I am here in Beijing with Laurence - a colleague from the UK.

Yesterday we did the unthinkable - and booked ourselves on an organised tour to the Great Wall.

First stop - the Ming Tombs - about 50km North West of Beijing itself.

As you can see it was drizzling and foggy.

Next stop - after lunch and shopping - was the Great Wall at Ba Da Ling itself.

We drove for just a few minutes and from nowhere Tolkeinesque mountains started to loom up through the mist. Very impressive.

We arrived and the snow started falling. I wanted to get a geocache - so we took the less travelled and much much steeper southern part of the wall.

As you can see - almost whiteout conditions.

The climb up was just slippery; going down was part farce, part winter sport. I’ll post a video of that later!

Here is a view during the summer to show the difference:

Finally - back into a very very wet Beijing for the evening.

We decided to avoid the local delicacies on sale in the hutong - pictures of those soon - but it was a festival - so fireworks, firecrackers - and kids with sparklers.