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The Great Wall of China steals the show in Race Across the World ...Middle East
I first saw the Great Wall of China years ago, on a boiling blue April Sunday at the tail end of a work trip. I’ll always remember the three-hour drive north from Beijing, still bleary from the craft beers of the night before. We had been up late at a tavern called Great Leap Brewing, among the drinkers crammed out front, chatting and swilling in the muggy street heat. Perhaps that explained the mirage-like aspect of my first glimpse. After an age, with the road traversing monotonous tan plains across which giant pylons strode with menace, the landscape segued. The view grew steep and craggy, the way narrower. Through the windows came the perfume of chestnut, cypress and pine. Sprays of white jujube flowers coated the inclines. Casually, the looping road revealed lightning glimpses of coiled, crenellated wall hundreds of feet above, silhouetted on the sky, before we hairpinned and the forest closed in again. Sign up to our mailing list to receive more content like this from Radio Times Travel, Shop and Money - click here We came to a car park and boarded a bubble-car transit lift, that floated almost vertically over dark woods for a while before disgorging us at the summit. And there it was, zigzagging off to the horizon: Jinshanling, widely considered to be the Wall’s most beautiful stretch of all. It was a pinch-me moment: the Great Wall of China was never something I felt I would ever really see. Sure, it was always crystal clear in the mind from drawings in childhood books, yet somehow it was mythic, too, like Atlantis or the Lighthouse of Alexandria. The contestants of Race Across the World must have felt something similar, setting off from a section called Huanghuacheng, to cross China into Nepal then hurry to southernmost India and the finish line. No matter who wins, they will surely all agree that the first bit was the best. The Great Wall of China is quite dizzying to contemplate: a barrier against Mongol raiders, with piecemeal origins in BC times, knitted into a whole over centuries. The autocratic Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) was most crucial to its evolution, reinforcing and finessing it with curly-eaved watchtowers, beacons, cannons and lookout platforms into the vision we see now. The Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, around an hour’s drive from the city, offers stunning views There’s no arguing with the beauty of Huanghuacheng. The cold, clear waters of Jintang Lake merge in spring with hills of yellow huanghua flowers to form an impressive backdrop. Opportunities to witness it at sunrise, or illuminated by night, create indelible memories for millions of visitors. But at a comfy 90-minute remove from Beijing, for wild and unreconstructed romance it doesn’t fully compare with far-flung Jinshanling, which I witnessed that hot spring day. There are plenty of other parts to head for, depending on your stamina and time. The most visited stretch, usually by package travellers on whistle-stop tours of China, is Badaling. It was the first section to open to tourists, in 1957, and has seen luminaries from Nehru and Nixon to Queen Elizabeth II and Nelson Mandela pop up for a quick photo opportunity. But proximity (there’s even a half-hour high-speed train link from Beijing) alas means crowds – something to bear in mind if misty isolation is the theme of your Instagram posts more than selfie sticks and bobbing heads. Should Badaling sound too touristy, and Jinshanling too intrepid, I suggest a happy medium: Mutianyu, which remains pin-sharp in my memory from a visit five or so years ago, just before the world closed down. It was late in the year – October, almost November. In Beijing the days were crisp and the skies were clear, and I vividly remember the pagoda trees with their copper foliage leaning over the streets on the walk to the Forbidden City. Mutianyu was the perfect half-morning’s drive from the capital, although our departure coincided with a sudden chill as the sun retreated and clouds rolled in. The road there took us through blank grey towns and rolling orchard valleys with people selling squash and pumpkins at makeshift stalls. There were pyramids of produce and displays of a popular snack, mountain-hawthorn fruit glazed with hardened sugar syrup and threaded onto skewers like skeins of mini toffee apples. Request a holiday brochure from one of our partners At the base of the gondola lift to the Wall, a branch of Burger King was doing a roaring trade. Yet moments later we were far above the everyday proceedings, deposited beside the snake-belly stone walkway of the Wall, bucking away over the green hills, west and east, until it faded into the mists. There was time for a short walk before returning to the car, to Beijing and then on to the airport. But progress was tricky along the steep and slippery, almost boulder-like stones underfoot, which unnerved me. Not so the elderly Chinese tourists, however, who rustled by in blue plastic ponchos in case of rain showers. They appeared to me to be as sure-footed as mountain goats – perhaps there’s something in the DNA of a people whose agile ancestors patrolled a remote, unforgiving, astonishing feat of engineering and architecture that has captivated the world for centuries. Race Across the World continues on Wednesday 30th April at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. 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