A leisurely hike over Hong Kong’s Twins

Hong Kong views

Taking it in

Getting started

Second guessing?

At the top!

Still coming to terms with the fact that we are committed to doing Ride the Rockies, Brittany and I had to jet off to Hong Kong for a few days recently. We lived in Hong Kong for two years between 2012 and 2014, and we absolutely loved the place. An opportunity to move to neighbouring Macau presented itself and we moved there for 18 months.

While Brittany and I adore Hong Kong, moving to Macau led to us finding little Churchill Chan, and for that reason alone we are eternally grateful for our time in Macau.

Anyway, I digress.

Hong Kong truly is one of the world’s great cities, and Brittany and I love when an opportunity comes up to go back there for even a few days. Some of our favourite reasons to go back include:

Dim sum - Tim Ho Wan is fantastic, but my favourite dim sum place, balancing price, quality and the down-to-earth nature of it, which is something I seek out in a place, is Kuen Fat Restaurant - I love to sit across the street, under the Canal Road Flyover on a stoop to eat it.

Paisanos Pizzeria - Very large and cheap New York-style pizza, although Pisa Pizza in New York’s Gramercy Park is the real deal, and, on a more local note, Colorado Boy in Montrose is superb.

Victoria Park - My favourite public park on the planet, it is always alive with activity which more often than not includes people practising Tai Chi; Chinese sword dancing; fan dances; runners lapping the park, both on and off the running track; tennis; general revellers; and on Sundays, hundreds, literally, of the city’s domestic helpers, mainly Indonesian and Filipinos, who flock to the green space to enjoy the more often than not glorious weather and to enjoy their only day off of the week.

I digress again.

In an effort to maintain what fitness we have before the serious part of training for Ride the Rockies kicks in, we retraced our steps on a hike that we did several times when we lived there. The Wilson trail is one of several great trails in Hong Kong (click here for an e-book version of hiking and biking in Hong Kong) that winds through Hong Kong’s ample countryside. We walked the first section of the trail backwards from Wong Nai Chung reservoir to Stanley, in the western part of Hong Kong Island, climbing over 1,000 steps to the peaks of the Twins. The 4.8km hike took us just under two hours and we rewarded ourselves with a slice of pizza (Paisanos, naturally).

Hong Kong is known as a neon metropolis, and justifiably so, but the vast majority of the city state of around seven million people is actually beautiful countryside with miles and miles of hiking and biking trails. On a side note, the beautiful countryside contains dozens of species of snakes the are native to Hong Kong, as many as 50 according to local snake charmer William Sargent, so watch your step.

The short trip over, we headed back to Colorado and back on our bikes!

Ride the Rockies is still open for registration until this Sunday, February 26, 2017 5:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, so click here and sign up for a chance to be one of the lucky 2,000 who will get to participate in this incredible ride through Colorado’s beautiful countryside.

Brittany Panter and Rob McGovern are freelance writers from Colorado and Wales respectively. They are participating in Ride the Rockies 2017 as part of the Media Pass Program and as such will be writing about their experiences as they train for the race. To read more about Rob and see his published articles click here, to read more about Brittany and see her published work click here.

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