21 km today where three were not walking the Great Wall. I started the day by visiting the small village to buy water and food. Unfortunately there were no restaurants there, so I got instant noodles at the shop instead.

Todays walk took me to about 2200 metres. When I got to the top and started walking down the other side, I could see the valley that leads to Ningxia which is the next province along the route.

The GPS I have been using is starting to disintegrate. The rubber protection has loosened and the glue underneath is all over the place. This is the GPS I used when kayaking the entire length of Norway in 2005. Brother Jon has kindly found a replacement in Beijing today and will send it to the next town,  Jintai tomorrow. Because of this, I have hitched a ride to Jintai to get the address of a hotel. The GPS Jon is sending has a pretty good road map of China on it and a lot more memory than the old one. This will make life, whilst I’m walking the Great Wall, a lot easier!! Thank you Jon!

In Jintai I had a big meal.  Then I looked for an internet cafe. After asking around, I met four young students and they told me that all the internet cafes in Jintai are closed next week because of exams in town! I don’t know why – is it so they can concentrate on their exams, or to stop them from cheating somehow. It was fun speaking to them as they knew about as much English as I knew Chinese, so we used both languages to fill in the gaps.

I will head back to Wuwei tomorrow to pick up the excess equipment. Might spend one day there too to get things sorted on the web site.