Bride's Pool Hike

Saturday, and we need to get away for a day. So we decided to check out another of the 2 hour hikes in our "Leisurely Hiker" book. This one was out by Tai Po Market and then farther out to Plover Dam. Plover Dam was built in the late 1960s, they needed a place to store fresh water and the simplest way was to build a dam out in the ocean around a bay, and then pump out the salt water and store fresh water. It’s the biggest dam in Hong Kong, and it saved using precious land area.

Water Fall at Bride's Pool

We took the bus to Sha Tin, then the MTR to Tai Po Market and found that the only bus that goes to "Brides Pool" only runs on Sundays and public holidays. There is a mini bus that goes out, but it only runs every 1 to 2 hours. So the quickest way was to take a taxi. It was out of the city and up a canyon quite a ways. We saw the Brides Pool sign and stopped the taxi there. Then we walked down the trail along the stream to the pool.

Old Stone Bridge

The Chinese are at that stage where they need to get serious about litter, but they are not quite there yet. It was a pretty spot, but full of garbage. It would be really pretty after a good rain storm, as the waterfall would be really nice. It was down stone steps, and a fun walk, back to where we started.

Beautiful Flowers Along Trail

Then we decided to go up on the "real" hike, which was supposed to be 4 kilometers and take about 2 hours. It was another one of Dew’s famous, "just a little uphill" trips. It’s pretty steep and there is a trail of stone steps. We hiked for about an hour and a half and hadn’t gone very far, and it looked like we were in for more uphill. So we decided to turn around and head back the way we came. The only problem with this is that we didn’t know if we could find a way back to town.

Shirl Climbing Pat Sin Leng Trail

The trip back went very quickly, seems we are pretty slow on the uphill, but much faster on the down hill. When we got to the bottom the only bus stop was for the Sunday/Holiday run so we began walking down hill, we didn’t think we were that far from the little town we had passed. About a mile down the hill the minibus passed us heading for the stop at Bride’s Pool. We crossed the street and found a good place for it to pull over and waited for it to come back. We flagged it down and headed back to town, and were we surprised to find out it was about 5 miles before we hit civilization again. Good thing we didn’t have to hoof it all the way.

We caught the MTR back to Sha Tin and had lunch at Triple O. Then headed for home. We had to wait a very long time for the 170 bus, but finally we were on our way. It was a very slow trip home, the traffic was fierce, and the ride through the tunnel was unusually slow. On the other side we discovered the reason, a wreck that was slowing everything to almost a crawl. But we finally got to Times Square and home, and a veg session in front of the late afternoon kids TV shows.

It was a gray day, and looked like rain, but we didn’t see any, except for the section on the MTR on the way to Sha Tin. Couldn’t have timed it better!