Sometimes everything just goes to plan and sometimes some places do not disappoint. I had read about visiting the Great Wall of China, bus loads of tourists, stalls, vendors of cheap rubbish, touts and even a cable car to get to the top. It sounds awful, I couldn’t think of anything worse.
Fortunately I had read, possibly in the lonely planet and so was forewarned. We spoke to the hotel we were staying at and managed to arrange a driver to take as to a more remote section of the wall and drop us off with the arrangement that he would drive to the next town and pick us up in a few hours time.
With a packed lunch and some water bottles we took off. The day was perfect, peaceful and lonely (we only encountered maybe 4 other people on our trek.)
Verdict ? I rate this trip with 5 stars!
Always Restless Feet 
I have organized visits to the Great Wall three times, once with my mother, once with my husband, and once with my boss and business colleagues. In each case we were totally blown away – my mother just smiling, inarticulate; my husband saying “I never believed in my greatest dreams I could be here!”; my boss saying ‘This is the best day of my life!” In each case I felt so great because I had enabled them. There is no power greater than the power to make another person happy, and the Great Wall confers so much triumph!
I so totally agree, the Great Wall really is that amazing!
we went in winter – snow on the wall. Really amazing, but f-ing cold (I think it was tops of 4 degrees). Surprisingly, the Mrs. enjoyed it more than the Forbidden City (toilet issues, me thinks 🙂 ).
I imagine the snow would add a really haunting quality to the great wall, but I could do without the cold.
What surprised (in a good way) me was the remoteness of much of the wall.
Awesome pictures! Which part of the great wall was this?
Thanks, erm, um. I’ll have to confess, I do not recall the name of the area. I’ll have to look it up and get back to you soon. It was about an hour or two by car from Beijing because I had wanted to avoid the crowds!