Well. Yet again, I assumed wrongly. Having seen so many pictures of the Great Wall of China filled with tourists from side to side as far as the eye could see. I’d steeled myself for crowds.

However, there's a lot of wall in the Great Wall. We drove a long way out of polluted Beijing, then walked to a part of the Wall that was almost overgrown in places with shrubs and weeds, and incredibly quiet.

It was empty, crumbly, overgrown and magnificent. How lucky we were, simply to be there.