Hong Kong is well known for its hiking trails and small outer islands as perfect weekend gateways. It is also due to the fact that Hong Kong is smaller in size and surrounded by mountains that makes hiking the most preferred activity in general amongst locals and expat community.
Hong kong island which is the main island of the city offers plenty of hiking trails which are situated at a convenient distance. Braemar hill is one of the mountains on the main island which has few hiking trails to offer. Let's explore what this hill has in store for hikers.
There are different starting points where you can start to ascend Braemar hill; one of them is starting from the "Braemar Hill" bus station. Wherever you are on the Hong Kong island, you can take a bus no. 25 or 25A that takes you to this station. Braemar hill is situated near Tin Hau area. You can also take a MTR and get down at Tin Hau station and then take the bus to the hill starting point.
This route to hike is easier than the other route where you end up climbing too many stairs. From this route, initially you will start with few stairs to climb and sooner it becomes zigzag narrow lanes that circles around the mountain.
Since it appears to be an easier hiking path, you would see couples with young kids, senior citizens and beginners hiking along side you. I must say Hong Kong locals in general are in good shape and have lots of stamina since hiking is a typical weekend routine for them. I sometimes gets overwhelmed by looking at aged locals hiking and running faster than me! Once you climb the first set of stairs, you come to following checkpoint to choose which side you want to hike;
For hiking Braemar hill, you need to take a left turn here. Jardine's lookout is also a popular trail to get nice view of the city and is on the right hand side. However, we didn't explore Jardines lookout while hiking. Once you take a left turn, you start walking along a narrow trail with trees on either sides.
Good part about this trail is there is hardly any steep slope to climb. You get a feeling of walking in the park. I personally enjoyed it since I am not a big hiker myself! After hiking for 10-15 min you arrive at a basement of Tai Tam Country Park.
You also get a distant view of some of residential buildings on Hong Kong island as below;
Locals making the most out of their Sunday afternoon;
There is a sitting area to relax and re-energise yourself after taking a quick refreshment break. Here again there are two paths to choose from to proceed. First path is to visit the Tai Tam Country Park which is on the right hand side (shown below) or explore the 'Po Luen Path' on the left hand side.
First we took the right turn and started climbing the stairs leading to the country park. Soon you get to see a waterfall (which at the time was dry since rainy season was yet to start). Good place for kids to play around.
People take a quick break here to sit and admire the sight around and soak up the nature.
Beyond this is almost a dead end so we started descending back to the starting point of the Tai Tam Country park to explore the other side of the hill.
Now this is where we really got confused. One issue we faced here is that there were very few navigation boards to help hikers explore the hill. We end up walking around here and there and also saw few other fellow hikers too trying to figure out which one is the right path to follow. Then we saw one of this boards showing 'Po Luen Path' which is basically the descending path leading you to somewhere near Tin Hau temple road (from where you can easily get a return bus back to city centre). We didn't really want to descend the mountain too soon hence we started exploring other routes in between and got to see some view of the city (not the best views but something to look forward to!);
After this we started descending the hill and reached to the Tai Hau temple road.
Hope you liked this blog and and got some insights on what to expect when hiking Braemar hill. Happy hiking!
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