Walking The Great Wall of China (Virtually)

Week 3 and a half Summary

A little late on the update timing, but the great news is that it doesnt really matter cos I hit the target goal of 260km walking distance for the month with plenty of time to spare! It took me 25 days to complete, and with the time spare, or extra days left, I can now attempt to catch up on some km’s. I say catch up because remember, my goal of the year is to walk 3000kms over 2022, and I’m pretty sure I only got a paltry 75kms or so in January so I have push myself a little further over feb and march.

Virtually, I would be completing my hike of the Great Wall of China at Huangyaguan. I would have seen many great sights along the way. The Great Wall in its entirety is over 21,000km long, but it is not one continuous fortification. It is a series of Walls spread out across China, of which less than 10% remain intact. Millions of people were used to build the Wall and hundreds of thousands, some say as many as a million, died building it. Also, contrary to popular belief, the Wall cannot be seen from the moon or even from the International Space Station.

I must remember that despite not being rewarded with ‘physically’ seeing the beautiful sites along the Great Wall, I was rewarded with seeing some cool things while walking my local town tracks. I saw many different types of wildlife, including the common denizens like Possums and Wallabies, to the more uncommon sights of Owls, Koala’s and Foxes (I had a particularly cool encounter with a fox that decided to follow me for a good 400meters). I even had a slightly scary encounter with a large Brown Snake on one of the wilder tracks, and while nothing bad happened, it was a reminder that you do flirt with danger when simply walking, jogging or hiking, and that attention and concentration is still needed when taking these treks. Like with most things, respect the danger and it will respect you too.

That’s enough from me. My journey this month is done, but that only means that a new one is about to come. Here’s to March, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll make you a 300km month :).

As I finish my journey now, let me leave you with this quote:

*“There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.” ~ W. Somerset Maugham *

Week 2 Summary

Another great week with a further smashing of the weekly and monthy goal. The goal to reach was 112km by day 14 was well surpassed by reaching a total of 154.2km. I was a little worried earlier on in the week when I developed a blister on my ankle (wore the wrong socks) which did slow me down a little through the mid-week, but still managed to power through the discomfort to hit the minimum 8km on those days. So what’s left? 105km and 14 days to complete them! I think I got this!

Percentage of the Great Wall completed is 59%. This would place me roughly around the Banchengzi Reservoir.

Week 1 Summary

I smashed my goal of hitting 56km walked by making it to 72.3km total purposeful walking distance. The week went pretty well, especially in the first few days as I pushed myself to walk 12-16km per day in order to get a good head start and get some extra kms under my belt in case I needed a rest day. This came back to bite me in the later part of the week as I struggled to reach those distances (very tired and sore tootsies/feet) but always managed the minimum daily of 8km and never needed the rest day, managing to score a good 12kms over the weekly minimum and banking it for next week.

As for my virtual marathon along the ‘Great Wall of China’, I have completed 27% of the trek and (would) have seen many great sights and historical monuments along the Badaling section of the Wall and beyond, including Juyong Pass (where the Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan breached the wall twice!), a submerged portion of the wall at Huanghuacheng and the Jintang lake.

Getting started!

My virtual journey along the Great Wall of China will begin in Bangshuiyu village and will end at Huangyaguan Pass. While this is only a small section of the overall length of the Great Wall (it would literally take a year and a half of walking 6 days a week at 20km per day to cover the entire 8,852km length of the Great Wall!), it is considered the most well-preserved and most-trafficked by the general public. This section in ‘roughly’ 260km in length (roughly perhaps to account for the elevation gains and losses), and in order to cover this in 28 days, I will have to walk 8km per day or 65km per week. To track my progress, I will be using a couple of phone apps and a smartwatch to track steps and distances. The apps in question will be Samsung Health (tied to my smartwatch), addidas Running app for distances and to feed distances into the third app, ‘Conqueror Virtual Challenges’, which will track my progress along the Great Wall of China automatically so I can see my progress virtually.

Here’s the tldr on how it works: Whatever distances I record while walking in and around my local township here in Australia, will then be uploaded into the Conqueror - Virtual Challenges app. For more info on this app/service: https://www.theconqueror.events/

The journey begins!