The second impassable Great Wall stretch 1


I went to bed really early yesterday and got up before the sun at half past five. I started walking an hour later.  This time is was nice and cool, which was great! The light was beautiful, so I spent too much time photographing instead of making progress. The weather forecast for today said a high of 37 C in the shadow (99 F) so I wanted to get as far as possible before it got too hot. This time I had plenty of Ice Tea with me and peanuts and some dried fruits.

The Wolfberry harvesting season is at it’s peak and wooden frames full of red berries are to be seen all over. The Chinese call the berries Gou qi. As I started heading for the impassable stretch, I met three ladies talking. One of them was processing the Wolfberries. First beating them with a wooden plank, then holding them high and dropping them in the wind to separate the dry green stalk from the berries.

They looked pretty sceptical untill I showed them the end product, (The picture I took) and then they were in front of my camera wherever I pointed it!

By this time it was getting hotter. With only a few kilometres to the very challenging part of the Great Wall, because of steep mountains, I saw a mud hut. I needed to drink and went in and sat down. I was sweating a lot and it took quite a long time before I cooled down. Probably a good idea to let the body cool down when I have the chance.

It wasn’t difficult to see where the previous Great Wall’kers have deemed it too hard to follow the Great Wall route. The Wall went straight up a steep hill. Up until now it had been made mostly by rammed earth, but here, they had used stones instead. I wanted to see what the terrain looked like on the other side and managed to climb the steep hill. It was difficult, because the ground was full of loose small rocks. Some of them looked like slate, and I slid several times, but used the walking poles to keep my balance.

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To the left the Great Wall is made by rammed earth. Because of the steep hill, they have used stones on the right hand side.

Battlement on the Great Wall. The enemy territory on the other side. The Great Wall uses features of the hills to add to it's defencive capability.

The other side was pretty wild. Steep mountains and a very dry terrain. Not the sort of stretch to walk alone – certainly not in the middle of July!

25 kilometres today.


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