Why are we running?
I have found that running gives me time to think, running give me time to introspect and running helps me heal. I have embarked on all these journeys over the past 12 years for probably two main reasons. I suppose the first is the selfish side. It’s
The Dragon snore
It had been a long trek on the wall to get to the crew meeting point, which was in a small remote village where we were going to spend the evening. Hopefully we would be able to convince a farmer to rent us a room or two
Not just a pretty face
Don’t let a pretty face fool you. A lot has changed in the last 12 years since I last ran the wall, but the one thing that I have noticed is the amount of areas of the wall that are now closed and fenced off because they have
Get those 2 out of Mongolia
I don’t know how this keeps on happening, but somehow, we keep losing the Wall or following the wrong bit of Wall and every time we do it we end up in inner/outer somewhere called Mongolia. We were on a bad day; we had lost each other as
Game watching
I think a lot of us have experienced some sort of game watching, whether it’s birding or out there on a safari game drive, they are similar. You are up early in the morning. A quick cup of coffee, a rusk and you all bundle out the
Deserted Villages
Often the highlight of my day is when the wall dips down a valley into a fortified village where the two become one. As you trundle down the mountain slope into the village you hit a time warp, as you are Trans- located into yesteryear, into a bygone
How things have changed 12 years later
The journey is still in its infant stage, but already at this early stage there are many noticeable differences that I have seen along the wall. I must admit that the progress of infrastructural development and city builds I am experiencing is astounding, but there is often a
Just to keep going
The mind is an incredible thing, it gives you strength, sometimes lets you forget and escape the reality of life, blocks out pain and then fills difficult voids with memories of the good times, family and friend. It always seems to have the ability to get you over
Rain yes rain
We all know what this means, but I must admit coming from the cape in South Africa, rain has not been a common thing over the past few years. Well believe it or not, nor has it been in this part of China either, in the dry arid
The Sleeping Beauty
On most of our journeys we have used the walk to directional finder on our phone maps. We are given a point by the crew where they will meet up with us and then we track to that point along the wall. The amazing thing about this app
