We booked a MuBus Tour for this day trip to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. This section of the wall is about an hour drive outside Beijing and the tour company were well organised and explained our options clearly.
Lunch was available on arrival at the site, just a buffet of various Chinese and Western options, nothing special but enough to fuel up. We chose to tackle the Western route which involved firstly a shuttle bus then a cable car to get to a starting point. Not ones to take the easy route we thought we’d tackle something called the “Heros’s Steps” which refers to a particularly steep climb (reaching up 80 degree in slope) to a platform know unimaginatively as “Hero’s Platform”. Climbing these stairs is apparently “an achievement that makes one feel like a hero”….not sure about that bit…but there were medals available to purchase if you really wanted to celebrate your “hero” state with several thousand other high achievers!
May not have felt like a hero on the day but the old calf muscles were complaining about the effort of the next 2 days, who needs a medal when the pain is a reminder??
We went back down by cable car to recover with a beer before boarding the bus back to Beijing just in time to refuel with a decent dinner.
