Warburton.me » hiking http://www.warburton.me Andy & Stephs Travel Blog Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:37:51 +0000 en hourly 1 Exploring Beijing http://www.warburton.me/archives/70 http://www.warburton.me/archives/70#comments Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:13:36 +0000 Andy http://www.warburton.me/?p=70 Wow… what an epic couple of days! After arriving in Beijing on Sunday and basically doing nothing, we headed out to see the sights. Monday we went to see the Jingshan Park, The Forbidden City and Timinin Square, then Tuesday we did a 10km hike on the great wall of China.

Jingshan Park

Big Buddha in Jingshan Park Jingshan Park Jingshan Park

Forbidden City

The Forbidden City the Forbidden City Steph & The Forbidden City the Forbidden City

Timinin Square

Timinin Square Timinin Square

The Great Wall of China

More Wall Andy on the Great Wall The Great Wall Andy on the Great Wall More Wall More Wall Andy on the wall

What can I say about the great wall? Well… it’s totally deserving of it’s name! It’s absolutely massive – we only walked the 10k stretch between Jinshanling and Simatai but that very nearly killed me! If the Great Wall was flat and always in good condition it would have been a nice walk with beautiful scenery, but it’s not – some sections of the wall are close to 90 degrees with steps that are about a foot tall each, other sections have a similar incline but with steps that are massively damaged, leaving you with not a lot to hold on to as you climb.

Walking this section of the great wall really is an epic feat of endurance, and not something that I thought I would have been able to complete, however once you get up there, you are driven to keep going by the sheer beauty of the landscape and the urge to see what you could find around the next corner!

There are loads more photos on my flickr account, so feel free to check em out – despite carrying a 13MP camera, I’m resizing to 800×600 for upload just because the internet connection here is a bit on the slow side.

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