We was up nice and early for the trip to the Great wall of china the drive to Jinshanling took just over three hours, we would have a walk of around 10 km this would take us to Simatai..
He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man.- Chairman Mao Nearly everyone has heard of the huge, stone wall known as the Great Wall of China. The Great Wall of China was built mainly to protect the Chinese Empire from the Mongolians and other invaders. The Wall has been periodically rebuilt and modified throughout history by each reigning Chinese dynasty. There are huge discrepancies regarding the length of the wall. One person had said that the wall was over 3,720 miles, Richard Nixon said it was 2,484 miles long, while Time magazine favored 1,684 miles. However, it is known that the Great Wall extends from Kansu, in the west, to the Yellow Sea, in the east. Ancient records report that at least one million slaves and prisoners of war were used to create this defensive wall. Many laborers died from exhaustion and starvation while working on this colossal task, their bodies added to the rubble and masonry as the quickest means of disposal. For centuries, the Wall was known as "the longest cemetery in the world."? Credited with the consolidation of the Walls, Shi Huangdi created the Great Wall, which at the time was known as the Wan Li Chang Cheng (Ten Thousand Li Long Wall). It twists and winds along hill crests, gorges, and rivers. At its greatest, it reached from the China Sea town of Shanhaiguan, over 3,000 miles westward into the Gansu province. To put this in perspective, it would stretch from Los Angeles to Boston, or, from London to beyond the Urals mountain chain which separates Europe from Asia.?Actually, China is not the only country in history that built wall along its boundary. Athens, the Roman Empire, Denmark and Korea all did so at certain time in the past. The Hadrian's Wall in northern England, built "to separate the Romans from the barbarians", extended 117 kilometres from Wallsend-on-Tyne in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west. All the walls were built for the purpose of military defence, and the Great Wall of China was no exception. Yet the Great Wall is unique. It was first built in the 7th century B.C. when China was still divided into many small states. After the unification of China in 221 B.C., the first emperor of Qin Dynasty (you must have heard of his terracotta army) linked the walls of the three states in the north and formed the first "Wan Li Chang Cheng" (ten thousand li Great Wall, li is a Chinese length unit, 2 li = 1 km). Since then, the Great Wall was rebuilt, modified or extended throughout Chinese history for over 2,000 years. Most of the Great Wall we see today was built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). In some areas, two walls built in two different dynasties can be seen running side by side. Based on the technology available at different dynasties, the Great Wall was usually built with local materials, mostly earth and stones. Natural terrain such as mountain ridges was often taken advantage of to form part of the wall. West Han Dynasty (206 B.C. - 25 A.D.), for example, used sand and crushed stones filled with layers of reeds or tamarisk twigs to build the wall in grasslands and desert areas that are subject to strong wind erosion. We arrived at the start it was now getting hotter so on with the factor 2...We hiked up to the wall the climb was really steep but the views of the wall was spectacular.. we finally reached the wall the initial climb was very hard you have to watch your footing as the wall is crumbling away in many places they are repairing it but it is a mammoth task as you can imagine.
We carried on walking each section there was other people coming the other way so we chatted to various people on the wall...
In the distance we could see our finish point we had to cross a suspension bridge.Then we had to options one was another 25 min walk to the bottom or to take a rope slide down to the bottom we opted for the slide so me and Lisa went together that was cool..We had lunch then headed back to Beijing.