Mr.Martyn Fidler and his wife Claire came to Beijing with a tourist group. They have travelled a long way across Russia and Mongolia. Now that they were in Beijing, their biggest dream was to see the 8th wonder of the world—the Great Wall of China. However, when they went to the Wall at MUTIANYU with the group they were deeply disappointed: restored Wall as if it was built yesterday and tons of tourists as crowded as forbidden city.

                               

They decided to walk the real Great Wall that they dreamed of and that belongs to themselves. So they turned to GREAT WALL HIKING.

On their free day - August 8th , they headed to the Great Wall AGAIN-in a decent car,by express way. Their ambition was to walk 20 km from GUBEIKOU to Qilin Watchtower of JINSHANLING - in 6 or 7 hours. That means they want to finish the job for 2 days within 1 day.

When we arrived, Martyn and Claire couldn’t wait to change to T-shirts of GWH . The moment they set their feet on the Wall, they shouted: “ This is the Wall ! This is our dream !” For the first 4 hours hiking in GUBEIKOU,we encountered nobody except for a farmer with a hoe on her shoulder heading to her field.

As we walked through a valley, they was fascinated at the diversity of vegetation and crops that was so different from UK: maize,sorghum,grain,chilly,gourd,aubergine……

Martyn was busy taking photos of insects and bugs since he is a zoologist: cicada, mantis, lizard, dragonfly……

When we got on the Wall again at JINSHANLING, we had picnic lunch in a watchtower and it was their first time to taste donkey meat.

The latter half of the hiking was much more difficult: We were exhausted to some extent and it was getting hotter and we felt like being baked on a huge brick pan by summer sunshine of Beijing. We started to see tourists though much fewer than MUTIANYU and I had to get rid of those commercial venders. Martyn and Claire took different strategies: Martyn would walk slowly but persistantly while Claire preferred to take short breaks in cool watch towers. When we reached Qilin Watchtower, I took a photo of the hero and heroine with SIMATAI Wall as backdrop. Then we descended to the parking lot. Before we left for the city, we celebrated the long march with a sweet Hami melon.

When we were arriving at the hotel, Claire expressed their gratitude formally. “ Today is our 30th wedding anniversary.” she added.