Also known as the 10,000 Li Wall, the Great Wall of China stretches from Shanhaiguan Pass in the East to Jiayuguan Pass in the West. In between it passes through five different provinces and two autonomous regions. Contrary to popular belief, the Great Wall is NOT visible from space - it may be long but it is still very thin (relatively speaking).
Like most tourists, we saw the Wall at the Badaling site, 70 km north of Beijing and at an elevation of 1000 m. This section was first restored in 1957 with the addition of guard rails (which did come in useful at times). Also present to enhance your 'Great Wall Experience' was the Great Wall Circle Vision Theatre (which we didn't see) and a cable car to help you to get over the trickier bits. The cable car wasn't running when we went, presumably because of the weather (it was raining). I had hoped that we would be visiting one of the less 'touristy' sections of the wall, such as those at Mutianyu, Simitai and Jingshanling Pass. However, it was still an amazing experience.
After entering at the entrance turnstile, we walked up some steps to get onto the wall itself. A sign cautioned us that to graffiti the Great wall was not a good idea. I guess 'Kathryn woz ere 9T9' was out of the question then... There was still a LOT of graffiti around, however. Chinese graffiti is kind of bizarre - because it is all in characters it still looks very elegant (even if it really does say 'Cheryl and Dazza were ere '89').
The steps brought us to the middle of the restored section and we then had to decide whether to climb to the left or the right. We had been told that the left hand side was harder so, being foolhardy and young, we went that way. I think we made the right choice. While the path was quite difficult (i.e. steep) in a few places there were certainly less people on this side. Besides, the steepest sections of the path did have steps (some of which were up to half a meter high!) and the ground wasn’t slippery, despite the rain.
In the wet weather two hours was just enough time to see around without beginning to feel too uncomfortable. But, had it been fine, I would have liked to spend a bit more time at the Wall - perhaps to scale the right hand side as well or to browse through the impressive selection of 'I Climbed the Great Wall' t-shirts and other memorabilia. (Although I don't think I could - or should - have taken any more photos!) Ultimately, I am kind of glad it rained. The fog gave the whole place a great atmosphere (although the resulting 'atmospheric' pictures are all a little grey…) and I'm sure there were fewer people there because of it.