Tai To Yan

There are some lovely ridges in the northern parts of the New Territories that we wanted to hike given the cooler weather.  Eamon and the others were "peak hunting" with their Strava accounts, so a few of us agreed to go up with them.  To make things more interesting, they found a more challenging route for us to take to get to the top of the ridge. 

It was far more of a bush whack than any of us could have imagined.  There was a path (barely), but it had largely overgrown.  What made it worse were the attempts by previous hikers to cut their way through the dense vegetation.  All this had done was to leave sharpened branches protruding into the path, ready to slice open the legs of those like myself who had come unprepared without longer trousers.  The cuts were mostly superficial, but a few of them left me smarting.

Everything cleared up at the top.  We appeared out of the thickets and people already at the top looked at us with confusion.  There was a much easier path to the right of us.  Why had we decided to go up this other route?  I thought it was a good question as I wiped some of the blood of my legs.

With the difficult part of the hike completed, we were left to enjoy a far more serene walk along the ridge.

Ridges are always fantastic ways to get a better look at Hong Kong and its surroundings.  The views are always panoramic with little to no interruption and we were lucky that it was a clear day.

In the distance we could see as far as into Shenzhen.  This brand new Chinese city was pushed up right against the border with Hong Kong.  It was hard to fathom that it had all grown in little over twenty years.

We made our way along the ridge and then down the hill.  By the end, we wanted to get down quickly and to get a drink and food.  Eamon started running and soon we were all running along the ridge as well.  For the last couple of kilometres, it was a run.  Others we passed looked at us with shocked expressions as these eight random people flew past.  It was a tiring way to finish a hike, but it did mean that we were able to get to our food and drink more quickly.