supernova

I never used to go cycling on Sundays. Try cycling from Shatin to Taipo at weekends and you will see why. Hiring a bike for the day is a popular weekend pastime in Hong Kong, and the dedicated cycle track between these two major conurbations is clogged with ‘weekend wobblers’, who are invariably in large groups and have zero awareness of other cyclists. And the cycle track is so wide that two double-decker buses travelling towards each other would not need to slow down as they pass—it was probably once a road—yet trying to overtake a large group is extremely fraught, because these people are all over the place and seem incapable of travelling in a straight line or keeping to their side of the road.

However, this changed at the beginning of 2016, when the area northeast of Fanling was opened to casual visitors—it had previously been part of the so-called ‘frontier closed area’. Naturally, I wanted to check out the cycling possibilities. The ride through the area that I’ve constructed has developed over the past few years as I’ve added more narrow paths to the road sections, but there is one road that I’ve included for the past two years even though I’m forced to turn back after a few kilometres.

Lin Ma Hang Road roughly follows the border all the way to the eastern extremity of the New Territories, but there is still a police road block on the road, presumably because what lies beyond remains a closed area. Nowadays, I cycle along this road partly to see whether the road block has been removed, because I would love to see what lies beyond it.

Anyway, I was cycling along Lin Ma Hang Road yesterday when I spotted a stand of the yellow flowers that I featured in Starburst. Naturally, I stopped to take a photograph:

I then took three more photos as I continued along the road:

After about 100 metres, the display came to an end at a rough track, and I thought that if I followed it, I might be able to take a few photos from behind:

The trees in the background of the next three photos are on the far side of the road and provide a reference for how extensive this stand of flowers actually is:

The bushes on the left in the third photo are in the process of being overwhelmed by mile-a-minute. And this is a closer view of that photo:

The yellow flowers in the next two photos are partially obscured by grass flowers and sundry other vegetation:

I’ve included the final photo to show the track from where I took the previous seven photos:

I found this display to be much more impressive than that featured in Starburst. Do you agree?

postscript
There are a couple of unnamed roads leading off Lin Ma Hang Road, and Fortissimo is an account of what Paula and I found at the end of one of them.