Aberdeen to Stanley

Back in the days when we were at Aberdeen Technical School, we used to hike every Saturday afternoon.  Sometimes we walked from our school in Wong Chuk Hang to Stanley, bought honey candy from the monastery there, and walked back to school.  

Today I tried to run, starting from Aberdeen. 

There is a great walkway linking the rocky beach below the Country Club and Deep Water Bay.  From Deep Water Bay, you get a great view of what is now Ocean Park.  At ATS, we used to climb the hill which now bears the big Ocean Park logo,  which we called Rooster’s Hill (雞公峯).  We dared not look down when we climb it because it was so steep and slippery.  When we got down, we dared not stand up.  We skipped down on our backside. 

There is another, even longer one linking Deep Water Bay and Repulse Bay, perfect for running.  After Repulse Bay, I took a wrong turn and end in South Bay.  It is about 8 kilometres from Aberdeen to South Bay and it is quite a good run. I had to backtrack and eventually got back on Repulse Bay Road after climbing some of the makeshift steps used by construction workers.  At many places there was simply no side walk.  At a couple of places I took the temporary “skywalk” used by the construction workers.  

When I got on Stanley Gap Road, it really was too dangerous to continue.  There were no sidewalks and the cars zipped by much too closely. I wonder how we dared walk this way in those days.  We were probably too young to be scared. 

So I went down Chung Hom Kok Road to get to Stanley instead.  I did end up in (front of) the prison. 

It is probably more sensible, in the future, to run from Aberdeen to South Bay Beach and back, for a total of 16 kilometers.