Letter from London|A trail of tears and triumph
Now that the weather has finally improved here in the UK, we are off to the Surrey Hills tomorrow. This is a delightful patch of countryside to the south of London, which is unmarred by towns or motorways. There you can hike for twenty kilometers without being disturbed much by modern civilization. There are a few quaint villages, and isolated scattered farms, but otherwise visitors enjoy the rolling slopes of the North Downs, which from their higher points offer uninterrupted broad vistas over the rural landscape. It is a green area of woods, hedgerows and meadows. Our walks these days are leisurely, not too arduous, and will almost certainly be punctuated by a stop for lunch at a country pub.
All this is quite a contrast to the rugged, spectacular scenery and physical challenge of trekking in the New Territories, which we so often did in our Hong Kong days. The breath-taking coastal paths of Sai Kung, and the steep, rocky paths over the central peaks were hard work, particularly in the long, humid summer months. But there was one special path that I never felt able to conquer – and that was the MacLehose Trail. Although I walked individual sections of this hundred-kilometer marathon, I knew that to tackle the entirety in a single effort was beyond me.
Nevertheless, I became closely acquainted with this twisting, climbing and falling path vicariously, when, in the early nineties, my ambitious wife decided to join a team entering the Oxfam Trail Walker. This event had been conjured up a decade early, to exploit the challenge of the course by raising money for charity through sponsorship for the daring – some might say foolhardy – entrants. The target was quite simply to complete the route with an intact team of four, so brotherly and sisterly love was an important ingredient in lasting the course together and achieving success. By the time of my wife’s first effort, thousands were competing.
By mapping out and linking up existing pathways, the Trail was first established in October, 1979, as part of a broader government plan to improve the quality of life for ordinary Hongkongers. The idea was to ensure people could enjoy some rural therapy away from the urban areas, creating protected country land by means of the Country Parks Ordinance of 1976. As this took place during the governorship of Murray MacLehose, himself a keen hiker, the Trail took his name.
Very quickly the exhausting route was spotted by the British Army as a useful form of sadistic fitness training. Soldiers were sent out on competitive runs to cover the whole distance in one agonizing effort, racing from Pak Tam Chung in Sai Kung and across the whole swathe of the New Territories, including the daunting mountains of Ma On Shan and Tai Mo Shan, to Tsuen Mun. Ultra-marathons (a sport designed for masochists) were soon being run regularly.
Not surprisingly, those hardy Nepalese fighters, the Gurkhas, perhaps toughened by growing up in the Himalayan foothills, became the recognized champs to beat. They set a seemingly unbreakable record of around twelve hours. Apparently, they jogged all the way, while carrying their kit!
When my wife took part, the aim was more modest – just make it to the finishing line and collect the sponsorship money. This didn’t prove so easy, as at the first attempt one team member dropped out from understandable exhaustion and cramp, while a second slowed up the whole team by unreasonably suffering from severe blistering on her feet. Apparently, she expected to stop frequently to tend to them! The problem was, it delayed the others and they finished in, what was for them, a disappointing time.
Not to be put off, my determined spouse entered a second year, calculatingly picking teammates made of sterner stuff. Once again, they set off from Sai Kung, at three in the afternoon, looking to trek through the night. As always, it was hard going and she reported later that the toughest parts were the steep slopes up the mountain sides, with just a flickering torch to find their way in the dark.
They stumbled, exhausted, over the finishing line, the next day around 1pm, having achieved a remarkable time of 22 hours. Their leg muscles were so sore as they approached the last few kilometers that they actually found that jogging was less painful. Amazing achievement, for a bunch of civilian thirty-somethings!
I must confess here I played a major part in their success, being in charge of support logistics. This entailed driving them all to Sai Kung to the start, tearing myself away from a sociable evening in my favorite bar to deliver hot drinks, salty soup and carbs at some godforsaken spot near Shatin at 2am, and having to collect them at the end! And I was exhausted!
There were many such teams of ordinary people who tackled that daunting course and made it. At the finishing line, as I waited for my team, I witnessed many tears – of relief, joy, triumph and sheer pain. You couldn’t describe Wong Ho Chung as ordinary, however. I just read he broke the record last year for running the MacLehose Trail, setting a time of ten hours and thirty-eight minutes. Wow! That simple idea of a walking trail turned so many people into heroes and a few into super-heroes.
(The writer lived in Hong Kong for more than twenty years, arriving soon after the death of Mao and leaving after the handover of the territory to China. He experienced the seismic transformation of Hong Kong on its journey from plastic flowers and T-shirts to global front runner in trade and high finance.)
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