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.

toadstool time

When I asked Paula recently where we should go for a bike ride the following day, she favoured a short ride, but when it looked as though the weather would be cooler than it had been recently—temperatures have been 5 degrees above what I normally expect in November—she changed her mind and suggested instead that we go ‘out west’.

This would mean a ride of at least 80km, which would be further than we’ve managed so far this winter, but it turned out to be interesting for a totally unexpected reason. A lot of the distance we cover when heading to the Kam Tin River is along Drainage Services Department (DSD) access roads, which run alongside rivers and are therefore quite flat, and we noticed the first of several clusters of toadstools shortly after leaving the urban area, beside the road that runs along the west bank of the Sheung Yue River, a short distance downstream from its confluence with the Shek Sheung River:

The next DSD section on our outward journey was along San Tin Tsuen Road—where DSD access roads can be accessed by motor traffic, they are often named, and this road also provides access to the large area of fishponds north of San Tin—where we spotted a couple of examples of the same fungal species:

The kerbstones provide some idea of scale (the largest examples in this collection are around 10cm in diameter).

I can’t remember where I photographed this solitary example, but it was probably somewhere in the Kam Tin River area:

Having done just a few of the many cycling diversions in the Yuen Long area (‘hospital path’; ‘Yeung Uk transit’; ‘big tree temple circuit’; ‘Shap Pat Heung exit path’ (part of this segment—6.00 to 6.48 on the video—turned out to be so heavily overgrown that we will be missing it out in the immediate future, although I’ve already discovered a new path that could mean we never go that way again); ‘journey to the west original path’; and ‘alley ballet’), we were on our way home, cycling along Pok Wai South Road, which runs along the south bank of an unnamed tributary of the Kam Tin River, when Paula spotted this group of toadstools:

A short distance beyond the previous location, we crossed the river via a road bridge and immediately doubled back along Yau Pok Road, which runs along the north bank of the tributary, where we soon spotted yet another fungal cluster:

This is a closer view of the three individuals on the left:

You will have noticed that all these photos are examples of the same species, although I’ve so far been unable to identify that species. However, the rule of thumb with fungi is that they are poisonous, unless you’re certain that they’re not. That’s why I’ve referred to the fungi pictured here as ‘toadstools’. The term ‘mushroom’, in my view, should only be applied to edible fungi. Of course, I should make an exception of Psilocybe cubensis, popularly known as ‘magic mushrooms’, which contain the psychoactive compound psilocybin and are not a culinary item.

The only time I’ve ever picked fungi to eat happened when we used to cycle to Sham Chung in the Sai Kung Country Park to visit our friend Tom Li and eat his incomparable pan-fried noodles. I’d noticed a large number of mushrooms in the field in front of his store, and when I looked more closely, I thought they looked remarkably like Agaricus campestris, the field mushrooms that grow in profusion back in the UK. I picked a big bagful. This must have been when we still lived in Sai Keng, which is within walking distance of Sham Chung, because as we walked back home, I couldn’t help but notice that a couple walking in the opposite direction had eyeballed my bag and its contents. The next time we visited Tom, he told me that the couple had asked him where I’d obtained the mushrooms. “Out there,” said Tom, gesturing towards the field.

“But they’re poisonous!” exclaimed the couple in horror.

There had been several widely publicized ‘mushroom’ poisoning cases in Hong Kong in the weeks leading up to this incident.

However, the ones I picked were delicious, and I’m still here.

it’s a pleasure

An under-appreciated aspect of Hong Kong, at least by short-term visitors, who will want to see the conventional ‘sights’, is the territory’s formal parks and gardens. There is just one large park in Fanling/Sheung Shui (North District Park), but there are a lot of small gardens, and this post is about one such oasis in Fanling.

A few days ago, I was walking up the lane that connects the ‘village’ of Fan Leng Lau and Jockey Club Road, the main north–south artery through Fanling/Sheung Shui, on my way to Fanling Clinic when I suddenly decided that I would detour through a small park that the lane runs past on my way home after completing my business in the clinic. And take a few photos:

I’ve placed ‘village’ in inverted commas because Fan Leng Lau was once a village—all its residential accommodation has been built under the auspices of the so-called ‘small house policy’, which was implemented by the colonial government in 1972; it allowed any male over the age of 18 who could trace their ancestry through the male line to a male resident of the village in 1898, when the lease on the New Territories came into effect, to build a house in their village. Now, however, Fan Leng Lau is merely part of the much larger conurbation of Fanling.

The green sign on the left of the entrance to the park in the photo above reads ‘Fan Leng Lau Pleasure Ground’, which strikes me as rather old-fashioned. ‘Pleasure grounds’ were in vogue during the Victorian era, but there are no attractions here that would qualify it as such. There aren’t even any sport or fitness facilities, which is surprising given that the park is administered by the Recreation and Sports Service, a subsidiary of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.

I took the next photo looking to the right just after I entered the park:

The next three photos were taken at intervals as I walked slowly along the main path through the park:

You will have noticed a large number of benches alongside the path, and I took this photo of a cluster of four benches looking back as I passed:

At the top of the hill, there is a kind of boardwalk instead of a concrete path:

And this half a hollow tree appears to be still growing strongly:

The building directly behind the orange village houses is a school, which you can tell from the architectural style.

The last time I walked through this park, the tree leaning sharply to the left in the next photo had just been radically pruned:

…although it nevertheless appears to be thriving:

Three more photos taken at intervals as I walked along the path:

Finally, this is the exit gate:, which leads directly into Fan Leng Lau (behind the camera):

This gate is clearly never closed, because the identifying sign is on the inside of the gate.

Given the sheer number of benches, you would expect some at least to be occupied, but although I’ve walked through this park several times over the years, I’ve never seen anyone else here. You would think that at least a few locals would avail themselves of the peace and tranquility of this quiet, verdant oasis in the middle of an urban jungle. I find it a real pleasure to walk through.

see also
Above Water Gardens describes three gardens in Sheung Shui, which used to be separate from Fanling, but the two are now contiguous.

yum! yum!

I imagine that most people have a favourite dining place, somewhere outside the home that they particularly enjoy visiting. For me and Paula, it’s China Land, which is located in Fanling Centre, a small but lively shopping mall a short walk south of Fanling station:

Unlike the traditional Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong, China Land is a very small establishment—the frontage in the photo is the width of the place, and the depth is about the same, meaning that, excluding the kitchen, it is probably no more than 50 square metres in area. Also unlike traditional restaurants, it doesn’t have movable tables and chairs but fixed bench seats and tables, like regular cafes, although the seats are much more comfortable. However, this arrangement means that it’s not a practical venue for parties larger than four.

After scanning our vaccination records—you can’t get into eating places, other than fast-food joints, without doing so—we picked out a table at the front of the restaurant. Paula chose a set meal for two from the menu, while I suggested that we add siu lung bao (‘small dragon bread’), one of my favourite dim sum delicacies, to our order.

First to arrive were two bowls of traditional soup and a plate of stir-fried beef:

The large lump in my bowl of soup is sai see kwat, a cut of pork that is unusual in that when cooked it goes soft and falls apart (pork usually goes hard when cooked). I’ve tried to obtain this meat when I’m back in Penrith, but English butchers cut up pig carcasses differently, and so far I’ve been unsuccessful.

One indication that China Land is an upmarket establishment is the two pairs of chopsticks, one to eat with and one to select food from the plates in front of you. Needless to say, however, we don’t observe this nicety when there are just the two of us.

The next dish to arrive was a kind of salad (on the left):

And then came the siu lung bao:

Although bao means ‘bread’ in Cantonese, these are actually dumplings. They contain minced pork and broth, and it’s usual to apply a few drops of vinegar before eating one. In fact, I like to place the entire dumpling in my mouth at once, so I can enjoy the explosion of taste that occurs when the dumpling is squashed and chewed.

I rated the last dish to arrive as the best:

I neglected to ask Paula how the dishes in this set meal were described on the menu, but I remember thinking that this one must be a kind of sweet and sour pork, although it didn’t look remotely like traditional gu lo yuk. I selected a piece of meat and placed it in my mouth. Wow! Absolutely delicious. The batter was wonderfully crunchy, and the sauce was, well, sweet and sour. Even the green chilies that came with this dish were packed with flavour.

I did think that we would struggle to finish everything (note how large the two main dishes were):

…but we polished off the lot. Without feeling stuffed!

A footnote: before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, this restaurant was so popular that you would normally have to take a ticket and await your turn when a table became vacant. Paula and I always used to go early to avoid this roadblock, but I took the first photo above just after leaving the restaurant, and there is absolutely no sign of a queue. This state of affairs appears to have affected most eating places in the last three years—the restaurant where we go for yam char (‘drink tea’) used to be crowded but isn’t at present. Whether this is down to natural caution or just not having one’s vaccination record encoded on one’s phone I’m unable to say.

Finally, I thought that I would shoot a short video of the central atrium of the mall from the mezzanine floor outside China Land—I found the constant stream of people on the escalators quite mesmerizing—while I waited for Paula, who had gone to the toilet: