the road to nowhere

Although I first visited the San Tin area two years ago (New Fields), my primary focus of attention was the fish ponds in the area (Pond Life). However, last winter, I decided to check out Tun Yu Road, which runs from Castle Peak Road—a major traffic artery—to an unmanned crossing point into China, although I didn’t know that this was the case until I reached it.

There was also a second road, which branches off Tun Yu Road before the latter narrows from a conventional width to a single-track road with passing places:

This is a fine bridge to be crossing what is merely a small river, so I wanted to see where it would lead to. However, I’d barely turned the corner off the bridge:

…when I came to a point where several large trucks had been parked on both sides of the road, so I concluded, wrongly, that it merely led to yet more quasi-industrial sites—there are several on the wider section of Tun Yu Road—and I decided to turn back.

However, back in October, I was cycling in the area and decided to take another look. This is a satellite photo of the area:

The bridge at the start of the road is circled. The cruciform shape in the centre of the image is a major freight crossing point into and out of China, which is fenced off along the sides (the fence can be seen in several of the photos below). The MTR’s Lok Ma Chau spur line can be seen snaking its way to the terminus in the northwest corner of the image, while Tun Yu Road is clearly visible to the west of the crossing point.

And this time there were no parked wagons, so I continued:

There is one quasi-industrial site along this road, but it doesn’t appear to be particularly busy. This is the turn-off, to the left, to that site:

Just around the corner seen in the previous photo, there is an official-looking building:

According to Google Maps, a notoriously unreliable source, this is the ‘Department of Health (Outbound) Office’, but this is what is actually written on the sign on the wall:

Customs Detector Dog Division
Lok Ma Chau Dog Base

Immediately after passing the Customs building, there is a large pond that is choked with a plant that I’ve seen in some of the disused fish ponds along the frontier road. I can’t provide a specific identification, although I imagine that it is some type of reed:

And then it is a guaranteed quiet road:

There are two things to note about the previous image: the floodlight—these occur every 15–20 metres, although I can’t imagine their being turned on at night nowadays—and the speed limit sign. I can easily exceed 8km/hr, even on a bike!

Whatever hit this pole was probably also exceeding the speed limit:

And this is a final view of the pond, just before it comes to an end:

The following sequence of photos gives a good idea of how quiet the continuation of the road is:

…and how pleasant it is to cycle along.

Believe it or not, this is a passing place:

On a recent foray down this road, Paula and I encountered three dogs, which I assumed were feral and which I also assumed had crossed the border from China, for reasons that I explain below. Yesterday, while taking the photos for this report, I spotted two more. The first dived into the undergrowth the moment it saw me, but the second merely ambled down the road, giving me a chance to take this photo:

The railings in the distance lead up to a bridge over a slime-filled tributary to the river that runs parallel to this road on the left, while the next photo was taken from the bridge, looking back in the opposite direction. It shows the Lok Ma Chau spur line passing overhead:

And this is where the road eventually leads to:

I took the previous photo on my first foray down this road, but some serious clearance of vegetation has taken place since:

If you look closely at the next photo, you will see that there is a hole in the fence closest to the camera position:

The sign in the middle of the photo proclaims that this seemingly abandoned road has a name: Sai Kwo Road. This does seem bizarre, given that we cycle along many roads that are unnamed. But this sign is repeated at regular intervals along the road—you can see it on both sides of the road in my first photo above.

And here’s another hole:

The fence here is in extremely poor condition, and there are at least half a dozen other holes like the ones pictured, which is why I think the dogs we’ve seen came through one of them—they’re unlikely to have crossed the river, or followed the road from its beginning, especially as there’s nothing for them to eat here.

So if this road leads nowhere, why do we continue to cycle along it. That should be obvious: it makes a pleasant interlude between the more demanding sections of our ride, and it adds a couple of kilometres to the overall distance cycled!