While Severe Tropical Storm Lionrock (not a fully fledged typhoon yet, but getting there) hovers around in the South China Sea, Hong Kong is under the influence if it's subsidence, creating hot, calm and generally high pollution inducing weather. It's very much a case of 'the calm before the storm', where the calm is super hot and sunny!
So, since it was an Asics day I decided to take advantage and run the trail route down to Po Lam. The little bit of road wore me out but as soon as I hit the trail I was feeling great.
Tree-lined perfect running trails.
Prickly flowers!
So great, in fact, that I decided to stretch the trail section out and hike/run back up the hill instead of sweating it out on the roads.
This is a photo of the map provided mid-route. Etched Stainless Steel. Nice. But hard to change when routes change I suppose! The route I planned to take here is the red one, while I ended up on the blue one (I added the colour for these routes, but not the others). Note that both of these are marked trails.
Wonderful, interesting, government provided paths through the jungle. This trail is marked in exactly the same way as the one I ended up on! (blue one above)
I hit the valley floor and ran the tiny bit of road to find my trail (red one)... Nothing doing. There was nothing I spotted that would vaguely pass for a marked trail. Nevermind, I'll run that other trail behind the villas.
Easy to find, the start of this trail was quite promising.
This quickly descended into another safari through tall grass. Doh. Didn't I say I hate running in this type of terrain?
Playing spot the trail... Again. (Right in the middle of this picture, actually)
The trail wasn't all bad (aside from making a bad turn and getting lost in the jungle for 5mins). Quite hard to follow and rarely able to run at proper speed, but interesting places.
Awesome makeshift wooden bridge.
The trail on the left is where I came from, on the right, a trail I occasionally run down.
Abandoned concrete house. No windows, door or roof, but a few chairs indicate that locals use it as a resting place halfway up the slope.
Overall quite a short run with a bit of walking up stairs at the end (notice the sharp inclines on the elevation plot!). When I finally made it back to UST, I wasn't nearly as tired as usual, but a lot dirtier!
See you in the jungle!
~ Joe
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