on the money

My last post described a not entirely new addition to our regular Saturday bike ride, and this post is an account of another segment, the existence of which I already knew about, that we’ve added to the ride. I discovered the connection between Hang Tau Road and Kam Tsin Road, in the area between the Sheung Yue River and Fanling golf course, last winter, but I’d only ever ridden down the crucial section. However, I worked out that if it turned out to be possible to ride up that section, then instead of taking the shortest and most obvious route from Kwu Tung Road to the start of ‘oriental garden’, we could add about 1.5 kilometres to the ride by following Kam Tsin Road, then doubling back along Kam Hang Road to the narrow alleyway we call ‘oriental garden’.

The following images are stills from a video that I shot last week, with comments where appropriate. The start looks (and is) straightforward:

However, the alleyway narrows and begins to climb:

The route turns to the left beyond the building:

…and starts to climb again:

There is a sharp (and awkward) turn to the left in the distance:

A closer look at that turn:

It isn’t obvious from the following image, but there is a drain on the right of the path (you can see its continuation in the previous image), so if you’re careless here, you are certain to come off your bike:

The angle eases off before the path joins an unnamed and presumably unregistered road:

The rest of the route is straightforward, although as you can see, the condition of the road surface is poor:

The car in the distance marks the top of the hill:

…and is followed by a fast downhill section through an obvious industrial area:

Kam Tsin Road, which is soon reached, is not a through road, so it carries relatively little traffic:

I asked Paula what name we should give to this connection. She didn’t notice that we had been cycling along Kam Tsin Road, but where this road eventually joins Kam Hang Road, she did spot that we were passing through the outskirts of the village of Kam Tsin. And kam tsin is Cantonese for ‘gold money’, so the name would have to be cash-related. This diversion serves its purpose admirably, so it’s on the money!