WildWall
Experiences
The Lindesays
William Lucas Lindesay OBE
CEO — Chief Exploring Officer
William Lindesay OBE is a geographer by training, and an honorary senior research fellow in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Liverpool, his alma mater.
Using his 2 hr 39 minute marathon, 69-minute half-marathon and 31:30 10K capabilities, William took up ‘real cross country’ by running Hadrian’s Wall from Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway, in 1984. That ‘Wall Fever’ directed him to China when in 1987 he became the first foreigner to make a journey on foot along 'the Great Wall' (as the world knows it today) — a distance of 2,470 kms. To date, as of early 2025, William has spent around 38 years in China.
William founded ‘International Friends of the Great Wall’ in 2002. He has authored numerous books on the Great Wall, published by Oxford and Harvard university presses and Penguin Random House among others, and presented his own Great Wall documentary on National Geographic Channel. In China William has curated The Great Wall Revisited exhibition at two premier Beijing venues. He is recognised worldwide and within China as the leading non-Chinese expert in the field of Great Wall Studies.
For his pioneering and perseverant conservation work, William has been dubbed as ‘Guardian of the Great Wall’ by the Chinese media. He has received many prestigious awards, not only for his exploration, research and conservation work, but also for his engaging methods of presenting ‘the Great Wall the way he has discovered it’ to the world.
William’s highest national honours include award of Permanent Residency of China for contributions to protecting the Great Wall, the Friendship Medal of China (1998), the Beijing Great Wall Friendship Award (2008) and Officer, Order of the British Empire (OBE) from HM Queen Elizabeth II (2006).
In recent years William has received numerous ‘domestic’ awards, including him being a ‘Good- Example Setting Citizen in Huairou District, Beijing’ for litter picking, Honorary Villager of Xizhazi (the hamlet where the Lindesays have their Wall-side home) and ‘Hello Beijjng Great Wall Ambassador’ by the Beijing Tourism Board.
Internationally, William’s most recent high-level awards include The Special Award from the Royal Society of Asian Affairs (2016) and his inclusion as a luminary member of ‘The Explorers Club 50, Class of 2022’ in New York City.
Qi Lindesay
COE — Chief of Everything
Qi Lindesay studied history at Xi’an’s NorthWest University, and is definitely the woman behind William’s success, honours and books. A great adventurer herself, Qi succumbed to William’s third proposal of marriage in 1987, and bravely went to Britain in 1988 with her husband — when people from the PRC were as rare as pandas.
Mrs Lindesay recently published her first book, on the experience of giving her children an alternative-style ‘international education’ by way of extensive family travel.
Qi is in charge of anything at WildWall that requires diplomacy, relationship management, planning, logistics or practicalities.
James Lindesay
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James Lindesay, also known widely as Jim, and Jimmy by his many Glaswegian friends, is a graduate of World History from Peking University (PKU). The subject of his bachelor degree dissertation was the Jesuit-led Kangxi-period geographical survey of China during the early 18th century, from which the detailed geography of the Ming Great Wall was elucidated for the first time.
Jimmy started to spend the majority of his weekends at the Wall in his family’s residence there from the age of four, accompanying William and his WildWall guests on walks to the Wall soon after. At the age of 13 in 2007 he participated in his first full-length journey along the Ming Great Wall when the Lindesay family made a Jeep safari along the Wall for 6 weeks. In 2016 he was part of the family team ‘flying’ the Great Wall, a project that generated the world’s first internationally-broadcast documentary showing the diversity of the Great Wall along its whole length from the air. In 2018 he was a crew member of a 120-day length expedition along the Wall organised by WildWall for a South African team led by David Greir, when he multi-tasked as a drone pilot, photographer, interpreter and driver. Jimmy has also participated in all three of the Lindesay’s ‘Genghis Khan Wall Expeditions’ to Mongolia’s Omnogovi and Dornod provinces in 2011, 2012 and 2016. All these experiences were good preparations for the ‘2 Brothers Great Wall’ journey of 2022 when Jim and his brother Thomas made a journey of more than 3,800 km along the line of the Ming Great Wall, overcoming and side stepping all kinds of ‘covid’ obstacles.
James married his Peking University classmate Elise in 2017 and they have a baby son, Marcus.
Thomas
Lindesay
Thomas Lindesay is a graduate of international relations from Peking University (PKU).
Tommy was first carried up to the Great Wall at the age of 6 months, and before his first birthday he had camped beside it. Since then the dust of the Wall has never been out of his fingernails. As well as participating in hundreds of WildWall Weekends, Tommy has made three full-length journeys along the Ming Great Wall — by Jeep (2007), ‘in the air’ flying drones (2016), and on foot (2022-23). He also participated in two of the Lindesay’s Genghis Khan Wall Expeditions, in Mongolia.
At the age of 16 Tommy featured alongside his father and brother in a widely watched BBC news feature on droning the Great Wall. Tommy went on to edit the Depictograph (Lindesay edition) of WildWall’s 2016 archive of drone footage and presented it in a stunning 52-minute length documentary entitled ‘The Great Wall: The Greatest Views’ which is shown exclusively to guests participating on WildWall Weekends.
Tommy is a keen historian and has travelled to more than 50 countries. He is trained in First Response and has practiced his first-aid skills at athletic events and on the high-street. He enjoys winter swimming in the frozen lakes of Beijing and hasn’t taken a hot shower since October 2016.
As a keen athlete himself and has participated in road races, trail runs and various Spartan events. He is a certified Spartan Hurricane Heat Krypteia (ethos, attitude and skills instructor) for designing and running endurance events. He assisted and filmed the 60-hour non-stop Spartan Agoge 003 at the Great Wall (2016), the Spartan Agoge 010 on the Mongolian Steppe (2018), and competed himself in the gruelling Greek Islands Agoge event in 2019. In 2024 Tommy spent timeout in the Tanzanian bush with the Hadzabe people, mastering various native bushcraft skills, an experience which he followed with an ascent of Mt. Kilamanajaro.
Thomas, along with his brother Jimmy faced the ultimate obstacle race in China when they decide to set off all the way across CovidChina to follow the Ming Dynasty Great Wall from Jiayuguan to Shanhaiguan and then on to Hushan, Dandong, the true eastern end of the Wall. Their journey, ‘2 Brothers Great Wall’, is documented in 22 episodes on the Youtube channel entitled ‘The Lindesay Brothers’.
Thomas Lindesay is the youngest person to have made a journey along he full length of the Great Wall.
(Aide de Camp — ADC)
