Monday morning was an early start for a private transfer bus to a place called Simitai, the steepest length along the Great Wall. We were really excited, though a little apprehensive of our fitness for trekking.... knowing it was the hardest part to walk along. The bus took 3 hours so we all had a wee nap to build our strength, At about 11am we got there and set off with our daysacks to climb onto the wall itself. The area visitors tend to go to on the Great Wall is called Badaling, and Simitai is quite far away from that. It's not 100% renovated either, so some of the towers were unsafe to climb through, and some parts of the wall only had a few feet in width to walk along. Badaling on the other hand is not entirely original, so we were pleased we'd see some of the more authentic bits.

We were immediately joined by lots of tiny chinese women following us, (Bobo had told us not to talk to them if you didn't want to buy a souvenir from them), trying to help us up the wall on the tricky slippery bits and basically getting them in our goodbooks for spending later with them! We felt really bad when it came to ignoring them when they asked if we wanted anything - but we're poor students after all :)

The wall itself was spectacular. We only saw a few other people in the whole 5 hours we were trekking along it. Bobo reckons we walked about 10km along the stretch, and at times it was so high up it actually snowed! It was hot work climbing though, but we took it steady, and everyone made the length. To give you a better idea, if you look at the photos - we walked 30 tower lengths, and stopped at tower 15 for a picnic at lunchtime. The end of the walk was possibly the most fun, we decided to go on the 'flying fox' to return to the guest house, a long steep zip wire across a lake, which was both very fast and very cold! I think someone took a video of Claire screaming her head off on the descent, all for show of course...

That night it was absolutely freezing, they didn't have the radiators on in the rooms, and because it was snowing everyone even wore their hats and woolley jumpers to dinner! There was the option to get up ridiculously early (4am) to watch the sun rise over the Great Wall. Incredibly, only 4 people in our 16 strong group decided to do this, us two and another couple, Sarah & John. We met each other in the courtyard of the hostel at 4.30am, and made our slow, dark, freezing ascent back onto the wall to catch the sun. It was pitch black, we even saw shooting stars, and by the end of the spectacle our waterbottles had turned to ice. But it was SO worth it. We saw the sky start to glow, and suddenly the wall would become visible, and the mountain range too. Despite our fatigue, it was definitely one of the best things we've ever done - to see that panorama, and the changing colour, was brilliant. Our photos truly do not accurately show how gorgeous it was!

Unsurprisingly, we all went back to bed afterwards.

The next day (Tuesday) was pretty much a travelling day. We left Simitai guesthouse at about lunchtime, took the bus back to Beijing and had a few hours mooching around before our train left at 9pm. We were to take our first overnight train, and everyone was a little apprehensive about what to expect - so, cleverly, us two and Emma & Callum decided to go to a nearby bar, and have a pitcher or two to calm our worries. Ended up making the whole affair of catching the train a lot more amusing than it probably was - but we slept better too so that's a bonus. The train took about 11 hours, in compartments no bigger than a bathroom, with 6 bunk beds. It was quite claustrophobic, but a lot of fun too (apart from the squat toilets - really NOT NICE).

Tomorrow is Claire's birthday in Xi'an, so no doubt more updates at the end of the week!