This guest house is sooooo much better. We have hot water, clean towels, heat and tv. You can still sit on the toilet to have a shower and the electric plug for the boiler is under the shower head!

We had a late breakfast today (8.30am) which was a mixed bag of pancakes (nice), coffee (very welcome), French bread (brioche type rolls in individual packets) and a few other dishes. We all agreed that the food was better at the previous guest house, but we like hot showers and warm rooms quite a lot!

We then took a short private bus ride to ‘Crouching Tiger’. Today’s trek was to be an ‘easy’ route of 3 hours, although the planned route we were taking had recently been closed and was a 'sensitive' area at the moment. We had to take our passports with us to prove we weren’t political activists trying to make our way to Beijing across the mountains.

There are two girls in our group who had been told that the walks were a few miles long, easy and that they could turn back at any point. For various reasons they weren’t able or willing to do a full trekking trip so ‘Walk the Great Wall’ (emphasis on Walk) sounded like a good option for them. Like the rest of us they weren’t told about the scrambling, climbing and suicide missions we’d be taken on, and for walk they had read stroll.

This morning they were quite clear they did not want to participate in the full trek. They found themselves whisked off with us on the bus being told they could walk back from the start point to our guest house. Once at the start point they were told they couldn’t walk back as there’s every chance they would be stopped and possibly arrested on suspicion of being activists. Needless to say they didn’t do the full trek ( although they did some ) and they ended up having to wait at the bus for the next few hours.

The terrain at Crouching Tiger is different to the ground we’ve covered so far, being more earthy/sandy as opposed to rock. There were many points were we scrambling uphill on rockfall and dust. Alan, Mitch and Angela were taking the narrow footpath alongside the wall, which was in a state of complete disrepair here. When we got to the steepest point in today’s trek Angela could not get her footing on the dusty path and kept sliding back down the path so she turned back to the closest tower. Alan and Mitch struggled valiantly on while the rest of the group, who had been scrambling over Wall rubble, were already entering the next tower. Richard, the guide, was already on top of that tower (he’s always up ahead - never checking everyone’s ok) and called for Angela to come up to the next tower. We now know enough to know that his version of easy doesn’t match ours and that we have to watch our own backs! As the other group members had got so quickly up the scramble Angela decided to give it a go knowing she could turn back. She made it!

The next climb was a ridiculous, rubbly scramble. Angela, Alan and Lauran stayed at this tower while the intrepid Mitch, Holly and Lauran’s partner Simon carried on (not) led by Richard. Mitch turned back as, like us, he had nothing to prove by climbing and the view was fantastic where we were. Holly, Simon and Richard climbed another two towers.

After a lovely sunlit picnic lunch on the wall we started our descent. Angela went back down the steepest slope on her bum, like a slide. There were many slips and trips on the sand and gravel path heading down.

Back at the guest house we had a little free time before our second Tai Chi lesson so we went up to the small temple that sits on the Wall behind the guest house. Our second Tai Chi lesson was a little later so it was getting dark and very cold by the time we finished.

We had dinner which was a good selection of mostly vegetables (home grown) and then played cards which Angela lost. Thankfully it wasn’t strip poker.

Tomorrow we trek in the morning and then move on to another guest house. Who knows what’s in store for us then?!