Hiking: Lantau Trail Stage 8

After hiking Lantau Trail Stage 7 we had not much choice then to continue stage 8, which goes from Kau Ling Chung to Shek Pik. It is a flat, 5,5km walk next to the water catchment area and it is really boring.

Even the guide book did not have much to say. It talked about the tracks branching off downhill to secluded sandy bays – but given that we already had been hiking for over 2,5 hours, we did not feel in the right mood to go down to some bays if we then had to climb them back up again. So we kept going.

The hike ends at Shek Pik reservoir, where there is a prison and detention centre. The dam was built in 1963, creating the largest reservoir in Hong Kong at that time. Plover Cove Reservoir in the northeastern New Territories, is now the largest reservoir in Hong Kong in terms of area, and the second-largest in terms of volume. It was the first in the world to construct a lake from an arm of the ocean.