Heading into dense foliage. Awesome.
At the bottom of the hill it went through a village and along some backroads before coming out at a round-a-bout that my "out-and-back" route normally passes through. Running along, I noticed a new looking footpath alongside a waterway. Since we're in exploratory mode, let's see where this goes:
Around the corner and along the river. Not too bad, I thought, I wonder if this crosses the river somewhere and I can come back along the other side. Abruptly, my trail ends and someone's built a shack, claiming the path as their front yard. I can see a little trail continue on the other side there, maybe I can just sneakkkkkkk... oh god... three big dogs come racing out of the shack, forming a semi-circle in front of me. I puff my self up, and hold my arms wide and high to make myself appear a little bigger, and slowly back away while growling a little bit. The dogs don't seem very intimidated however and leap closer gnashing their jaws and bite the air less than a foot from me. Maybe if I back away far enough, they'll happily defend their marked territory? No such luck as they keep pace with me. Finally some weathered old man appears from the shack and calls the dogs off, apologising. You'll have to forgive me for not snapping a photo of the dogs (given the circumstance) but rest assured, the scene rather resembled this one:
Just like this but with 3X as many claws!
Adrenaline high, I decided to turn for home instead of running a little further along the road, and open getting back to UST, I still had a little fuel in the tank so decided to explore a nearby trail I'd seen but not yet taken. Just behind the bus stop at HKUST there's a path down the hill and under the bridge, this leads down a lot of stairs (more than I remembered), past the waterfall and to the beach.
HKUST's waterfall. I'm willing to wager that very few of the students here have actually seen. Most probably not even knowing it exists and not exploring the random stairs heading down the hill.
Ants marching straight up a wall. Carrying eggs?
About three quarters of the way down the hill (although I remembered it being closer) there's a paved turn-off to the right, I was hoping this was a shortcut back to UST, possibly near the accommodation somewhere.
As you can see the path (barely visible on the right hand side there) was quite over grown, but I was still optimistic.
After a short stint along the trail it wound around a spur and... stopped. At a grave. Damn... Not having nearly enough energy at this stage to run up the stairs, I was relegated to walking back up the stairs before a short jog back to the Sports Centre.
All-in-all a rather eventful run, even if the end was a little bit of a let down!
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