Well, this was our final full day in Beijing before the mammoth journey home... that entire journey it took to get here encapsulated into 10 hours or so. We'd booked a trip that went to the Ming Tombs and then the Great Wall at Badaling. Our tour guide was a real motormouth type; very friendly and charming and with plenty of (very old) jokes. Not a lot to see at the tombs, although the initial temple is impressive and genuinely old (unlike parts of the Forbidden City which had been rebuilt after various fires). The tomb itself is a hill - it hasn't been excavated as they have not yet got the technology to preserve the contents. Then there was an unexpected trip to a jade shop, which took ages as the Americans on the tour felt obliged to wield their plastic [Adrian notes: Americans don't seem to be able to spot tourist tat like we can]. We talked to a couple of nice Dutch blokes who had been on the last couple of trains with us; they were really pissed off about the jade trip as well, as it reduced the time available to us at the Great Wall.

After a somewhat mediocre lunch at the Friendship department store with free Baijiu (a kind of rice vodka... we and the Dutch guys swiped the bottles, as no one else seemed to want to try it) we went to the Wall, which is breathtaking... even more stupendous than the views we got from thet train a few days previously. We went up the steeper bit, which was quieter than the other side and continued about 1km before the route ended (the wall beyond there is ruined). As with everywhere else there were hundreds of people selling stuff... postcards, books and souvenirs. China has certainly grasped the horns of free enterprise with both hands.

We had planned to go to a concert that evening, but the traffic back into Beijing was so bad we didn't get back in time, and so having fortified ourselves with canapes and free beer at the hotel, we went for a stroll round the streets, including a load of food stalls selling all sorts of stuff... including deep fried scorpion and starfish.

So, after a gradual and ever-changing journey east, we now prepared to do the reverse in just ten hours or so. Our flight wasn't until 2:45pm, though, so once we'd packed, we went out for a last wander around Beijing's Dongcheng District, aiming to look at some of the traditional Hutongs (alleyways) where people still live and work in a parallel world seemingly untouched by the glitzy modern Beijing. The gradual spread of commercialism and westernisation is slowly erasing a lot of this history, but it's nice to see there are still plenty of Hutongs left in central Beijing. Walking down a wide shopping street full of designer labels and neon lights, a quick turning down an alleyway transports you into a timeless environment, where normal working class people live their daily lives, running small greengrocer's and butcher's shops, playing cards with friends and watching the world go by. It's no idyll of noble peasants (the electricity, gas and water supplies in the Hutongs are notoriously dangerous, and the sewers aren't exactly sweet-smelling) but it's an intriguing way to spend a couple of leisurely hours, sheltered from the hot sun by the graceful willow trees which hang over the tile roofs of the houses (some of them several hundred years old).

But it all had to come to an end. We took a taxi to the airport and boarded our flight back to London (transferring at Copenhagen). Now, my stature means that I'm not a big fan of flying, and my currently dodgy hip joint meant I wasn't looking forward to a 9/10-hour flight. I enjoy the actual flying, but hate the fact that my legs end up being crammed into the tiny amount of space. My only previous experience of flights longer than three or four hours was when we flew to Vancouver a few years ago with a fairly low-budget airline... I felt horribly cramped. This time, though, we'd struck lucky. Even though our tickets (London to St Petersburg and then back from Beijing) were pretty cheap, the quality of service we got from SAS was probably the best I've ever experienced, especially on the return journey. Let's hear it for SAS!

Back to reality now, though... time to type up this journal, wash some clothes and contemplate the return to work. Bah!