journey to the west: the outer limits

I couldn’t do journey to the west last winter because of a succession of health problems, but Paula and I have already done this challenging ride together four times this winter. On the first occasion, we found that at one point the usual route was blocked. A new road had been under construction two years ago—a road to nowhere, it seemed to me—but it has now been completed:

The route we used to follow came down this road from a point just around the corner in the distance and then crossed the bridge over the storm drain on the right of this photo:

The road just left of the parked car was the continuation of the route.

We could have lifted our bikes over the crash barrier, but I thought: let’s see where this road leads to. I was right! It did lead nowhere, but just before it came to an end, there was a rough dirt road leading off to the right. It did seem to be merely providing access to a number of quasi-industrial sites, but you will never know for sure unless you check it out.

However, it wasn’t long before it too came to an end:

“Oh! look,” I said. “There’s a path”:

You don’t just assume that there are no forward options merely because motor vehicles can go no further (the path is directly in front of me in this image).

Because I’m left-handed, unless there’s a compelling reason to choose otherwise, I will always turn left when faced with a choice. However, the left-hand option merely leads to someone’s house; but the tricky right turn does provide an exit:

This is a strange path, with abrupt changes of direction that don’t appear to make any sense, although I’m sure there is a reason. At one point, there is a junction at which the obvious choice is ‘left’, simply because a right turn here points back towards the road, which suggests that it’s probably a dead end, because I’ve not seen any paths emerging onto ‘the road to nowhere’:

Soon after this junction, I recognized that we were approaching the narrow path that we recorded in YouTube video ‘journey to the west: narrow path #2’. The first two times we came this way, we turned right to follow that path, but then I thought that it would make a better ride if we turned left here instead and followed the original route backwards:

Unfortunately, the turn here is quite tricky, and when we tried to shoot a video, the first time we tried this option, Paula toppled over into the bushes on the left. She wasn’t hurt, fortunately, but the video of the incident will not be published!

However, we did manage to shoot a video last weekend:

It leads eventually to another cluster of quasi-industrial units, and there is a turn to a small village around 4:50 on the video, but it doesn’t lead anywhere else.

Close to where this video ends, I knew from earlier explorations in the area that there was a short Drainage Services access path running alongside a large storm drain, and further exploration seemed like a good idea. When this path came to an end, there was a rather broken path running across at right angles:

I opted to turn left here partly because turning right looked difficult because of the tight turn onto a steep ramp, even though it was probably heading in a more useful direction, and partly because I’d spotted what looked like a promising path on the other side of the storm drain. That path can be seen leading straight on in the following image, which is a still from the second video that we shot last weekend:

We usually shoot videos only of already established segments, but this path looked so good that I thought we might be able to record a first exploration of a new path. It didn’t work out that way. The path is indeed well made, unlike the broken paths that we more frequently encounter, and it goes a long way before reaching a fork:

The right-hand option is the one I chose on this occasion, but it eventually came to an end. A foray down the left-hand option had the same result. In both cases, an ‘organic’ farm was in the process of being established (I placed ‘organic’ in quote marks because I’m skeptical that any official accreditation will have been sought).

Because this attempt to record a first exploration of a new path ended in failure, it didn’t occur to me to try again with a straight-on run at the steep ramp mentioned above:

…but despite many paths and alleyways turning off the path that I chose to follow, which I ignored, eventually it reached a road, and we had established a new addition to journey to the west. This is the subject of the second video:

This video was recorded on only the second time that we followed this path, and I wasn’t sure, because of all the possible options, that I could repeat the route exactly. At some stage, however, I’m going to have to check out whether any of the paths joining this one lead anywhere useful. The main problem is that I will already have 35km on the clock when I reach this location, with a further 45km to get back to Fanling—if I include fish pond alley and the Tam Mei loop, both of which I consider unmissable—so my enthusiasm for further exploration in this area is likely to be quite dim.

another recently uploaded journey to the west video
This video follows the outward section of the journey from the summit of Ki Lun Shan Au (Saddle Pass) to the point where we stop to remove our sunglasses before passing through the PLA’s San Tin Barracks, just in case we arouse suspicion by continuing to wear them. The sharp left turn at the bottom of the hill is the start of accidental tourists, so named because when we attempted to shoot a video of a link path in this area, Paula missed the turn left at 3:09 (a right turn when coming in the opposite direction):

This section is an example of a surprisingly common phenomenon: a segment that we now follow in the opposite direction to that followed at the time of its original discovery.