The text is below, minus the villager interviews which were conducted by Elaine Yau but plus some description of the villages, and with a few pictures different from those published in the magazine.

The rain was incessant, the skies a greenish grey, and my Sunday hike across the northeast New Territories was taking far longer than I thought it would. It was now late afternoon and getting dark, and yet I was still walking an exposed hillside miles away from the nearest road. I wouldn’t be able to make it back to town before night fell.

It was time to make other plans. My sodden paper map showed a village called So Lo Pun in the valley below. I would get down there, knock on a door and ask if I could sleep on someone’s floor.

The descent was quick, but only because the steep path was a rivulet of slippery clay. And when I reached the forest at the bottom, I was knee-deep in water. It was dark already. Where was the village? I couldn’t even see any lights.

I suddenly realised that I had arrived. The tall trees of the forest were growing up through the dark windows and broken rafters of what had been a terrace of single-storey houses. Nobody had lived here for decades.

It was my introduction to the abandoned villages of Hong Kong.

Philip Kenny, a blogger who explores and writes about the hidden parts of the region, says many of the remote villages of the New Territories were thriving places until the 1950s. “Then people started drifting to the urban areas where better-paid work was available,” he says. “Many went overseas to work in the Chinese restaurant business.”

The 1960s saw an increasing movement of villagers away from their rural homes and traditional lifestyles as farming and fishing became less viable.

“People either moved closer to the city or took advantage of Hong Kong ties to the UK and went overseas,” says Kenny. “Britain encouraged immigration at the time. The old people who were left behind gradually passed away and the villages have slowly crumbled.”

Hong Kong’s humidity, wet season and fast-growing foliage can consume a traditional village house remarkably quickly. First to go is usually the tiled roof, exposing wooden beams which then rot and fall inward. The side walls follow. Often the last part of a house left standing is the front doorway with its stone lintel.

Liverpool-based writer Po Wah Lam grew up in a village inside the closed frontier area, close up against the border with China. Like many others, his family upped sticks and moved to the UK in the 1970s. He recalls a vanished lifestyle.

“Somehow I remember when I was three,” he says. “It was night-time and I was running with our dog past rice fields. In front of me was grandmother and the only guiding light was the torch she held. My grandmother was very kind and often gave food to passing strangers, especially those from the north.

“I was a seven-year-old country boy when I left the village, yet somehow I never really left. For a long time I kept returning to it in dreams. These were very happy dreams and they were always the same: the field, the dog, all marching in to welcome me back. When finally I did return for real, as an adult, the feeling was cinematic. And yet the place felt and looked smaller than I remembered it, and also very empty.

“Our village, Heung Yuen, was similar in a way to the setting of The Seven Samurai, the film which is Akira Kurosawa’s greatest masterpiece. There were mountains wrapped around a cluster of houses, and small fields worked over by animals and people. And like the film, there was adventure. I remember fishing and exploring, the scent of rose myrtle and the wintergreen that grew around the hills. We used the wintergreen to make brooms. The school and the weddings, and the night-time cinema screenings that once took place inside our tiny village classroom, I remember them all, but with people who have now gone.”

My unexpected overnight stay in So Lo Pun took place 20 years after Lam’s family left their village life behind, but mobile phones were still not commonplace, so I had no way of calling for assistance. The rain didn’t let up, so I took shelter first under the slanted roof of the village shrine, and then inside a low, open-fronted shed which housed grimy bone jars. A heavy animal stomped unseen around my hiding place all night, kicking over stones. When dawn came, and with it an end to the downpour, I hiked around the coast – passing through another ghostly settlement of empty houses in a bay with a clear view of mainland China – until, in the early evening, I finally came to a phone box at an inhabited village called Kuk Po. I was quite keen to call the Wan Chai restaurant where I worked. I was 24 hours late for my shift, a personal record. Luckily my boss roared with laughter down the phone line.

If you have hiked in the hills of Hong Kong, you have probably come across similarly eerie villages, some overgrown but others apparently deserted just yesterday. It might seem odd that in a city where land is so valuable, so many beautifully sited residences are left empty. But location is everything. The following forsaken villages are some of the most intriguing.

Wang Shan Keuk

Planted deep in the forest of Pat Sin Leng Country Park, Wang Shan Keuk is perhaps the model of a spooky woodland village. It has been disintegrating for a long time, and the remaining walls and doorways are overgrown with creeping vines and sprigs of red berries. The location is so far from any market town, it’s hard to imagine how farming was ever viable here. Maybe the villagers transported their produce to market by sea, in which case their lives would have been transformed beyond recognition when the inlet was dammed in 1960 to create the giant Plover Cove reservoir.

Fan Lau

Fan Lau has twice been abandoned by its inhabitants. A Qing-dynasty fort on the cape here was evacuated by its soldiers before the British moved into Lantau Island in 1898, and the village which had a hundred residents just 30 years ago is now a ghost town of banana trees and locked-up houses. Despite its beautiful setting, on a tombolo between two sandy beaches, there’s a melancholy air to the place. The single-room school is open to the elements, desks and chairs simply left there after the teacher packed up and left. In the 1980s, a proposal to site a new power station on the peninsula led to some new blocks of flats being built on the edge of the village, but the proposal fell through. The flats still stand there, ruined by the weather, abandoned even before they could be lived in.

Sham Chung

Set on the quietly lapping shore of Tolo Harbour, Sham Chung is a wide, fertile valley crossed by a network of streams which lead to a bund. The old houses are larger in size than you will typically find in New Territories villages, suggesting a degree of wealth, but clearly not enough wealth to entice the population to stick around. Gates and windows were locked when the inhabitants left, and bamboo poles tied in doorways to prevent wild cattle pushing their way in, but most villagers never came back, and many doors now hang off their hinges. Step inside the houses and you will see family photographs still adorning the walls.

Tung Ping Chau

This remote island has the distinction of possessing Hong Kong’s only radiation shelter, thanks to its proximity to the nuclear power station at Daya Bay on the mainland; but it’s unlikely ever to be used because no one lives here. It was a busy place in the 1960s, when refugees swam to it from Guangdong to escape the Cultural Revolution, but now its half-dozen villages stand mostly silent. The island springs to some sort of life at weekends, when day trippers arrive to see its unusual rock formations and offshore coral, but if you seek solitude, Tung Ping Chau during the week is the place to be.

Sha Lo Tung

High up on a plateau, hidden from the world’s eyes by a ring of hills, you might think only holy men and hermits would live in such a place as Sha Lo Tung, but in fact two villages were built up here. It’s on a little-used hiking route, and one house sells drinks and tofu dessert to passing walkers, but the other buildings are gradually dissolving into their lush surroundings. It wouldn’t be the New Territories if there weren’t a hidden land struggle going on between developers, indigenous villagers and green groups, but Sha Lo Tung’s importance as a dragonfly habitat has kept it unspoilt until now.

Yim Tin Tsai

You can hire a sampan lady to take you out to Yim Tin Tsai, a small island off Sai Kung town which was once densely populated, mostly by Christians. Their restored church is still in good condition but the village itself is deserted. Wander into the houses and you can see the traditional layout of rural homes: one large room, with a wok station on one side, washing facilities on the other, and a raised sleeping platform at the back. Letters and postcards from family members working overseas can even be found left on bedside tables. It’s hard not to wonder: who were these people, what made them leave, and where did they go?

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This walk is completely flat so it is suitable for all. Time required: two hours.

Take the West Rail to Yuen Long station, and make for Exit A. North of the station, all the land you can see is occupied by half a dozen sprawling villages with many old-style houses. It’s a bit of a maze. Bear left to find Yuen Long Kau Hui Road, and follow it more or less straight ahead to Shan Pui village. A few signs, some painted and some hand-made, point you to Nam Sang Wai. If you don’t see them, just follow anyone who looks like a hiker or biker.

Here at Shan Pui village there’s a ramshackle wooden jetty. Pay HK$5 and a boatman will ferry you across to the wetland.

The name Shan Pui may ring a bell – it was in this river that “Pui Pui” the saltwater crocodile was found living in 2003. An Australian reptile hunter was flown in to catch the croc, and mainland experts also tried, but all failed. Finally she was caught by government staff. Pui Pui is now living in the Wetland Park at nearby Tin Shui Wai.

On the other side of the river, a gangplank leads you to a cafe where you can buy drinks. Here you’re at the edge of the wetland. Nam Sang Wai was originally a collection of farmed shrimp ponds and fish ponds which fell out of use and have become overgrown with tall reeds. Now it’s an important habitat for various types of birds including egrets, pintails, cormorants, ducks and rare spoonbills. Some of these birds stop off in Hong Kong as part of their annual migrations across East Asia. Otters have also been seen in the ponds.

Turn left and follow the track shaded by large paper-bark trees. You can make any kind of criss-crossing route through the wetland, since it is a network of narrow linking bunds between ponds. If the path you are following gets too narrow and seems to disappear, simply go back and make another turning. Eucalyptus and other trees have grown tall in the wetland, and as you walk through, sun shining through the waving reeds, you can almost believe you’re walking in the English countryside.

Two ruined houses in the wetland have been used as sets in Hong Kong movies, and you may see people doing their own fashion or wedding photo shoots there. One of them has a large kitchen with space for three woks – it may have been built as a police post in the 1960s to look out for immigrants swimming from across the river. It’s best to keep to the southern half of the wetland, and aim to make a circle back to the jetty.

Walking the single-track Nam Sang Wai Road is not really recommended as it is too long and a bit featureless, apart from the mangrove beds on its seaward side. However, if you are on a bike, it’s ideal because it sees little traffic. At its northern limit, there is a surprise view: the faraway towers of Shenzhen, seen across the shallow tidal waters of the bay. In the evening, flocks of birds are flying home to roost in the dark mangrove bushes.

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This walk is gentle and suitable for all. Time required: 2 hours.

Take the MTR East Rail to University Station and follow the signs over the bridge to Ma Liu Shui pier, ten minutes’ walk away. The morning ferry leaves at 8:30am, and there is an additional 12:30pm departure on weekends. (Don’t take the 3:00pm sailing, as it will give you no time to explore). You can call Tsui Wah Ferry on 2272 2022 to confirm the timetable.

The journey through Tolo Harbour takes 90 minutes, plenty of time for you to eat a packed breakfast and watch the scenery go by. The ferry calls in at two deserted villages before arriving in the small harbour at Tap Mun.

From the pier, turn left to walk through the town. The mostly Hakka and Tanka people make their living from fish farming, and there are a couple of shops selling drinks and dried seafood. On weekends, the three or four simple restaurants are busy catering to large groups of day trippers.

On your right, steps lead up to a large Tin Hau temple. It’s well maintained with fine roof decorations. Follow the path higher up, keeping the police post on your right. The trail leads past a line of traditional village houses and eventually rises to a pavilion on a wide open hillside. The springy turf gives Tap Mun its seldom-used English name, Grass Island.

From here you’re treated to open views across the wide expanse of Mirs Bay, from the coast of China in the north to the pointed outline of Sharp Peak to the south. Ocean breezes make this a great spot for kite flying. Down on the shore, clumps of screw pine fringe a rocky beach.

Turn left to make a short detour uphill to a viewing point. Returning to the pavilion, go straight ahead, keeping to a route parallel with the coast. Trails are in part made by the island’s herd of cattle which now wander free. As you round the cape you should see a balanced rock formation down by the shore. Then you enjoy views of Ko Lau Wan, an isolated fishing village across the narrow strait, before arriving at the New Fishermen’s Village.

Cuttlefish and squid are laid out to dry in the sun. On our September visit, a temporary bamboo theatre on the village square had just been taken down. The path carries on through a straggle of ramshackle seafront homes to bring you back to the ferry pier. If the tour groups have moved on, this may be a better time to eat at one of the cafes.

The boat back to Ma Liu Shui leaves at 5:30pm, but that may be too long to wait. Instead, there are hourly sailings to Wong Shek pier in Sai Kung, at least until 6:00pm. It’s an enjoyable half-hour hop across Long Harbour. Speedboats also make this trip, but are not always there.

The crossing to Wong Shek is a good option: from there, you can take bus 94 (or 96R on weekends) through the country park to Sai Kung town, where a wealth of restaurants should be able to satisfy the hunger brought on by a day of salty air. Take the bus or minibus from Sai Kung back to the MTR in Kowloon.

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This walk involves some sustained climbing and passes through uninhabited areas, so is suitable only for fit adults. Time required: 5-6 hours.

Take the MTR to Tai Po Market station and find green minibus 23K. The bus drives up through the Wun Yiu valley, and terminates before it reaches the highest point of the road. Get off here, just past San Uk Ka village, and carry on walking uphill.

You’re on the Wilson Trail here. This rises up to Lead Mine Pass, which is a common way up to Tai Mo Shan. But you can take an alternative route which passes through less-walked forest. Bear right instead of left when the road reaches a rain shelter, and follow the signs marked for Yuen Tun Ha. This is a wide, stony track through the trees. After passing some farmhouses on your left, you reach the lonely ancestral hall of the Wong clan, and here the track ends. Your route now continues on a narrow path through the forest.

This is a lovely hiking trail of stones, tree roots, bamboo and lichen-covered rocks. Higher up the hill, you pass through the eerily overgrown houses of Yin Ngam, and eventually you rise above the tree line to emerge onto a grassy hillside. From here, you can look straight down at Tai Po and Tolo Harbour.

The path is a bit harder to follow through the long grass, but at each fork, bear left. You soon step out onto the MacLehose Trail, and the high radar domes of Tai Mo Shan are clearly visible. Turn right and follow the trail. It leads you through henge-like groupings of tall stones. You may meet a herd of wild cattle happily grazing the grass beside the path. Look south to see the familiar shape of Lion Rock on the horizon.

It’s not long until you join an old military road, and this winds up to the very top of Tai Mo Shan, passing an abandoned British Army facility on the way. Just a bit further on, you may see PLA soldiers playing basketball in the grounds of their radar station on the peak. And then the road turns downhill and winds slowly back and forth to bring you down to the barrier gate. People are usually out here to enjoy the wide-open view across Shek Kong all the way out to Yuen Long.

From the country park visitor centre, a path leads you quickly down to Route Twisk and the bus stop. Bus 51 from the near side of the road will carry you back to the MTR at Tsuen Wan.

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Following is an excerpt. The book is not just walking directions; it’s very visual, with lots of photographs — some modern and some historical — and colour maps for each walk. I’ve included a few random spreads among the text below; click them to view at full size. Happy hiking!

Route 12: Pok Fu Lam

The green western slopes of Hong Kong Island have long been used as a retreat from the city – first by missionaries and dairy farmers, and today by students and wealthier residents. Starting at the Peak and ending atop Mount Davis, this walk will exercise your knees and give you advance views of the heritage sites along the way.

Victoria Gap, where the Peak Tower stands, is a crossroads from which trails lead in half a dozen directions. The entrance to Pok Fu Lam Country Park is easily found directly opposite the bus station, and a car-free road leads straight down into peaceful forest. Old banyans clinging to the stone walls shade your descent into the valley.

These steep hillsides were saved from development by the need to protect Hong Kong’s water sources. This valley was dammed as early as 1863 and a reservoir – the colony’s first – was built down below to supply water to the city. An aqueduct ran around from Pok Fu Lam to Central, giving Conduit Road its name. Major tree planting took place at the same time to prevent soil erosion. Before then, most of Hong Kong Island’s uplands were bare, partly thanks to the grass cutters who scoured the hills to collect kindling. The forest suffered during the war years, when much of it was chopped down for firewood; but it has recovered well and you’re now able to walk through mature woodland.

Camellia and eagle’s claw flowers provide colour beside the path, and birdsong fills the air. In fact, it was the ‘pok fu’ bird which gave Pok Fu Lam its name – lam meaning ‘forest’ – although the original Chinese characters have changed. It’s often pronounced ‘Pock Fulham’ by expats more familiar with the London football club.

At the only fork in the road, turn right to carry on downhill, passing some bricked-up bunkers built by the British Army. The path now skirts the reservoir. Beside the dam, there’s an attractive old building now used by the country parks staff, and facing it an information board with old photos of the area. One picture shows a strange white castle which seems very out of place on the bare hillside. In fact this building is still there: now known as University Hall, it’s hidden from view by trees. As you pass the riding school on your left, the mansion stands above the other side of the road. You can go up the steps and through the low gateway for a closer look.

Douglas Castle, as it was originally called, was built in the 1860s by Scottish taipan Douglas Lapraik to serve as his country home. It looked rather different then: an octagonal penthouse surrounded by battlements commanded all-round sea views, four crenellated corner towers had mock arrow slits, and outhouses were built in identical Victorian Gothic style. The building has undergone many changes over the years and is now used as halls of residence for Hong Kong University students.

Lapraik arrived on the China coast as a young man, travelling to Macau in 1839 to become apprentice to an English watchmaker. Upon the founding of Hong Kong a few years later, he moved to the new colony and quickly became successful in the property and shipping trades. He built a dock at Aberdeen to service Royal Navy vessels, ran a line of steamships up the coast to Amoy and Foochow (modern Xiamen and Fuzhou) and helped establish the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce. He was one of the investors in the Chinese junk Keying which made history by sailing to London and New York in 1846 – the boat amazed the crowds there, including Queen Victoria, who had never seen such a thing before. Perhaps his most notable legacy was the founding in 1863 of the Hongkong & Whampoa Dock Company. This was the first limited company in Hong Kong – prompting the government to start writing a Companies Ordinance – and its ultimate successor, Cheung Kong, still bears stock code 0001 at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The Douglas Steamship Company remained in existence until the 1980s.

After an outstanding career, Lapraik retired to Britain, and Douglas Castle was sold to the French Mission in 1894. The priests renamed it Nazareth House, added a chapel, and installed a printing press which produced religious texts in dozens of Asian languages. A prominent feature added at this time was the cast-iron spiral staircase which connects three floors. In 1954 the building passed into its current ownership; the chapel was converted into a dining hall and the crypt into a common room, and as University Hall it continues to house undergraduate students. Despite the building’s change of name, alumni are known as Castlers.

Béthanie stands on the other side of Pok Fu Lam Road. Built in 1873 by the same French Mission, it was designed as a peaceful retreat and sanatorium for priests returning from missionary work in China and elsewhere in the Far East. The Missions Etrangères de Paris departed in the 1970s, and for many years the building deteriorated while being used as a storehouse by Hong Kong University Press. Since 2003 it has been occupied by the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, who have renovated it in innovative style: in particular, the original pitched roof, which was removed at some point in the past, has been reinstated using glass panels instead of tiles. The project won the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award in 2008.

There’s a French Mission museum in the former wine cellar which is open every day until 6:00pm, and guided tours of the building are also conducted. The Bauhinia blakeana, Hong Kong’s official floral emblem, was discovered growing in the gardens of Béthanie by French priests in the 1880s.

On the far side of the building, two octagonal cowsheds have survived from the earliest days of Hong Kong’s milk industry – they gave rise to the company which became Dairy Farm. It was a Scottish pioneer of tropical medicine, Dr Patrick Manson, who came up with the idea of establishing a farm to supply hygienic fresh milk to the European population of Hong Kong. Eighty cows were imported and the Dairy Farm company began operations in 1886. The company later diversified into running supermarkets, in a joint venture with the Lane Crawford department store, until it bought the Wellcome retail chain and became part of the Jardines group.

The Pok Fu Lam farm was closed in 1983, and the two cattle sheds have now been converted into a performance space – one as a tiny theatre and the other as a foyer, which also has a small photo exhibition of the site’s history. Down the hill from these, another of the old Dairy Farm buildings is now used by the Chinese Cuisine Training Institute.

Across the road, Pok Fu Lam Village may look like a shanty town but it is in fact one of the few indigenous settlements remaining on Hong Kong Island. A lot of villagers were formerly employed on the dairy farm. Today, some of them grow crops on land which must be worth billions. Besides a large earth god shrine, the village has an unusual brick tower called the Lee Ling Immortal Pagoda which dates from about 1910.

Take a bus now a few stops north, passing the Queen Mary Hospital, to alight at the Chinese Christian Cemetery. The site has excellent fung shui, with wooded hills behind it and an unencumbered view out to sea. A stairway leads straight down through the terraces to the Pavilion of Eternity – ‘Erected by Wing Lock Tong, May 1951’ – and then to Victoria Road. Bear right and then take the steps down into a ramshackle stonemasons’ village. At the foot of the hill you’ll find the gates to the Tung Wah Coffin Home, a complex of buildings reminiscent of old Macau.

From the late 19th century onwards, tens of thousands of mainland Chinese people passed through Hong Kong on their way to Southeast Asia, North America, Australia and other places where fortunes in tin, gold or plain labour could be made. When they died, their wish was to be buried in their ancestral lands, and so their bodies were sent back the way they came. There was a need for temporary storage of their remains until transport could be found back to China, particularly in times of strife on the mainland, and so the trustees of the Man Mo temple on Hollywood Road founded the first coffin home in Kennedy Town in 1875. This was moved to the present site in 1899, and the Tung Wah Hospital took over its management. It is still in use; good burial plots can be hard to find in crowded Hong Kong, and caskets and urns can be kept here until one becomes available.

The site was nicely restored in 2004, winning praise from the Hong Kong Heritage Awards, but it’s private and you may not be allowed into the compound.

Further west along Victoria Road, Felix Villas is an elegant terrace of houses built in the 1920s and now used as quarters for university staff. Beyond it, a foundation stone for Victoria Road is set into its junction with Mount Davis Road. This was laid in 1897 to mark Queen Victoria’s 60th year on the throne; construction of the road commenced at the same time and was named in her honour. It was moved to its present site in 1977, coincidentally also a royal jubilee year, and a plate notes this fact.

On the coastal side of the road further on from here, a compound of white buildings behind a high wall has no sign, nor any official name on maps; not even a street number. Since the handover in 1997, it has been slowly crumbling into the surrounding greenery. Originally the mess of the Royal Engineers, the compound was transferred to the police force in the 1950s for use as a secret prison for Taiwanese spies – the colonial government was keen to avoid Hong Kong being used as a proxy battleground for Chinese Nationalist and Communist forces, and Special Branch detained anyone suspected of engaging in espionage.

But it was in 1967 that things really heated up. That summer, Hong Kong was rocked by riots inspired by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution over the border. Home-made bombs were planted in the streets. Leftists called strikes which paralysed public transport. Unionist demonstrators clashed with police, pro-Beijing crowds waving Mao’s red book picketed Government House, and a radio journalist who opposed the violence was murdered. At the border town of Sha Tau Kok, Chinese militia shot and killed a group of Hong Kong police officers. Fearing a possible invasion, the government decided to take radical action: pro-communist schools and newspapers were closed down, and the police were granted special powers to arrest leftist leaders. This involved the world’s first helicopter raids on multi-storey buildings. The political prisoners were brought to Pok Fu Lam and held in solitary confinement until the disturbances were over.

This hard-line response was generally supported by the Hong Kong public – the leftists’ violence having turned public opinion against them – and in appreciation of its steadfastness, the Hong Kong Police Force was later given the prefix ‘Royal’, which it kept until 1997. In Macau, by contrast, the Portuguese authorities failed to maintain order during the unrest, and control of the enclave was effectively handed over to China thirty years early.

The ‘white house’ compound may last have been used in 1989, when democratic activists smuggled away from the massacre in Tiananmen Square were debriefed here before being sent abroad. The Beijing crackdown prompted Hong Kong people of all political stripes to assist an emergency ‘underground railroad’ operation. Led by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, which still organizes the annual commemoration in Victoria Park, Operation Yellow Bird helped hundreds of students and intellectuals escape from the mainland. One such person involved was Lo Hoi-sing; formerly Hong Kong’s top man in China as head of the Trade Development Council’s Beijing office, his involvement in the rescue missions landed him in a mainland jail, and his career never recovered. Most of the details of the risky operation remain a secret.

Special Branch was disbanded as 1997 approached – some local detectives were given British passports to protect them from any post-handover retaliation – and the buildings have been empty since then.

The final stretch of this route involves a hike up quiet Mount Davis Path. A flight of 365 steps leads up to an isolated youth hostel, from which backpackers can enjoy 270-degree views of Victoria Harbour. To save their legs, a shuttle bus service links it to Sheung Wan.

Past the hostel, and up a steep slope built to haul giant 9.2-inch guns to the summit of this coastal peak, you’ll find the ruins of an extensive system of fortifications. Mount Davis is well positioned to guard the western approaches to the harbour, and five gun emplacements were built here in the early years of the 20th century to ward off potential French or Russian fleets. More cannons were installed at Jubilee Battery, at the foot of the peak. They were of little use against a land-based army, however, so were unable to defend Hong Kong during the Japanese invasion from the mainland in 1941. They came under heavy aircraft attack during the assault – and the damage can still be seen – but the last defenders held out right until the surrender on Christmas Day.

As well as exploring the bunkers, tunnels and command posts, you can end your walk the same way it was started: with panoramic views of sea and islands.

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Standing on the high points of this ridge, you can look westwards directly down the length of Victoria Harbour. Click on the photo to view it at full size. Kowloon is on the right, and Hong Kong Island on the left. You may be able to pick out IFC Two, the Peak Tower, the Wanchai Convention Centre, Green Island, and the North Point ferry pier. Behind Kowloon, the twin summits of Lantau Island are just hidden in cloud. There are some days when you cannot even see Lantau from Kowloon, so this is exceptional.

We started walking through a lush green valley crossed by farmers’ aqueducts and full of dragonflies. Then, in the forest above Ma Yau Tong, we passed a tiny temple to Kwun Yam which is guarded by an army of garish cement statues — Chinese gods, Japanese soldiers, dancing girls, monkeys and tigers. I learnt from Phil at Oriental Sweetlips (a blog, not a Wanchai curtain bar) that these were made by an 84-year-old local gent a decade ago in his spare time. The Trumpton-like statues are crumbling now but the shrine is still tended.

As we reached the open hillside, Lion Rock appeared over Kowloon, and then great views of the harbour opened up to the west. Crossing Black Hill, clouds moved in behind us, keeping the horizon visibility high. A detour took us to the summit of Devil’s Peak, which is occupied by the ruins of an old British fort. This hilltop was the last position occupied by Commonwealth forces in their 1941 wartime evacuation of Kowloon. With emplacements for fixed guns, the fort has a clear field of fire over the eastern approaches to the harbour, but it was of little use against a land invasion from the north.

I had timed this walk to end at sunset in the hope of seeing the dozens of kites which choose to swirl over this end of the harbour in the early evening, and I wasn’t disappointed. The sky was full of them. Hidden by cloud for the previous 30 minutes, but bathing Kowloon in a golden light, the sun broke cover at this moment and coloured the whole scene red. The band of smog which usually swallows the sun an hour before dark was totally absent today.

A final descent brought us to the seaside shanty town of Lei Yue Mun, where the Tin Hau temple had closed for the night but seafood restaurants were opening for business. We took the little ferry over to Sai Wan Ho — a nice trip in itself — and enjoyed Thai food, and a bucket of beers, in the ferry pier.

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