via caritas

I never used to do any cycling on Sundays, because all the places that I was familiar with were clogged with people who had hired bikes for the day. Most of them had little or no idea about what they were doing and therefore represented serious moving hazards with their abrupt changes of direction and total lack of awareness of whatever was happening around them. I’d never ventured east of Fanling either, but that situation changed at the beginning of 2016, when I learned that an area to the northeast of Fanling that had been part of the so-called ‘frontier closed area’ and was therefore off-limits to casual visitors like myself had been opened up to the public.

I started my exploration by heading north, because I’d once ventured down a road until I’d been confronted by a sign warning me that I was about to enter the closed area, and in order to do so, I needed a permit. Naturally, I turned back, but it seemed an obvious place to begin. This first foray produced a circuit that came back into Fanling from the east, but it was entirely on roads, which wasn’t what I wanted.

However, I remember coming back home with a tale about a ‘six-hill switchback’, which I wanted to show Paula. It was on the road on which I’d started my exploration, and on this second occasion, I didn’t fancy continuing as I’d done on my first foray, so we rode ‘the switchback’ in the opposite direction, which in retrospect is a much better option.

It took quite a long time, and a lot of exploration, but I finally managed to work out a coherent bike ride, which, naturally, I named ‘the final frontier’. Oddly enough, this ride is only really viable on Sundays because of the large amount of industrial traffic on key road sections during weekdays, even though I follow off-road paths as much as possible.

I had to revise my original route to avoid a village that was home to a psychotic dog that attacked cyclists, with the likely encouragement of the villagers, but I didn’t think there was anything else I could add. Of course, that didn’t mean that I stopped looking. There is a region to the east of Ping Che Road, the main north–south road through the area, that I’d explored earlier from further east but concluded, erroneously, that there was no through route.

However, last November I was cycling north along a short section of Ping Che Road that is unavoidable when I passed a turn-off to the Caritas Home for the Elderly. I decided to see whether it led anywhere else. It did!

There was a problem though: the return route to the start of this segment was entirely on roads, so I didn’t do it again until a couple of months ago with Paula, who usually goes to church on Sundays but has had to make do with a virtual service during current covid restrictions and was therefore available for a bike ride. I wanted to show her the new path, which was certainly worth a visit, even though it didn’t fit well into the overall sequence.

However, we had just passed through the village of Ping Yeung—its village arch marks the end of the first video—when, on the spur of the moment, I decided to turn right onto a side road that I thought might be a better option. I had expected merely to avoid some of the busier roads, but I was surprised—and delighted—to discover another path that led to a group of houses that marked the transition from country path to dirt road on my earlier discovery:

Narrow country paths always present different problems, depending on the direction of travel (see Two-Way Fun), so it was obvious that we would then backtrack along the earlier path. Incidentally, if you watch the video, look out for the dog that rushes out as we pass the group of houses. It’s of the all-bark-no-bite variety, although it is certainly enthusiastic.

And that’s ‘via caritas’, which has become one of the highlights of ‘the final frontier’.

other final frontier videos
Ping Yeung Exit
Chow Tin Exit
The Corpse Road
The Switchback