Hike! Great Wall Trip

[Zhongguoist]

Oh wow that sounds(and looks!) ace actually, are you saying that Gubeikou - Jinshanling is better than Jinshanling to Simatai?

[Bryan]

No, not necessarily better. Just well worth doing. There are a lot less people there as the hike between Jinshanling and Simatai is pretty popular now. Both of them are excellent hikes, but the whole stretch from Gubeikou to Simatai is ideal. You could make it in one day if you push, but I would take my time and spend one night in Jinshanling. That would give you time to climb the east side of Simatai (the Simatai ridge) when you arrive there. It would be a bit of a shame to miss it.

[Zhongguoist]

Originally Posted by greatwallforum

No, not necessarily better. Just well worth doing. There are a lot less people there as the hike between Jinshanling and Simatai is pretty popular now. Both of them are excellent hikes, but the whole stretch from Gubeikou to Simatai is ideal. You could make it in one day if you push, but I would take my time and spend one night in Jinshanling. That would give you time to climb the east side of Simatai (the Simatai ridge) when you arrive there. It would be a bit of a shame to miss it.

Ok I'll see how much time we have. Also may be going with a friend who can't do ridiculous amounts of walking so don't want to tire him out.... And also we want to see Chengde a bit it's trying to square up the 4ish days my friend has in Tianjin/wherever I take him before he goes to Beijing and stuff so that he's not too knackered.

[Zhongguoist]

Thanks to everyone's help I went to the Great Wall on Friday.

I don't really know what happened but basically I got a taxi from Chengde to GubeiKou as we were there very early and we wanted to do the most in one day. I'd said the GuBeiKou great wall but the driver didn't know it at all and basically he asked around in GuBeiKou and the only great wall that people said was safe was PanLongShan. I'd never heard of it but we ended up going there and it was amazing. It was just past GuBeiKou, then we turned off the main road and quite a long way up this road, there were no signs to it at all and when we got out of the car we only found it because we guessed. There was no ticket entrance or anything, didn't see anyone in all the time we were on the wall. We were on the wall for about 2 and a half hours and it seemed(at least to me) that it was in less of a state or repair than the Jinshanling - Simatai which I went to in 2006. It was very good, bit windy as well which was scary which as my friend said is what you want the Great Wall to be.

If you want to see my pictures from there, they are at:
http://www.zhongguoist.com/index.php...d=35&g2_page=9

Visiting Chengde was really cool as well, rather different and I'm glad for both myself and my friend that we did both in one day.