We don’t often devote an entire blog post to one attraction but The Great Wall of China probably deserves the honour, partly because it was one of the highlights of mum’s visit and partly because the photos are so good. For some reason I wasn’t expecting all that much of The Wall – how much better than the Setttle- Carlisle Railway could it be? – but I was blown away by it’s beauty, size and atmosphere, to which the photos do more justice than I can, so I’ll just fill in the background.

The wall is more than 6000 kilometres long and it’s easily accessible from Beijing depending on which bit you want to go to: unsurprisingly (since it was built between the 5th BC and 16th AD centuries) large sections are no longer in great shape these days, but the areas within striking distance of the capital have been tarted up for tourists and are supposed to be spectacular but very, very, very busy. So, acting as tour guide for the day, I decided to ignore those bits and head for Huanghua, where not much restoration has happened and, consequently, not many tourists go (I had romantic ideas of standing alone at a sentry post, listening to the birds and scouting the countryside for marauding hoards of Mongols).

We hit the bus station early and, having been told by several fake taxi drivers that no public buses go to the wall, easily found a public bus to the wall. It took an hour to reach Huairou, a small town outside Beijing, where we were accosted by more fake taxi drivers and spent half an hour haggling a fare into the countryside. We spent the 25 minute car journey playing spot the wall – there were loads of false alarms (farmer’s fields, power station boundaries, electricity pylons etc) but James eventually spotted it, snaking round the side of a ridiculously steep, wooded hillside and then veering off at an insanely sharp angle behind another peak. With true Chinese tenacity, the architects of the wall picked the sharpest, highest and remotest path they could for the wall to follow, further discouraging attempts to penetrate it.

When we arrived at the entrance of the Huanghua section it was very quiet and there was a large sign saying something like ’due to renovations this section of the wall is closed to visitors, have a nice day, go home’. But our helpful taxi driver led us up a little path behind the deserted ticket booth where two enterprising gentlemen had erected a home-made ladder and were charging 20p for the privilege of risking the climb. There were a couple of dozen Chinese families milling around and taking photos near the ladder but they didn’t seem keen on walking far, so all we had to do was climb the death ladder, hike up a steep, re-paved section and we had the place to ourselves, pretty much free of charge.

Compared to the constant cacophony of Chinese noise we live with in Beijing, the quiet was incredibly atmospheric and it lasted until we’d walked for about a kilometre, when James pointed out he could hear music. Sure enough, at the next sentry post a little man was sitting on a wall squeezing out a tune on an accordion. ‘That sounds familiar’ mum said. ‘I could be wrong, but I think it’s from the Sound of Music’. And sure enough, in the middle of the Chinese mountains, perched on a deserted section of one of the world’s greatest engineering projects, was a little Chinese man playing ‘High on a Hill Stood a Lonely Goat’.

Other than that surreal little interlude and the odd bunch of teenagers the wall was ours for three steep kilometres, until we veered off onto a path that took us down through an orchard and allowed some incredible views back up the valley and over the hills. We eventually re-emerged in Huanghua in a cemetery (a little reminder of the millions of labourers who died over the centuries that the wall was constructed and reconstructed by the Chinese dynasties) and had a beer at a nice lady’s house while we waited for a taxi driver to ferry us back to the town.

Funnily enough, the wall in its day wasn’t all that successful as a military barrier - numerous foreign invaders broke through over the years – but as a psychological tool it must have been extremely effective: even now with it’s crumbly old ramparts it’s a very intimidating structure. It seems to say, on behalf of the Chinese, ‘we’re big, we’re strong, we have the man power and determination to build an 8000km wall because we want to keep you out’ – the ancient equivalent of ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’.