Dragon's Back and Shek O

Sunday 24 November

This morning I found in my inbox an email from Wendy recommending the Dragons Back for a walk and Shek O for a slightly new age destination. I looked both up and decided to give them a go.  

Having successfully got the number 9 bus in the direction of Shek O, I could not move the name of where I was to get off into anything beyond short-term memory. I got fed up looking it up and decided that I must have read it so many times that I'd recognise it when it came up on the screen in the bus. So we went past all sorts of places it definitely wasn't and then the name Lan Nei Wan came up. That's it, surely? Confirmed by a car park and an obvious start to a trail. Off I got followed by three other walkers. Double confirmation. The other three looked at the map at the entrance for rather a long time while I fiddled around getting my cap and shades out and they set off rather hesitantly. When I looked at the map it was obvious it was the wrong place. It should have been To Tei Wan. An easy error. Anyway, the map suggested a relatively small climb of about 1/2 km would get one up to the track. At this point two of the others came back. 'We got off at the wrong stop'. Not one to lose face, especially having scented their Aussie accent, I just said 'Oh dear' and headed off up the incline, only very quickly to meet the third person who had followed my lead off the bus. He too was coming back down. For me, it was all uphill but no turning back. Anyway after about 15 minutes I got to a track that led after a further half hour to the start of the Dragons Back where I would have started if I hadn't got my Wans so confused. The Dragons Back itself was great, as incidentally was the walk to it. It's lovely being in all that vegetation and a bit of humidity. There were lots of people on the walk, it being a Sunday and lots of 'hellos' and 'good mornings'. Near the peak a man who'd just finished taking photos of his missus insisted on taking one of me on my camera, which was nice of him. The funniest people on the walk were a couple of blokes in their mid 20s about half way along, each with a very sophisticated radio controlled 4x4 which they were negotiating along the path. God knows when they got to the end.

 
The proper walk took a couple of hours to Big Wave Bay and I had a very welcome drink on arrival and sat on a rock looking at the surf and surfers; then headed along past a country club to Shek O. 

There must have been four brides having their pictures taken with various tasteful backdrops. I found the Black Sheep which was playing some right-on music as well as another slightly new age place, The Shining Stone. Both looked really nice but it was not a brilliant time (5.30) for a meal.