Hiking: Tung Chung to Mui Wo

I know it seems crazy that I’m hiking so much in this hot temperature – but I’m really enjoying it. Not just the exercise, but also meeting other fellow hikers.

Two weekends ago I joined the MeetUp group for a hike from Tung Chung to Mui Wo. It was an easy hike and I could have easily done a Moontrekker test hike in the same time, but I wanted to find out what’s the easiest way from Tung Chung to Mui Wo, so I joined the group.

It’s actually a 11km path, which is called Olympic Trail. It was set up before the Beijing Olympic Games, probably to encourage people to do exercise.

The hike is fairly flat with only one incline, so the distance is easy to cover. We did it in 2.5 hours, but if we walked quicker and stopped fewer times, 1.5-2 hours would also have been possible. It is very easy, along the completely paved Olympic Trail from Tung Chung to Mui Wo, via Tai Ho Wan (Big Oyster Bay), down to Silver Mine Cave and Silver Mine Bay Waterfall Garden into Mui Wo.

The hike starts at Tung Chung MTR station, we walked through the shopping centre to the other side. Then we followed the path next to the street, turned right at the petrol station and kept going for 2km next to the railway tracks (on a paved road). To the left are the sea and the airport, to the right are hills and green vegetation.

We stopped for a quick photo to take a shot of all 58 participants and then we took the subway tunnel to cross under the train tracks to the other side.

There we walked past a small lake, saw a few houses next to a few fields with bananas, pineapples and vegetables and continued our hike along a paved path. Every few metres was a symbol in the ground to show one of the sports that were at the Olympics, so shooting, running etc.

There are quite a few toilet houses and gazebos/pavilions along the path, so you can easily rest and recharge if you need to. That’s what our group did. With so many people hiking together, we had to stop every few hundred metres.

The path wanders through Tin Liu and A Po Long before it reaches Silver Mine Cave, which we passed quickly. After that we stopped at Waterfall Garden for another short break, the streams were pretty big after all the rain falls recently.

Finally we reached Mui Wo, where the group dispersed – some hikers took the bus back to Tung Chung, others waited for the ferry and I went with a few to the Turkish place in Mui Wo, to recharge our energy levels before we headed back to Discovery Bay via the Trappist Monastery. I did not take any pictures on that hike, but here’s a previous post describing that hike.