“ All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall…”  – the words of invading Mongol armies, immortalized by Pink Floyd. OK, perhaps not. Still, I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first to hum the tune as I scrambled, heaved and puffed my way along this most remarkable creation.

I spent ‘Good Friday’ on the ‘Great Wall’. Imagine a world where those two ‘G’ words were interchanged. Easter would begin with ‘Great Friday’ and the only humanly constructed feature to appear on world maps, would be known as the ‘Good Wall’. It is actually a very good wall but you’d expect that from a nation that have been perfecting the construction of large-scale defensive walls for over 2000 years.

The Chinese name for the great wall actually translates as the ‘unending and indeed the wall does seem to stretch on forever, snaking along the rugged ridge lines of the mountains, like some fancy elasticized frill.

I was fortunate enough to make two trips to the wall during my time in Beijing. One to a relatively remote and ‘wild’ part of the wall on a trip conducted by renowned Wall expert and British author William Lindesay and the other to a ‘restored’ part of the wall, whose make over is tested by thousands of tourists everyday who cable car up onto the grey/white ramparts and toboggan back down – sounds kind of crass but is actually more fun than should be allowed!

However and where ever you end up on the wall I sure the over all effect is quite the same – astounding. I was equally enchanted by the series of restored watchtowers as I was by the beauty of the wall in decay as it dissolved back into the landscape that it was quarried from. The trees festooned in white spring blossom erupting from the crumbling path ways created a sleeping beauty castle like magic, where I imagined slumbering terracotta warriors rather than some spindle pricked princess.

I could wow you with facts and figures – quoting a myriad of measurements and historical detail and the wild claim that the wall can be sighted from the moon…but it’ defiantly one of those equations where the total is so much more than the sum of the parts. It’s one of those ironies, that something created to separate, defend and attack from can be so beautiful….” All in all, it’s a very, very ‘good’ wall.”