Third Day- Gubeikou Gateway

6am start for what would turn out to be my favourite day of the trek. After a relatively normal breakfast of fried egg on toast we got on the coach for a 1.5 hour drive to the village where our day of trekking would begin. The Gubeikou Gateway, a passageway between China and Mongolia, was historically a site of warfare and was heavily guarded so our task for the day was to climb up to 27 watchtowers in varying states of collapse.
As we set off the sun was beating down and I was grateful for the layers of sun cream I had lathered on myself. There was no sign of any shade is sight just countless towers most of which had no roof so there was no escape from the heat for the entire day. This only added to the challenge of negotiating crumbly and extremely narrow paths whilst facing a sheer drop either side at all times, not for the faint hearted :)
It seemed never ending climbing up to the towers and back down to climb up to another one and so on but it was really rewarding as each time they were different and each had a different view. It was odd to think that there had been so many battles fought and attackers fended off where we were walking and at time a little spooky.
As we counted down from 27 we saw what would be our final ascent of the day up to the largest tower that we had seen. It was also one of the most preserved. It was a real struggle to push up to the final tower as we had been going for so long and the heat was so intense but we did it! We were allowed to have a short break to take in the views and some pictures and my eyes wandered along to the next watchtower which was actually guarded. Our guide told us that it was a real live army base and so we were not allowed to go any further. This was probably for the best as we still had to descend from the height we had scaled.

We set off down a path of sorts but really a track worn through the jungle and got scratched even more to add to the ones from the previous day! I managed to keep my footing, just, which was lucky as the slightest slip and it was a few hundred feet of a drop to the bottom. As Phil said it's a long way for an air ambulance to come and a long way to the nearest hospital, comforting! After a couple of hours descent sapping a lot of physical and mental strength we made it to flat ground again and the middle of a corn plantation which was huge! During a water stop I looked up and saw the stretch of Wall we had climbed up and it looked amazing and so so high up.
After a final push we got ourselves back to the haven of the air conditioned coach and after a ten minute drive we arrived at our lodgings for the evening. They were the most basic of the week so far but there was a shower and a bed so that was the main thing. After freshening up we went out to the village shops were we met some Hello People and bought some presents then it was time for dinner and another early night but not before we arranged our post trek travels with Michael, exciting times :)