journey to the west: the outer limits #3

When I established the bike ride I named ‘journey to the west’ (after a Chinese literary classic) in 2013, it was a straightforward out-and-back excursion, with a short circuit around the Kam Tin area at the most westerly point of the ride. However, it didn’t take me long to find alternative segments to parts of the return journey, together with a detour through the fish ponds west of Fairview Park and a circuit around the Tam Mei valley, which the original route merely touched.

I also improved the tour around the Kam Tin area with a couple of narrow paths, but until last winter, I hadn’t added anything else to the ride for several years. However, the trigger for a renewed bout of exploration was a new road, which I facetiously named ‘a road to nowhere’, because it seemed that it was likely to lead nowhere. In fact, it appears to have been built to provide access to an MTR emergency escape facility—Hong Kong’s high-speed rail link to the rest of China passes through the area, deep underground. However, the existence of the road, once opened, prompted dozens of quasi-industrial sites to spring up, probably illegally, around the end of the road.

Anyway, in December 2019, Paula and I found that a crash barrier on a bend on the then newly opened road meant that we could no longer continue along our established route. We decided to see where the road led to, and we found a rough track through the cluster of quasi-industrial premises. It ended in an open area, from where there was a path. Of course, we followed that and were delighted to discover that it provided a through route to a village and another road that would bring us back to the established route.

However, at one point, this road crosses a large nullah (storm drain), and there is a side road leading along it to the left. We decided to follow that, and where it came to an end, a path continued along the nullah. This path too came to an end at a T-junction with an extremely rough path. We turned right, and despite several possible options, the route we took eventually led back to the road. I decided to name these paths ‘the outer limits’, because they are as far from home as it’s possible to get.

A few weeks later, while Paula was away, I decided to check out a possible path that I’d noticed a long time earlier but never got around to investigating. That also provided a through route to the ‘road to nowhere, and we shot a video when Paula returned—we’d already videoed the first two paths. When I watched the video, I noticed what appeared to be a particularly spectacular firecracker vine at a fork in the road. I hadn’t noticed it when cycling, because it was located a short distance along the left-hand fork, and our route took the right-hand fork. And I’m not in the habit of looking around when cycling, because I’m focused on what is directly in front of me.

By the time I watched the video, it was too late to take any photos of this firecracker vine last year, but it was definitely top of the agenda for this January. I took several photos, two of which I used in Jeepers Creepers #3. And I described what happened a couple of weeks later, having stopped at the same location, when we discovered yet another new path, in Crash!

The remainder of this post is an introduction to the video we shot of the new path, ‘the outer limits: path #4’, on Saturday. This is the start:

There is nothing difficult here, but this junction requires that a choice be made:

It’s an easy choice though, because turning left here would merely return to the road we’ve just left behind or, more likely, be just another dead end.

The choice at the next junction is less straightforward. If you cross the footbridge on the right and turn immediately left, you will, within a short distance, arrive at the Taoist temple that I described in Crash! From there, it is possible to reach Kong Tai Road (the only named road in the immediate area) by a road that leads to the temple. If you cross the bridge but then turn right, the path does go a long way, but it eventually peters out.

Turning left here is therefore the preferred option.

The next choice to make isn’t long in coming:

Continuing on the main path does lead to Kong Tai Road, but a turn left here is much more ‘interesting’. For a start, this route passes an unusual house, with a recessed balcony and a covered verandah, both of which are uncommon features of village houses:

There is also the house’s name. Naming individual houses is common in the UK—there are dozens of named houses in my home town of Penrith—but I cannot recall another example here in Hong Kong’s countryside. The name roughly translates as ‘Wing’s Fragrant Residence’.

This path is much narrower than what has gone before, and it twists and turns all over the place:

Of course, this doesn’t mean that it’s difficult. It’s just more fun.

So that’s the new path. And this is the full video:

We had planned to follow this up by shooting a video of an enhanced version of ‘the outer limits: path #2’, which does have a few difficult moments, but I hadn’t fully charged the camera battery, so that will be a project for the next time we come this way.

footnote
If you enjoyed watching this video, then you will probably like these too:

Journey to the West: the Outer Limits
Journey to the West: the Outer Limits #2

Incidentally, I’ve numbered these paths according to the order in which they were discovered, but the order in which we ride them is #3, #4, #1, #2.