peak viewing

“Let’s go up the Peak,” suggested Paula recently.

Victoria Peak, the highest summit on Hong Kong Island, is the only major mountain in Hong Kong that I don’t know the Chinese name of. However, it’s always been simply ‘the Peak’, hence the wording of Paula’s suggestion. How to get there is the first problem. We can get a train from Fanling to Admiralty station on the island side (this line used to terminate at Hung Hom, on Kowloon side, but was extended by the MTR a few years ago), followed by a short walk to Central. From here, if you’re a tourist, you will probably take the Peak Tram (actually a funicular railway), but we always take the bus, mainly because the views are far superior—on the tram, you’re tilted backwards at an obscene angle, so you can’t see much, although if you’ve never tried it, then you should. Just once though.

The bus terminates next to the upper terminus of the tram, so there’s no effect on what you might want to do next. It is possible to continue uphill on foot, although the actual summit of the Peak is inaccessible because it houses a radio station. We always start by walking along Harlech Road, which contours the southern side of the Peak. There are occasional views to the south, but nothing particularly impressive. And despite the crowds around the tram terminus, it’s relatively quiet on this road, with few people and almost no traffic:

I never notice at what point we find ourselves on Lugard Road, which crosses the northern slopes of the Peak with no major gradients, ending eventually at our starting point. However, according to the government map Harlech Road continues straight on where Lugard Road branches off to the right somewhere around the col that separates the Peak from nondescript higher ground to the west. The last time we visited the Peak, we encountered a couple of young wild pigs around the col, and I shot quite an intimate video:

The individual that accounted for the bulk of the time in this video was probably expecting to be fed. Incidentally, I hadn’t realized that there are wild pigs on the island side, although I’ve seen many of these creatures in the New Territories.

I’d carelessly neglected to charge my phone before this excursion, and we spent some time in Hong Kong Park, where I took more than 60 photos, before catching the bus to the Peak, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when my phone decided to switch itself off to conserve power as we walked along Harlech Road. Consequently, I asked Paula to take some photos whenever a gap appeared through the trees as we walked along Lugard Road. What follows is a selection of her photos, with occasional explanatory comments from me.

The first two photos are views of what might be called the ‘western approaches’ to the harbour:

Almost all the high-rise blocks that you can see in the foreground of these photos are residential buildings. The buildings in the distance in the second photo are part of the town of Tsuen Wan, the northern terminus of the MTR’s Tsuen Wan Line to Central, one of the first lines to be constructed in what is now a very extensive network.

And this was our first view of the harbour, with a glimpse of the building that dominates the view towards Kowloon:

I don’t know the name of the building, which is located on land reclaimed from the sea since the handover to Chinese rule in 1997. The entire reclaimed area is known collectively as ‘West Kowloon’.

The next photo provides a fairly comprehensive view of Kowloon:

You will notice that there aren’t many super-high buildings. The reason for this situation is that when Hong Kong’s airport was located at Kai Tak, in eastern Kowloon, a height restriction (18 storeys) was in force. Notice too the line of mountains in the distance. ‘Kowloon’ means ‘Nine Dragons’ in Chinese, referring to these mountains. I can’t positively identify any of these summits apart from the one on the far right, which is Fei Ngo Shan (‘Flying Goose Mountain’), better known simply as ‘Kowloon Peak’.

The next two photos are essentially the same view from different angles:

Notice that there are now quite a few commercial buildings in the foreground. This is because the area below is the central business district, better known simply as ‘Central’.

These are views looking east along the harbour (shots taken from different locations):

The final four photos are general views from different positions, which I present without further commentary:

One final comment: it would seem from many observations over the years that a majority of people who follow this walk do so in the opposite direction. This might seem like the logical direction to follow—spectacular views almost straight away—but if you follow Lugard Road first, Harlech Road is going to seem like an anticlimax. We will always circumnavigate the Peak in a clockwise direction!

shepherd’s warning

You’re probably familiar with the old nautical proverb:

  Red sky at night,
  Sailor’s delight.
  Red sky at morning,
  Sailor’s warning.

However, I come from a part of England where wool was a major part of the local economy for hundreds of years, until a rapacious king, Henry VIII, confiscated the accumulated wealth of the mediæval monasteries, including Furness Abbey, which had been responsible for introducing sheep onto the fells of the Lake District in the first place (fell derives from the Old Norse word for ‘mountain’—all the local words for topographic features derive from Old Norse). Nevertheless, sheep (and shepherds) remain a fixture on the fells, and locally the familiar wisdom attributed elsewhere to sailors I automatically assign to shepherds.

The purpose of this digression is to serve as an introduction to what I saw this morning. I always enjoy my morning coffee sitting on the roof of our house, where I can listen to the cacophony of the dawn chorus (mostly crested mynahs), but I’d no sooner put my coffee down than I had to rush back downstairs to get my phone. Here’s why:

I took both these photos at 6.10am, and the next two at 6.20am:

…with this one just a minute later:

I took the next two photos at 6.28am to illustrate how far across the sky the colour had spread. This was the view looking southwest:

…and this is what it looked like to the northwest:

I took my final photo at 6.30am, when the display had reached maximum intensity:

Notice what appeared to be a perfectly circular yellow curve (it was much more obvious in reality).

And as for the dire warning that is enshrined in the Cumbrian shepherd’s message? It’s been sunny all day!

oh! my god(s)

Although I first came to Hong Kong more than 50 years ago, there are still places in the territory that I’ve never visited. Stanley, a small town on the south coast of Hong Kong Island, fell into this category until last week, when Paula suggested that we pay a visit after we’d been to the Registration of Persons office in Kowloon to pick up my new ID card (I’d lost my old one over the summer). Mind you, in common with many Hongkies who live on Kowloon side, I don’t often cross the harbour to the Island side, which partly explains the omission.

Stanley’s main attraction, at least for tourists, is its market, where you can buy all sorts of exotic items. However, when we arrived, the first thing I noticed was a sign pointing the way to a Tin Hau temple (Tin Hau is the goddess of the sea in Chinese culture), so that is where we went instead:

The first thin I noticed when we stepped inside was the door gods, Yuchi Jingde on the left:

…and Qin Shu Bao on the right:

Although I’ve recorded many examples of door gods on the doors of ancestral halls, study halls and temples, this was the first new example I’d seen in quite some time, and the first thing I noticed here was that the door gods weren’t merely painted on the doors; they were embossed, in a kind of bas-relief. I also noticed that although the two door gods held ‘standard’ weapons—a halberd by Yuchi Jingde and a pole sword by Qin Shu Bao—they grasped these weapons with both hands. It is much more common for the pair to hold these weapons with just one hand while holding a sword, still in its sheath, with the other hand. These door gods are also facing squarely forward, when they should be facing slightly inwards to ensure that intruders cannot sneak in between them.

I then took these photographs just inside the entrance:

I cannot offer any information regarding the subjects of these photos, although you might notice the dragons on the vertical panels in the third photo.

Then we ventured into the rear hall of the temple, where I spotted a sign that read ‘photography available’, which I interpreted as meaning that photography was allowed—we’ve visited temples and monasteries where photography is explicitly forbidden. And I certainly wanted to photograph what we saw here! My final five photographs show the array of gods along the back wall of the temple (from left to right):

I don’t know who or what the array of figures in the next photo represent (scholars and warriors?), but we saw a similar display in the China section of the Royal Ontario Museum when we visited Toronto back in August:

Notice the red signs on the walls behind these figures. These are the names of the various entities, something that I’ve not seen anywhere else:

And that was the Tin Hau temple in Stanley. Well worth a look inside, although the building itself is singularly uninteresting.

hong kong surprise

I’ve often said that, more than anything, what I like most about Hong Kong is not knowing what may be around the next corner. Even if I’ve been around that corner several times before. And it happened again a few days ago—in my own neighbourhood!

The area between Sha Tau Kok Road, the only road out of Fanling to the east, and Lau Shui Heung Road, a relatively minor road that heads off (eventually) into the mountains to the south, is densely populated by rural Hong Kong standards, although there are just two named villages: Kwan Tei and Fu Tei Pai (‘fruity pie’). Paula and I frequently walk through the area, which has a maze of paths and alleyways, after eating breakfast in Queen’s Hill Public Housing Estate.

One path that we hadn’t walked along for quite some time brings us to the eastern end of the single road that leads through Fu Tei Pai. I couldn’t help but notice that there was some construction taking place here, although to what end I couldn’t begin to guess. Not more housing though. And I was immediately struck by the gaudy colours that had been painted on the wall on the right: alternating bands of yellow, pink and blue (the construction site is on the left):

You probably can’t make out the giraffes on the left, so here they are in closer detail:

A short distance past the giraffes is the entrance to a car park, with a horse all saddled up and ready to ride:

Immediately to the right of the entrance to the car park, we came across these strange creatures, which I’m unable to identify with certainty:

…although my guesses are (from left to right) a lion or similar big cat, a crocodile (standing on its hind legs) and two rhinoceroses, which have hatches on their backs, for some unknown reason.

A rough translation of the Chinese writing is as follows:

This path is closed. There is a fierce dog. Please do not enter. If you do, the consequences are your responsibility.

This is a closer look at the two blue elephants on the right:

In case you thought that one of the creatures to the left of the elephants is a bear, not a crocodile, check out my final photo:

The horse is just around the corner to the left.

And that’s my Hong Kong surprise. I cannot predict when the next one will occur.

favourite photos: summer 2024

Paula and I will be heading back to Hong Kong in a few days, and as I usually do, I’ve put together a collection of what I consider to be the most interesting photos that I’ve taken during the summer. I took more than 600 photos during our two trips to Toronto last month and this month, but with two exceptions (see below), I’ve not included any of these in this collection. These will be used next month to illustrate things that we did in this fascinating city during our visits.

We often go for walks (if we’re not cycling) when we’re in Penrith, and we frequently visit the Thacka Beck Nature Reserve during these walks. On one occasion, we saw a rainbow as we emerged onto Bowerbank Way, part of the Gilwilly Industrial Estate, on our way to the reserve:

The entrance to the nature reserve is marked by the litter bin on the right of the photo.

One option after we’ve exited the nature reserve on the far side is to continue along Thacka Lane in the direction of Newton Rigg Agricultural College. We frequently see horses in the fields bordering the lane, including this pair, who appear to be looking for attention:

Foxgloves are common on the fells (local name for the mountains of the Lake District), but I was surprised to see this specimen growing out of the crack between a wall and the pavement in front of Penrith Methodist Church:

I spotted this splendid example of a stile as we cycled through the village of Reagill, south of Penrith:

Notice that no mortar has been used in the construction of the wall, which is standard practice around these parts. The rock is limestone. You can also see this technique being used in a wall alongside the road leading out of Penrith towards Great Salkeld, where the principal rock is sandstone (although some boulders have also been incorporated, sourced from boulder clay, the ubiquitous glacial deposit around here):

The next photo shows a view of Blencathra, one of the few Lake District mountains with a Cumbric name (although it is often referred to by locals as ‘Saddleback’) that I took while out cycling:

This road used to be the main road to Keswick, but it was replaced by the A66 more than half a century ago, making it ideal as part of a cycling route nowadays.

‘Sunset’:

When I asked Paula which bike ride she would like to do to mark her birthday, she immediately replied: “Haweswater”. I took several photos here, but I particularly like this one, looking back towards the head of the valley:

When we flew to Toronto last month, I had a window seat, and I suddenly noticed that we must be crossing the southern tip of Greenland. I always switch my phone off when flying, and in the time it took to get it up and running again, I probably missed the best shots, but you can still see the glaciers in this photo:

On our second flight, the plane passed many miles south of Greenland, so there was no opportunity to take more photos.

The walk along the River Eamont, from Eamont Bridge to Brougham, south of Penrith, is a pleasant excursion, and we followed this route on a walk at the end of last month. The river appeared to be flowing unusually fast, but the water level didn’t appear to be higher than usual:

Notice the three ducks in the bottom left corner of the photo.

The day after our Eamont excursion, we did a bike ride north of Penrith that included a road we’d never cycled along before. At one point, I noticed an unusual plant that dominated the verges on both sides of the road:

This is Himalayan balsam, an invasive species that, in this location, was almost the only plant on both sides of the road for about two miles.

This photo shows a quaint road bridge over the River Lyvennet in Morland, southeast of Penrith:

I discovered just this summer that there’s a skate park next to Penrith Leisure Centre. I took several photos of the colourful graffiti on the sidewalls supporting the ramps, including this one:

On our second trip to Toronto, we were taken to watch a major league baseball game, and on our way to the stadium, we passed this installation, which I saw as a ‘must’ photo opportunity. Paula took this one with my phone:

Another ‘must before we go’ was a bike ride to Ullswater, which we tend to avoid at the height of summer because of the sheer volume of tourist traffic. On this occasion, we approached the lake from Matterdale End, and where to take a photo from was self-evident as we descended the hill towards the road that runs alongside the lake:

The subject of my final photo is a tiny flower that I spotted just a couple of days ago growing out of a crack in the external surface of the low wall surrounding my neighbour’s backyard:

I have no idea what kind of flower this is, so if you can enlighten me, please leave a comment below.