We left our hostel at 9am and had a three hour bus journey to get us to the Great Wall. We started our journey at the JinShanling part of the wall and the aim was to get to Simatai, 10km and about 36 watchtowers further along. We thought, ahh 10km, easy we did 12 in Christchurch! Actually, it seems that the photos and film footage we've seen in the past of the Wall didn't give us any idea how steep some of the sections are! This was seriously hard work, but WELL WELL worth it and we made it to Simatai! This definitely has to be the most amazing and stunning place I have ever been! I can see why it's one of the Seven Wonders! I am only afraid that my photo's will nowhere near justify it. This was the thing that both James and I were most looking forward to and it certainly didn't let us down. We even had beautiful sunshine for the whole four hours we were trecking, when it's been fairly miserable for the few days before - I think this was due to my praying all the way there!

Our hostel looked fine on first impressions, nice looking room, TV, en-suite, clean restaurant, but actually it was probably the worst nights sleep we've had as not only was it so freezing that we had two quilts, two blankets and I wore a jumper, but also the beds were so hard that it felt like we were sleeping on the floor! We tossed and turned all night, but must have had a bit of sleep and maybe the hard surface did us good after the treck that day, as we weren't aching too much in the morning! We had another banquet style dinner with the group before bed, but everyone was fairly quiet and shattered from the walking, so after a well deserved feed most of us headed to bed.

This morning we got up bright and early and had a western style breakfast - hmmmm, well they called it Western, but I'm not sure we'd serve it at home? We left the hostel by 9am and made our way back to Beijing, stopping at the Olympic stadium (better known as the Birds Nest) for a quick look. James, Me, John and Mark (the two English guys) just had some noodles for lunch and now we're passing time, before our sleeper train to Xian this evening - this should be an experience!

P.S. Did you know that there about 1 million people buried within The Great Wall? These are the people that were building it, but died due to lack of food, fatigue and too much sun, so instead of taking them away the other builders simply carried on laying stones on top of the bodies!