First: Congratulations to Norway on winning the Eurovision Song Contest yesterday and for the National day today!

After walking for a couple of hours, the Great Wall continued straight through a hilly area, whilst the road that has followed The Wall veered off to the closest valley to the south. The Wall followed the contours of the hills and the ground was loose dry soil with some vegetation here and there.

Using my walking sticks I felt fairly comfortable, even though some places were pretty steep. Jon decided to follow a valley to the other side, so we switched our mobile phones on to be able to stay in touch.

These crazy Chinese people – the Great Wall soon followed ridges that I felt uncomfortable walking along. Some places, the remains of The Wall were very eroded and looked ready to fall over. Some places they already had.

I spotted Jon in the valley as I got closer to the other side of the hilly section. I was walking along The Wall but came to an area where it followed a ridge on a steep hillside. The drop was probably about 40 metres and it was so steep that when I stood at the top, I couldn’t see the side of the slope underneath me. I called Jon and asked for his assessment on the remaining path of The Wall. He said that if I managed to walk (or climb) the next 20 metres then the rest should be fine. That sounded fair enough, but then he added: “Looks like there has been an earth slide (Jordras) there.

That was enough to make up my mind and I walked around.

This was a very nice lesson to learn early on. Jon and I spoke about it and the conclusions are as follows:
– We are Walking the Great Wall, not Climbing it.
– Because the exposure to potential danger is going to last for a whole year, the only sensible thing is to have a very low risk profile.
– Some places, it will be hard to know whether a stretch has any elements of danger before we are there, and this can be very time consuming in the long run. Haven’t found an answer to this one yet.

Anyway – we both got to the other side and walked on. Soon we were at 2.650 metres above sea level in the same type of beautiful terrain as yesterday.

We have pitched our tents and shared the rest of our biscuits, a sausage and hot chocolate powder. We have some water left and hope to find a place to stock up again tomorrow, preferably in the morning.

The air is crisp and clean and getting colder. This is our best camp site so far!