you are on an ugly road like this. Things got a little better towards Simatai but not that much. Then the last 10km was a complete dust road, which meant that once we arrived we were coloured grey.

Simatai was competely different to Huang Hua in that it was very touristy and the locals had that 'lets get your money' attitude. Most of the hotel owners we approached tried to charge us double of what we were paying in Beijing - a complete rip off. We found a place further down the road that was priced ok and so we cleaned off the dust there. Today was our longest ride to date (by 1km) and so we were pretty exhausted on arrival.

Climbing the Wall
We got up bright and early to bet the crowds on the wall. It was about a 2km walk until we were on the actual wall, but once we were there we were the only ones there. We decided to walk east to the 12th watchtower, which was a pretty steep walk - at some parts it felt more like a climb. From the watchtowers you could stop and look at the stunning views.





It was amazing how few tourists there were considering it is a major tourist attraction. All the tourist buses must hoard people to other parts of the wall. But this was great for us and we ended up spending 5 hours walking up and back. A great experience that I really glad we did. And Bex dont worry - we didnt go naked on the wall (not that they could see us in outer space anyway).

Simatai to Beijing
Distance - 138km
Average - 18.7km/h

We were going to break the ride up back to Beijing to stop at a town called Miyun. But once we got there at 11am after 60km, we felt pretty good to go on. So we re-fueled on stewed pork, cabbage and rice and set off for part 2. We found a smaller road this time that was not full of trucks, and so the ride in reverse was much more enjoyable.

But today topped yesterday, which made it officially our longest ride. And we felt it (well I did, Nick was too proud to admit that he was exhausted). But we managed to get into Beijing after 7.5 hours in the saddle. And we were both pretty proud of our accomplishment. Maybe in Europe Nick will try and beat this new target (he has a thing for beating old records).

So back in Beijing for 4 days before we get on the train to Mongolia and Russia. We are both very looking forward to it. Might not hear from us for a while as we will be stuck on a train, but will update things when we find internet access in Russia.