Walking along Tai Po Road – Taipo to Shatin Section

Traveling along the Tai Po Road is one of my favourite things to do when I get a spare bit of time (not often). Granted, the road is now broken (as in non-contiguous) in various places by highways and flyovers but the original route of the road still exists – more or less – between Tai Po <-> Fo Tan and Tai Wai <-> Sham Shui Po.

I’ve been intending to walk as much of this as I can for some time now, no real objective in mind other than trying to absorb a bit of old HK roadway nostalgia and to track down anything that may be a relic of the halcyon days when the road was the only way to get into the NT. Anyway, the other weeks I finally found the time to walk the Tai Po to Fo Tan leg.

Tai Po Road 11.5 Mile Stone, Ma Liu Shui

Finally, after quite some time trying to track one down, I have finally managed to find a real bonafide Hong Kong Milestone. I did mention these briefly before when I did a short post on 7.5 Milestone park in Tai Wai. Of course, the milestone in that case was a fake one – a brand spanking new replica that epitomises HK’s approach to heritage preservation (i.e. knock it down and then build a fake one because that’s the same, isn’t it?). Why didn’t they use the original one? Probably destroyed by some idiot with a jackhammer.

Anyway, here is a real one still in-situ, untouched by subsequent roadworks and development that has overtaken many parts of the NT.

7.5 Milestone Rest Garden, Tai Po Road

Not too long ago, before fast cars and kmph took over modern life in HK, distances along many roads were measured by milestones. These things – big stone blocks with a number etched into the side – were everywhere and if you are eagle-eyed, you may still find a few that have escaped removal/destruction when roads were upgraded.

Even quite recently (1970′s) various establishments and points of interest along main arteries (for example the Tai Po Road and Castle Peak Roads in the New Territories) would often be referenced using the milestone marker as part of their address so for example Dragon Inn was at the 19.5 milestone along Castle Peak Road,  Shatin Inn was at the 7.5 milestone along Tai Po Road, Tai Po Bungalow was at the 16 Milestone along Tai Po Road (that stretch since renamed Kwong Fuk Rd), and the Lung Wah Hotel and the Shatin Roadhouse were (well the Lung Wah still is) located at the 9 milestone along Tai Po Road.

Anyway, you get the idea, right?

St Christopher’s Home and a Missing Plaque, Tai Po

Here’s a good example of how you should never take HK’s landscape for granted – something I am guilty of all the time despite knowing better.

A while ago now (2010 I think?) a nice fellow called Sean Olson posted some old pics on Gwulo.com in an attempt to wind up a few remaining loose ends concerning his family history (a decade long research project – the result of which can be found on Sean’s website: The Hong Kong Legacy). Sean had a whole bunch of old snaps that needed the locations identifying. It can be fun trying to nail these places, and let’s face it I’ve had a reasonable amount of practice – sometimes it’s easy, but sometimes the topography of the land has altered so much due to development that it can be quite a challenge (for an excellent recent example of how you can be fooled, check out this recent addition to gwulo and the ensuing discussion that followed – a picture supposedly of Castle Peak turned out to be 50km away in Macau!).

Shek Lei Pui Reservoir and lots of Monkeys

You’d think looking after 3 of my own monkeys (of the non-hairy persuasion) all week would make me reluctant about going to see some real ones – a bit of a busman’s holiday – but actually we were so desperate to avoid the boredom of watching Dragon Boat Racing (anyone who has had to sit through them before will attest that only copious amounts of alcohol can keep said boredom at bay) that pretty much anything was a viable alternative.

So off we headed to Kowloon Reservoir(s) by catching the #81 bus from in front of the Royal Park Hotel in Shatin and getting off at the stop for Shek Lei Pui Reservoir.

Shatin Inn revisited- All About Ah Long

You may remember that a while ago (February 2010, in fact) I wrote an entry about the Shatin Inn on the Tai Po Road in the hills above Tai Wai station – a veritable HK culinary institute with a reasonable amount of nostalgia associated with it. Well, when I was looking into the place I had read that it had been featured as a location in an 1989 Chow Yuen Fat film called “All About Ah Long” directed by Johnnie To.

Shatin Inn, Tai Po Road

Here’s one I found purely by accident. Walking up the hill past Tai Wai New Village, I noticed what looked like a small 1 storey ramshackle building with a corrugated iron roof. It’s tucked neatly away in the shadow of the new Tai Po Road trunk system and looks fairly innocuous, but interesting enough for me to go and have a sneaky peak to see what it was.