A Long Walk

Yesterday was a holiday in Hong Kong. I had agreed to walk Maclehose stage 1 and 2 with a couple of friends. I have walked this track before and I was surprised at how much it did actually take out of me as I was told it was flat prety much the whole way.....it is not!

We started at around 7:45 at the entrance to the country park under cloud cover. It had threatened to be either a very hot day or a very wet day but the conditions ended up being perfect for hiking. The cloud cover stayed the rain never fell and there was a nice breeze the whole way.

The first stage of the walk is a little tedious, it takes you around the road that circles the side of the High Island Reservoir. There are some good views but it is most nondescript and all on sealed road so ne real excitment.

One you get to the end of the road you walk up over the hill and you are confronted with the view of Long Ke beach which is the view above. It is a great view and the beach is just beautiful. There were only about 10 people on the beach.

After the beach you climb the mountain on the other end of it, if you open the photo and look carefully you should be able to make out the track heading up. It is a real slog up this Hill, it starts from sea level and goes up to 314m above with out a flat section in between. The last time I did this it took an incredibly long time but knowing what was coming and not having the sun beating down it was a lot faster this time round.

After this the route pretty much evens out until you get to the down hill to Sai Wan Beach. This is a great section of the track, you follow the coast after Sai Wan with a couple of good climbs and drops and then end up on Ham Tin Beach. From Ham Tin you go back inland. The first part of this is along a tidal area and we have to negotiate a couple of streams that were flooded and the bridges to cross them were under water, nothing dangerous though!

From there the walk to Pak Tam Au cover another 2 very decent climbs. We ran into a team of medics who were out walking the trail. One of our party who will remain nameless asked them what it is that they do and when they told him he proceeded to fall off the track into a stream....probably the single best piece of comedy timing I have ever seen. (I was concerned initially as it was a nasty fall) but we got a live example and the question was properly answered.
We got back to the road in pretty much 6 hours all 3 of us knackered and happy to see a taxi come by.

I will get some more pictures posted later today and get the link on here.