Tai Mo Shan Country Park

Location: In the heart of the New Territories

Fact file:

• The 14.4-square-kilometre park surrounds Tai Mo Shan (“foggy mountain” or “big hat mountain”), which is Hong Kong’s highest peak, at 957 metres.

• While there’s fog aplenty up here (hence the name!), on a clear day the views are superb, with Kowloon, Victoria Harbour and Hong Kong Island all visible.

• Tai Mo Shan is actually an inactive volcano; it dates back to the Jurassic period.

• How cold? On a particularly frigid day in 2016, the mercury dipped to minus 6 degrees Celsius at the summit. (See our last issue for the story of a trail run on Tai Mo Shan that just happened to be held on that day.)

• This area of Hong Kong was once home to tea plantations, and famous for a variety of green tea called wun mo cha – “cloud” or “mist” tea.

What else?

To the north of Tai Mo Shan is another smaller peak, Kwun Yam Shan, which is home to a number of “hot pots” (some of them signposted); this is the local name for fissures in the ground that emit warm, moist air from below the surface. They’re sometimes referred to colloquially as “dragon’s breath”.