not such a grand day out

The weather hasn’t been good lately, with a lot of unseasonal rain, but I did manage to get out cycling last Tuesday. Paula was going to be busy, so it was a rare opportunity to get out on my own. I decided that I would go ‘out west’ and see whether it was possible to do all the narrow path segments that I’d discovered over the past couple of years in the Yuen Long area in a single day.

We no longer follow the bike ride that I originally described in Journey to the West, after the Chinese literary classic, which followed a long, meandering series of back roads and involved very little when we eventually got there, but nowadays we prefer to reach the Kam Tin River as quickly as possible. That point is already 25km from home, and that is via the most direct route to get there. This is the photo that I took on Tuesday upon reaching the river:

This is a typical estuarine scene, with mangroves on both sides of the river downstream from this point, although I’d never previously seen the water level this low. And there are usually many more birds here than you can see in this photo. You may just be able to make out some of the skyscrapers in Shenzhen in the distance.

The first narrow path on my itinerary after crossing the river via the Hung Mo Bridge was ‘the hospital path’, so named because it passes Pok Oi Hospital on the right towards the end. However, this video doesn’t include a very tricky steep ramp that is now part of the detour starting at 2.14:

My next objective was to cross Castle Peak Road via a footbridge, which you can just see at the end of the video. After this, my route passes through the village of Yeung Uk:

Not all the turns are obvious, and until I’d memorized the route, I was continually going down alleys that turned out to be dead ends. My route continued along the path to the start of ‘the big tree temple circuit’, which reaches this nineteenth-century landmark via one route and returns via another. This segment is on my list of videos to shoot this winter.

It was time to head back towards Castle Peak Road, following a path for which I’ve not yet come up with a suitable name. Paula and I found out recently that the original exit section is currently heavily overgrown, but last week I discovered an alternative, which I remember thinking on this occasion: “Bloody hell! This is difficult.” Shooting a video of this section is a top priority for the future.

This section of Castle Peak Road is unusual in having cycle tracks on both sides of the road, and I followed the one on my side back towards Hung Mo Bridge. However, just before the cycle track starts across the bridge, there is a flight of steps leading down to Ko Po Road, a Drainage Services Department (DSD) access road that runs along the west side of the Kam Tin River. The existence of a long flight of steps might seem like a tough obstacle, but we always come this way, because we simply dismount and bump our bikes down the steps on their back wheels.

Most DSD access roads in the Yuen Long area are widely used by local drivers who have scant regard for cyclists as rat runs and are therefore dangerous—I’ve had a few heated arguments with drivers here who have made unnecessarily close passes at speed and have been saluted, therefore, with a raised middle finger. So I avoid these roads now. But Ko Po Road is a dead end, and as you can see with the following sequence of photos, the scenery is spectacular. Not to be missed!

This is a view looking downstream after following the road for a short distance:

Hung Mo Bridge is the nearer of the two bridges you can see—the far one carries the expressway that links all the towns of the New Territories. The apartment blocks on the right of the photo are Park Yoho. You can tell that these are posh apartments by the height of the blocks—the blocks in a downmarket estate would be more than twice as high! And I believe that there is a station here on Hong Kong’s connection to China’s high-speed rail network, which probably isn’t operating at present because of cross-border restrictions.

And this is the view upstream, taken from the same place:

The mountain in the distance is Tai Mo Shan (‘big mist mountain’), the highest in Hong Kong at 957 metres. However, the reason for taking the photo should be obvious: the spectacular viaduct (and its reflection), which carries what I’ve described previously as the West Rail Line. It was built by the Kowloon–Canton Railway (KCR) to connect the towns in the west of the New Territories to Kowloon. The KCR, which once operated the only railway line in Hong Kong, has since been taken over by the Mass Transit Railway (MTR), which has extended the line through Kowloon to link up with the Ma On Shan Line, also built by the KCR. And the line carried by the viaduct has now been renamed the Tuen Ma Line (because it connects the towns of Tuen Mun and Ma On Shan).

I stopped at several points along the road because there were a large number of egrets on the near side of the channel (they usually congregate on the far side). The next two photos were taken from distance as far as the birds are concerned, but you can see that the river divides into two separate channels in the middle distance. You’ll never guess what these two tributaries are called: Kam Tin River North (on the left) and Kam Tin River South!

This is a closer view of the birds in the previous photo, looking back downstream:

Most of these individuals are greater egrets, but after examining an enlarged version of this photo, I could see a few lesser egrets. Despite the names, I’ve found that there is little in size to distinguish between the two species. Only the colour of the beak differs (yellow: greater egret; black: lesser egret). Incidentally, by clicking on a photo here, you will get a full-screen version.

The next two photos provide a closer view of the birds here:

…and this is an enlarged version of the central part of the previous photo:

This photo was taken from the same point as the previous one but was angled slightly to the right:

I thought that I’d taken enough photos by this time, but a short distance further on, I just had to stop to take one of the ducks on a small mud bank:

Needless to say, wildlife photographers, with their 400mm telephoto lenses, were out in force here. They probably looked on someone taking photos with a mobile phone with a touch of superiority, but I’m happy with the photos I took, and I had other things to do. After a short break at a bus shelter in the village of Shui Mei, it was time to tackle the only narrow path that dates back to my original exploration of the area in 2013. I can still remember that day: the first 300 metres is a smooth concrete path more than 1.5 metres wide, but it suddenly degenerates into a typical country path, twisting and turning. It went on for so long that I remember wondering when I was going to reach a dead end—the usual outcome when I venture down a new path—but then I saw a car parked in someone’s yard and knew that I’d found a through route.

However, a couple of years ago, I was exploring paths leading off Chi Ho Road, which runs alongside Kam Tin River North. And I found a path that leads to the one that I’ve just described. Like many other paths that I’ve found over the years, we now cycle along this path in the opposite direction to the way it was originally explored. The point at which this new path joins the original path is close to the end of the latter, so it provides an excellent extension. The turn off the original path occurs at 4.08 on the video:

If you watch this video, you will notice another path off to the right just before the end, which I checked out first, because it looked more promising, but it was a dead end.

And then it was time for the outer limits paths, so named because it isn’t possible to go any further in this direction. There are five paths, numbered in the order they were discovered rather than the order they are followed. I started with path #3, which I’d already done with Paula this winter. On this occasion, I encountered three local people who seemed surprised to encounter a gweilo on a bike, apparently far from his natural habitat.

Next would be paths #1 and #2, which I hadn’t done so far this winter. The original path #1 is no longer possible—someone constructed a big and probably illegal industrial gate across the dirt track that leads to the original start—but I soon found an alternative start:

The original path joins from the left at 1.21.

Path #2 is the most interesting of the five outer limits paths, not least because of the variations that are possible:

If you watch this video, it’s possible to turn left at the T-junction at 3.17, although that option involves riding over a stony area that isn’t particularly comfortable. It may not be obvious from the video, but there is a big drop off the left-hand side of the path that you need to pay close attention to if you choose to turn right at this junction, which I did on this occasion.

When the path emerges onto a road at the end, we always double back to the start of a second path, which emerges onto the path we’ve just been following at 4.19 on the video. We then follow the first path backwards and turn left at the right turn at 4.04 on the video. This path eventually rejoins the first path at the T-junction at 1.45, where the original path turns left. The original path is then followed backwards to the start.

If all this sounds rather complicated, this is a video of the second path:

The outer limits path #2 is followed by a lengthy road section leading to the start of path #5, which links a recently constructed unnamed road that I’ve described elsewhere as ‘the road to nowhere’ and Kong Tau Road, which is also a dead end.

I don’t know why I turned left when I reached Kong Tau Road in the video, because it’s necessary to turn right to reach the start of path #4. And this is where things became not so grand. There are no speed bumps on major roads, but they are ubiquitous on narrow single-track roads like this one. It’s always possible to avoid them on a bike, but on this occasion, there was a gap of no more than 25cm wide on the left of a speed bump that I tried to avoid. That wouldn’t usually be a problem, because most speed bumps, like the ones in the village where I live, slope down to the side. However, this speed bump had vertical sides, and I carelessly allowed the sidewall of my front tyre to scrape along this vertical surface. My bike was immediately thrown violently to the right, and I lost control. My right hand took the full force of the impact on the road, and I felt sure that I must have broken something. I struggled to get up, and it was obvious that I had to abort the remainder of the ride and simply get home.

I thought that I could ride one-handed, and I did manage to reach Shui Mei again, but I had to stop because of traffic, and it was too painful to restart, because it’s necessary to have both hands on the handlebar to do so. So I pushed my bike the rest of the way home, a distance well in excess of 25km. I did stop briefly to take this photo of the Kam Tin River, which I thought was interesting because it shows the outflow from a large nullah (storm drain):

I reached home just as it was getting dark, and Paula’s first reaction was that I must go to A&E at North District Hospital immediately (I had planned to go the following morning). So we hailed a taxi and checked in at A&E at about 8 o’clock. I was assessed by the triage station almost immediately and classified as ‘semi-urgent’, #4 on a five-point scale. I noted from the electronic display board, which showed only #4 and #5 patients, that there were around 150 ticket numbers ahead of mine!

And that wasn’t the only problem. There were no new calls for numbers on the display board for extended periods, during which an announcement on the PA system informed those waiting that ‘resuscitation was in progress’, so there would be some delays. I was mildly amused by the pronunciation of ‘progress’ as if it was a verb rather than a noun. Every medical facility that I attend regularly has the same female Scottish voice, which I suspect is artificial because I’ve heard it elsewhere thank people for their ‘cooperation’, pronouncing –oo– as a single vowel, which no native speaker would ever do.

Eventually, I was called to see a doctor at 10 o’clock the following morning, a wait of 14 hours. Several patients had complained about the long wait times while I was there—some had been waiting since the previous morning, with nothing to eat or drink—but everything proceeded quickly once I’d seen a doctor. He despatched me for an X-ray, which showed no fractures, so the eventual verdict was a sprained wrist. I was fitted with a plastic splint and discharged at 12 o’clock.

Although it was a relief not to have to spend time as an in-patient, I’ve no idea how long I will have to forgo cycling. And it’s certainly frustrating not to be able to get out on my bike, especially now that the weather has perked up after the miserable weather last month.
update, 9/1/2023
When I went back to the A&E Department two weeks later, the doctor was surprised to see that the swelling in my wrist had not subsided, so he ordered another X-ray. This revealed a hairline fracture at the base of the radius. And when, two weeks after that, I asked the doctor when I could expect to start cycling again, he said two months. Bloody hell! So I will have been out of action for at least three months, and I imagine that it will be quite a while after that before I can consider attempting the ride I’ve described here again.