Day 7: Simatai-Jinshanling on foot on the WALL

Chengde, 23/9/2005 at 18:30

Day 7: Simatai-Jinshanling on foot on the WALL

After having slept on beds like planks we got up early to get to the Wall. We wanted to be there before the tourists on day trips coming from Beijing. The village where we slept was close to the wall, so actually we were up the Wall so early that there was nobody yet to check our tickets that we had bought already the day before. The first 2 hours we only met 5 other people and in total on the 10 km trip maybe only 70 people. It took us 6 hours to get to Jinshanling. We did it very relaxed and enjoyed the views. It was so beautiful and so was the weather.
Some parts of the Wall are luckily not restored so it feels like walking on the real one, but is also very tough. At the end of the day arriving in Jinshanling we were both really tired. Jolanda’s legs were shaking… So we hired one of the locals to drive us back to Simatai. For the rest of the day we relaxed in Simatai and watched the sunset going down on the Wall.