Cool weather? Head for the hills!

We've just had our first few days of cool weather this winter, and cool weather means it's time to get out hiking!

If you're out and about and you see anything unusual, please leave a comment or a photo to tell us what you've found. It's always good to hear about new things to explore. I'll give some more tips on how to share your discoveries below, but first a small find from Friday morning's walk.

I'd started off with a walk up Hatton Road to the Peak. It's a regular morning walk at the moment, so I wasn't expecting to see anything new. On the way back down, I turned left off the road to take these steps:

They lead down to Pinewood Battery, and when you get near to the battery you'll see a junction in the path, and this shelter:

Just left of the shelter there's a blocked off track with a "Road Closed" sign. For some mysterious reason, the closed roads often lead somewhere interesting! I hadn't been along it before but it didn't look too overgrown, and the cool temperature means less mozzies, so off I went.

The first section of the path is a wide platform. It isn't far from the battery, and when I saw the concrete on the slopes I thought there would soon be military buildings.

But looking more closely it is just a thin layer of concrete, not the thick walls you can see around the battery. So I think this was a squatter area, built sometime in the years after WW2. Looking around there were several more signs that people had lived here, with steps leading up the hill,

a post in a bucket of concrete,

and tiles on the wall in front of the clearing:

After that the path narrows, but it never gets badly overgrown. At a couple of places I had to crouch down to get under a branch, but that's the worst of it.

Someone had put a lot of effort into this path. Here is a stone-lined gully, with several large stone slabs across it to make a bridge.

You can also see a length of plastic pipe in the photo above, a clue to where the path is leading:

A small dam built across one of the streams that runs down from the Peak. The dam is in two sections. At the back is an old but very well made wall, built from stone blocks:

It looks similar to other stonework you can see along Hatton and Harlech Roads. They were built for military use in the early 1900s. I guess this wall was built around the same time, possibly to catch water to send down to Pinewood Battery.

A concrete wall has been added in front, and forms the main pool of water:

It is newer than the stone wall, and though it is neatly built you can see the front wall is roughly finished. I guess it was built after WW2, to provide a water supply for the people living on these slopes.

Those are my guesses, but it would be good to hear from anyone who knows the history of this little structure.

When I find some new feature like this, I'm often surprised to find it's been on the government maps all along. I just hadn't realised what it was. As this screenshot from GeoInfo shows, that's true here too:

A - leave Hatton Road here. B - "Road Closed". C - the dam.

The stream is just a trickle at this height, but further down it grows to be much larger. That lower section of the stream is one of my favourite places around this area. It's a pretty spot, and well worth a visit if you're nearby. The easiest way to get there is from the old Pokfulam Conduit. If you get to the bridge shown at http://gwulo.com/node/21903, you'll see the path heading up along the side of the stream. Follow it along and you'll come to several small pools and waterfalls.

Happy exploring if you're getting out to the hills this winter. If you find anything unusual and would like tell us about it, I suggest you:

1. Check out the Map of Places to see if anyone has written about it before.
2. If they have, let us know what else you found when you were there, or if there have been any changes. Photos are always good (here's how to upload a photo).
3. Or if it's a new find, go ahead and make a new Place for it, where you can add any notes & photos.

I look forward to reading about your discoveries,

Regards, David