Our hostel takes tours to a couple of different parts of the Great Wall, and so we booked one to a fairly touristy area. It took 2 hours to get there, in a rickety old van with a crazy driver. From the car park, it took about 30 mins to walk to the Great Wall. The leaves were changing and falling, so were very pretty, but there was a lot of fog around. So when we got to the wall we could not see it snaking off into the distance unfortunately. Being a Wednesday, there were not very many people around. Much of the wall was reconstructed, and there was a white mortar between the stones that didn't look very authentic to me. Some parts of the wall were really steep, sometimes the path was on a real lean and there were lots of shallow steps. We walked along for a couple of hours, then went back down to the carpark to barter for souvenirs.
It was great to walk on the Great Wall, but the fog was a little disappointing. Michael thought it was fantastic, and we can always buy postcards of the wall on a sunny day...
