I was going to write about the Wilson Trail Stage 8 last week already – but I got distracted. I should have been writing about it though, because I managed to loose my pictures from our hike somehow. How annoying! So here are just a few pictures from my friends to accompany the post…
Wilson Trail Stage 8 starts at Tai Po Market. You need to take minibus 23K or a taxi to go to Sheung Wun Yiu. From there you just walk through the houses up the hill (not steep) and then follow the road. The trail takes you past a village called Lin Au (which is picture-perfect with its tended fields and little houses). The green hills of Tai To Tan rise in the distance to create the impression that we are somewhere in rural China, not really in Hong Kong!
The trail then continues through the half-rural outskirts of Tai Po, past children’s playground, over a bridge and past a dry river bed. It is a bit of a boring walk, very flat and past local residents looking at us westerners in hiking gear with slight bewilderment!
After almost an hour walking around and through the village we arrived at the bottom of Cloudy Hill. It starts with a concrete stairway and takes us upwards, step by step. Catching our breath, we rested and looked down over Hong Lok Yuen (which means the Garden of Joy and Prosperity) but to us it looked like a new built area somewhere in California. Nothing shows Chinese elements, how weird.
Then the strenuous climb is in front of us and we climb the southern spur of Cloud Hill (in Chinese it is named ‘Nine Dragon Gullies Mountain’ apparently that’s a folk story about feng shui dragons descending to nine valleys below).
It costs us a lot of sweat (and muscle ache in the days to come, I can tell!) to climb to the plateau on top of Cloudy Hill.
bluebalu 