Researching for the trip to Beijing indicated that there were about 4 main areas to view the Great Wall and each spot has its advantages and disadvantages as to the best area to go to. Most tourists go to the area called Badaling and this can mean very large numbers walking the wall. We chose to go further out of town to an area called Mutianyu which is about 90 minutes from Beijing. The hotel organised a driver for us and we left early in the morning to beat the crowds on the wall. The traffic was not so bad which meant that we did not have to close our eyes for the near misses that we encountered in many of the taxi rides around China. The ride back from the Great Wall was not so lucky and I was so glad the car had seat-belts and airbags!
We arrived at the Great Wall just after opening time which meant for certain sections of the wall we had the wall to ourselves. To get up to the wall we could ever start at section 6 or section 14. Both had a cable car to get up to the section. We decided to go to section 14 first and climb the very steep sections up to section 23 and then walk down to section 6 and take a toboggan type ride down the mountain.
Mutianyu section of the wall was built in 1368 upon the foundations of a previous wall built in 550 AD.
The wall had been restored in many sections but certain areas are still had left in a crumbling state . After section 23 we walked a bit further to about section 27. This stretch wasn't completely restored so it was tread carefully or suffer a spanned ankle. Certain sections of the wall were very steep and it made coming back down harder as the steps are very narrow for large feet !
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Heading up to section 24
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Had to climb down sideways |
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View from the side
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Section 27
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