Picture of the Day: Great Wall at Simatai

A view of the Great Wall from the seventh watchtower at Simatai

This morning my friends and I headed to the Great Wall, a part that I'd never been to, at Simatai, the most remote area outside of Beijing.
It took us three hours to get there by bus, and then after a quick lunch of Taiwanese beef noodles, we headed to the entrance.

We didn't chicken out and take the cable car, but instead walked to the second of 10 watchtowers and started walking up. It was quite the workout because it was quite steep, but it was the amazing views that kept us going.

However when we were almost at the top of the seventh watchtower, there was a staff member there standing behind some rope with a sign that said "stop" in English.

He explained we couldn't go any further because the wall was being reinforced and would take about two months.

Before we left we asked him to take a picture of us, but we also took several to remind us of the panoramic view of the wall from the top of the seventh tower.

To get down we walked to the sixth watchtower and then about 600 metres to the cable car station.