the twins | WhatIDidIn Hong Kong

Wilson Trail – Stage 1 & 2 – Stanley Gap Road to Tai Koo

Stanley Gap Road – Tai Koo (Stages 1-2)

Sunday 30^th October – 3h 29m – 12.36km

Having been forced into a week’s break thanks to a cold, and unable to hike on my preferred Saturday due to a dentist’s appointment, I was determined to get things up and running again on the last Sunday in October. I made the start of the trail, by an anonymous road above Stanley, just after nine thirty.

The Twins (the name of the two hills that kick off the Wilson Trail) are an iconic Hong Kong hike. The views are fine: as you slowly climb, Stanley, and then the entire south side of the Island, unfolds beneath you. Out to sea, I could see the Po Toi islands, and Lamma, and further off against a fine sea mist the uninhabited Chinese islands that form a protective guard around our SAR.

The problem with The Twins is that it is an unrelentingly boring hike. Bleak concrete step after bleak concrete step takes you up, then down, then up, then down, down, and down some more. It is to be endured rather than enjoyed. Following that, there is another concrete-stepped climb up Violet Hill, with views out towards Repulse Bay then, higher up, Aberdeen.

As I passed people doing the hike in reverse, I wondered if hikers on the Island are less friendly than those on the Kowloon and New Territories trails. Island hikers tend to be of the ‘pounding the trails in nothing but a pair of tiny shorts, pouring with sweat’, live hard, play hard types without breath to spare on pleasantries. I was blanked by several people, and offered grudging good mornings by others. The friendliest person was a woman at Wong Nai Chung Gap, looking for her dogs. I was unable to help.

Jardine’s Lookout and the quarry are part of the hike I had done three weeks before, and will be the longest repeated section out of all the trails I do this winter. Strava told me that I was slower in doing both these climbs than I had been on the earlier hike, which was understandable, post-Twins.

Luckily, the last hour of Section Two is a gentle wind down the hillside back into the city at Quarry Bay. Again, though, this section is heavily paved (these must be the two most paved trails in the whole of Hong Kong). My favourite part is the Buddhist statue and fountain that you pass, just before the old World War II cooking pots, with Koi crammed into the tiny pool. I used it to wash the sweat from my hands and face, which I’m not sure is the done thing.

And so I ended the Island section of my hikes. Next weekend, it’s onto Kowloon…

Walks 10: Wilson Trail Stage 1 – The Twins and Violet Hill

Posted on April 24, 2015 by UK #1s blog

‘The Twins’… Don’t they sound like a lighthearted comedy duo, perfect for hosting a children’s birthday party perhaps? The Ha-Ha Twins, or The Giggle Twins, maybe…? Or so I found myself thinking, whimsically, as I set out one sunny March morning to walk Stage 1 of the Wilson Trail, AKA ‘The Twins’. And yet I discovered, like my synonymous comedy duo, that this trail has very little to laugh about, and is definitely something I would discourage children from going anywhere near.

The alarm bells sounded as I began the trail and immediately started going up, and up, and up… I was already in a bad mood as I had taken the wrong bus from Central and missed the starting point (Hint: if attempting this hike, take the 6, or the 6A, or the 260, to Stanley, and the relevant stop will be clearly announced. Don’t take the 6X – ‘X’ presumably stands for ‘X-actly the same route as the other buses, barring the tiny stretch of road that you actually want’.) Anyway, I eventually found the trail and, as I said, started to go up, and up… Soon the Stanley peninsula, which had been spread out gloriously below, was disappearing in the clouds. Various people had described this hike to me and ‘it’s a bitch’ had been the most flattering account. This came into sharp focus as, after twenty minutes, I was still ascending. And sweating a lot. Although the experience of being deep inside a cloud is strangely relaxing: sounds are muffled and hillsides plunge in to the slate-grey void.

Finally, after an age of going up, the trail started to go down, and down, and down… Almost the same distance again in descent. My calves were taking a pounding. Suddenly, though, I left the clouds above and was presented with a view of Tai Tam Reservoir to my right and the uber-swanky apartments of Repulse Bay to my left. I got a cramp in my stomach from all the stepping and had to, pathetically, sprawl out on the trail to catch my breath at the bottom. And then, joy of joys, the path began to go up again, to the summit of Violet Hill. Which, for some reason, I remembered was a Coldplay song. So, to cap it all off there I was, amid a punishing hike, with Coldplay stuck in my head.

From the top of Violet Hill, the northern side of Hong Kong Island became visible, and the skyscrapers and harbour flitted in and out from between the clouds. From then on the trail flattened out and I wound my way down to Parkview: the end of Stage 1. I had intended to do Stage 2 as well, finishing at the MTR station in Quarry Bay. But if you are doing this hike like me and, I am ashamed to say, admit defeat, you can slink off down the road to Wong Nei Chung Gap. From here you can get any number of buses back to Central.