Unless you have been living in Outer Mongolia for the past year or so it will not have escaped your notice that the Medway Emerald CSC has been extremely active in raising funds for Kent Air Ambulance Trust and one bright idea was to send club member Mark Fettes (that ’s me) off on a sponsored trek along the Great Wall of China. After ten months of numerous fundraising events at the club and regular training by marching up an down Medway Mound (the hill in Gillingham by the Strand!) we had raised the minimum sponsorship and I thought I was ready to face the task in hand.

As you can see from the photo, I got there okay but there was many an occasion when I wasn ’t sure I would be making it back without the aid of Kent Air Ambulance Trust or its Chinese counterpart! The organisers kept stressing it was ‘challenging’ but no amount of training would have prepared me for what lay ahead.

First there was the heat, up to 48^oC at times and there’s not much in the way of shade up on the Wall. Then there’s all the kit one has to carry with them - a minimum of 2 litres of water, food for the day, waterproofs (not that we saw any rain!), first aid kit, sun cream, spares of everything, a backpack to carry it all in and for me the all important camera. As the week wore on, the books and iPod that seemed so essential at the outset found themselves being left back at the lodge along with anything else I could shed to lighten the load!

The real killer though was the inclines: very little is actually level or flat so you are either walking up/down at angles of up to 70^o or negotiating steps - as many as 1100 at a time - worn smooth or even away by centuries of feet tramping over them!

My sole consolation was that I wasn’t the only one finding it hard going - even the guys half my age were red faced, sweating and puffing and panting like dogs after a vigourous run. And to think I thought raising the sponsorship would be the tough part! But then, if was as easy as Celtic coasting to anoher league title then it wouldn ’t be so much of a challenge or such a memorable experience.

And it was certainly a memorable experience, not just for the physical demands it made on me. It ’s quite staggering - and believe me, I staggered many times, without the aid of Magners - to behold something that in parts is 7000 years old, to marvel at just how they managed to build it without the mechanical advances of the modern world. The scenery, the seemingly endless vistas, the undulations in varying shades of green was breath taking (that ’s why I was puffing, honest).

It was also a very humbling experience at times. We might moan about our lot and how our lives could be better but most of us live in luxury compared to the majority of Chinese. Despite it being the fastest growing economy in the world there is still a great disparity between the haves and the have nots. Beijing and Xian could pass for just about any city in Europe but beyond the city walls and the into the outlying villages, millions still live in very basic conditions - living in huts, no electricity, laundry is done in a neaby stream that ’s lttle more than an open sewer, some living their entire life in the remote areas in which they were born. But I didn ’t hear a single complaint.

But it didn’t matter how remote the region - they’d all heard about Glasgow Celtic Football Club and now they know about he Medway Emerald too. I didn ’t like to be the one to break it to them that Roy Keane retired over a year ago though....

The food was fantastic, even for someone as fastidious (that’s fussy bugger) as me although I did draw the line at trying skewered scorpion or boiled testicles (no, I don ’t know whose!). The Peking Duck Banquet to celebrate completing the trek was simply out of this world and I was so happy to be sat at the table with all the vegetarians. And beer, tasted great, worked out to about 67p per pint, not that I sampled much of it - was a hard enough task without attempting it whilst nursing a hangover!

I thought I saw Walter Smith checking out the Terracotta Warriors; rumour was he wanted to sign some as they were younger and more mobile than his current backline.