North west for the British penguins

We are now heading westwards with our new guide Jack. He is total dude, dances with me in the middle of the road and doesn't mind us singing in public- in fact he joins in. Tonight he grossed us out by eating chicken's feet. They appear more meaty than I imagine and Ants has dared me to try one- not tonight though as I would like to keep my tasty supper in my stomach!

The scenery is so breathtaking here. What I would describe as raw nature- fewer signs of human activity and mountains surrounding us. It is very different to south china- the people have longer noses and some have green eyes. Also, the food is mainly noodle based and a refreshing change to rice.

I have refered to us as penguins for a reason and it is nothing to do with the Pingwu reference. In Lanzhou (a coupe of nights ago) we went for a wander and it wa raining. We both sported green ponchos to keep dry. The pavaments here are very slippery when wet and our foot atire i.e. flipflops don't have much grip. We both nearly went tit over arse a few times and realised that the only way to stay vertical was to shuffle along like a couple penguins in single file (we walk only on parts of the pavement that appear to provide us with more traction). The thought of either of us suffering a broken limb was enough to reduce our walk to the pace of a crawling baby, because if one of us breaks a bone, the other would have to drive the whole way back to england- I can tell you that this is our idea of a nightmare.

Today we drove along the Great Wall- not literally. I didn't know that it is about 5000km long and we were driving right next to it for most of the day. It was awesome. It is not how you imagine after perhaps having seen photos, but it is so tall and wide that old Genghis Khan must have found it a challenging obstacle. It was in a pretty tatty state for the most part, but still an imposing sight. Sometimes it continued undamaged for a mile and there were watch towers (I assume) at quite close intervals. It was a very special day.

I would love to write more, but I am about to get cut off and then will lose this blog and be unable to pot it. Hope to writ a mega blog soon and add more photos. Goodnight, Jo xoxoxo