Just as I’m winding the blog down because new stuff is not
happening any more, Hong Kong jumps out to surprise me. Apologies for the
picture. It will become clear.
This week I went out running with a new (rather senior) colleague
from work. I had taken her out to run over some mountains in her first week, as
I’d heard she was a keen runner…and let’s be honest.
I was trying to show off a bit.
I wanted to share with another runner how awesome it is to run here, the trails I’ve
found hashing etc. It didn’t go to plan. We took one wrong turn halfway up a
mountain, and when we reached the top after some steep, rough-pathed climbing, the
trail we were on stopped. As we turned to look whence we had come, it looked a
lot steeper, the path much less clear and fog was visibly rolling in off the
sea.
Via some scrambling, severe scratches, jumping into storm
drains and her casually asking if I “had any family who would miss when you
fall off a cliff one night”, we made it back in one piece.
So this week, I wanted to get it right.
We took a trail I have done tens of times, yomping up to the
Peak Tram, along the flat path there and then headtorches on for a dash through
Pinewood Battery.
I love running though Pinewood Battery. It’s a maze of
trails and stairs on the Peak that fit around what was originally constructed
in the 1800s as part of HK’s artillery sea defences. It cracks me up as a piece
of incompetent planning. Its history goes like this:
1880s – someone has an idea to build a battery there. A
review is made to look into it.
Late 1880s – they decide to build it
Early 1890s – building finally begins
1901 – it opens, big shiny guns and all
1902 – it’s declared obsolete
1920s – it’s half-arsedly turned into aircraft defences
1941 – it has the hell bombed out of it by the Japanese.
Bugger.
The run this time is going great guns. All gone to plan,
views great, and I’m wittering on about Pinewood’s history as approach it. Having
spotted my first snake recently (they’re waking up…), I was scanning ahead for
beasties, and just as we hit the battery saw two eyes gleaming back near the
picnic tables.
Immediately thinking SNAKE, I drew to an abrupt halt and squinted
to where the eyes had been.
And could not believe what I saw – a porcupine! A real,
actual, like a massive hedgehog porcu-bloody-pine! I’d heard HK had some, but couldn’t quite
believe it. He looked unimpressed at our intrusion, which he showed by rattling
his huge spines and ambling behind the picnic bench to hide. Very cutely, he
peeked out a few seconds later, and when we were still there, shambled a bit
further away behind a chair, all the while with us cautiously following him to
get pictures.
As you can see from the photo, the pictures didn’t work and
eventually, he lummoxed off into the undergrowth.
So much better than a snake. Though it give me pause for
future hashes…wouldn’t want to stumble onto one of those now I’ve seen the
severity of the spines in the dark one night :s
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