If in December 2022 I had been told I would be moving to China in 2023 and camping on the Great Wall of China I would have laughed. But 12 months on it is exactly what life looks like.
In July 2023, I moved to Tianjin, a city in northern China, and only about 35 minutes from Beijing on the train. As any tourist to northern China, or newbie expat in my case, I was desperate to see The Great Wall of China and just 5 weeks after arriving in China, 6 Brits headed to Beijing for a “walk and a bit of camping” (so we thought).
We used a tour provider called CETrips who offer English speaking tour guides and support the entire process of the trip, they met us in Beijing and we got on the bus ready to head to the wall. If anyone is ever visiting Beijing, it’s important to note that The Great Wall is around a 2 hour journey out of the city in traffic and depending on the section you’re visiting.
Now we don’t have a lot of rain in northern China, I think we have only maybe had 4/5 days of rain in the 6 months I have lived here but this weekend was WET and as you’d imagine my bright idea of “walking the wall” quickly turned into “why are we even doing this”. Our guide Monica was brilliant to us and the tour provider supplied our tents, sleeping bags and ground mats and most importantly beers!
We started our “walk” to find out that the route originally planned has been closed due to the weather and instead we had to go the other way “but don’t worry it’s not that much longer”, maybe not Monica, maybe not…
Being the ‘organised’ one of our friends and the only one with a half decent rucksack we piled it full of ground mats and beers and attached what we could, where we could. Now I am 5ft2 and so for the vertically challenged The Great Wall is tough, in places we were walking up steps where they were as high as my knees and to say I began to question the whole idea of camping was an understatement, especially since the whole time walking up it rained.
After 3 hours of climbing steps we finally made it to the camping spot and it was time to pull of my pretty impressive tent pitching skills, within 20 minutes all 4 tents were up, the Crocs were on and a beer in my hand (I’d also stopped being over dramatic about this “walk” too).
We spent the evening hidden from the rain in one of the beacon towers with one of the only supplies we’d all brought, the main man of the night – Baijiu, which if you’ve never drank, don’t, but it definitely kept us all warm and merry that night.
The following day the rain continued and after packing up the tents we started to make our way back to the assembly point, we had luckily left early enough to be able to start to see the cloud lifting as we walked back down and the views were absolutely beautiful to see. The early start also meant that we were able to go to get for well needed breakfast and coffee at the bottom of the wall and the locals could not do more for us when we sat down for out traditional Chinese breakfast.
My number 1 tip for The Great Wall of China is to be ready, I knew it was steep and I knew the steps were not always well maintained but there are not readily available food stops or toilet stops or even places for water in all sections of the wall, especially areas which are less ‘touristy’, you need good shoes, drinks and snacks. Also, be ready for the rain in China, it comes when it is most humid and even a thin coat can make you feel like you’re too hot. Finally, not all parts of The Wall are the same, I have been to 3 different sections at different points and each of them have been completely different.
