Penang Hills and Trails - Chinese New Year Amble
TFF - Pantai Acheh - Secret Garden 2019

This is part of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang. Click here for the index. This is a Grade 3 walk. There is a sketch map at the bottom showing the route followed. 

Please visit my Penang buses page for information on accessing the starting point.

Our recent hiking had been 'unbalanced', we had done too many tough longer walks and too few shorter 'training' ones. As it was Chinese New Year, the late afternoon Batu Ferringhi traffic would be awful so this was an ideal opportunity to record the transit through the area behind Boulder Valley Glamping now the wild boar fence has cut off our previous route. 

We parked Mavis in full sun at the Tropical Fruit Farm 400 metre sign, by the time we came back the sun would have moved round and put her in the shade. We stepped round the padlocked gate and entered a different world as we descended into the valley.

When the grass was long it was easy to miss this junction initially as what little traffic there was tended to go straight ahead to the hut. On the other side, the coconut plantation has reached maturity.

We are now seeing signs of the forthcoming durian season. These buds will rapidly grow and of the flowers that emerge, maybe just one or at the most two will become a fruit in some 3 months time. At the bottom, we crossed the stream and entered the last of what would be shade for a while.

We just had to pick our spot to enter the coconuts, then slip down the bank and leap the stream.

Now, it it were not for the upper parts which remain an overgrown mess including some cut primary jungle, this would be one of the best maintained orchards on the island. The grass is well manicured and there are numerous young durian trees.

This part will look better in 10 years when the trees have grown a bit, it's a far cry from the state it was in 6 years ago when we found it newly cleared. They took their time but have done a good job eventually.

We wanted to avoid the dangerous and overgrown path behind the 'big house' so after joining the road from the main entrance we branched left up the hill. 

This is clearly the area reserved for later phases - let me remind you what these sensitive developers have in mind - a 120 room eco-hotel, 36 villas, 40 chalets and 100 'Birds Nest' villas, so nothing intrusive. Needless to say I am keeping my fingers crossed that the more modest existing  Boulder Valley Glamping is less than a commercial success.

The sealed road finished and became a wide track 

Where it continued up the hill, we branched right to the col which is the site exit, that's the view looking back.  

It was baking hot on the next section as we turned right and walked up the concrete road. Here's another piece of sensitive clearing, OK it was a mess, but was it really necessary to cut the beautiful mature trees which lined the road to the left?

This is all that is left of the largest one, it's plain vandalism. Now there is one tree left which has been ringed by these pig ignorant incomers.

At the top we turned left to where the ridge has recovered somewhat from its own clearance but it will leave the whole area dependent on pumped water forever to get it through the dry seasons.

Next we needed to pass down through the small section of 'jungle' which has so far miraculously survived.

When we got to the 'entrance' we found someone had tried to dissuade hikers from entering. Brainless as ever, all they have achieved is to make the entrance more obvious as it was easy to complete the job with a booted foot and then dump the rubbish to the side. Never mind, below is a mature durian orchard and for a change this time we went right. 

This path also had a few easily removed small branches on it and after passing through the rubber we went through the classic orchard which has almost every kind of fruit growing on the island.

Yuehong was into short cuts today, this one avoided a bunch of yapping dogs, and we set off down the hill.

The shade of the remaining old rubber was appreciated but in fact as we emerged opposite the 'English Garden' it clouded over.

We joined the 'left side route' and went down to the nearest point to Pantai Acheh and set off back up.

Yuehong disappeared ahead of me, I knew she would wait at the col where there is invariably a gentle cooling breeze.

I enjoyed my Tiger and decided I had done enough photography for the day. We didn't suddenly bump into two extra hikers, the pictures show Mike and Neil with us a couple of weeks earlier when we followed the same route back to the car.

This is the key turn off. it used to be 'hidden' but it seems the route is now busy enough to keep it open as a path. It's just a few minutes down to the 'Secret Garden' from where we took the path along and slightly up through the exceedingly old rubber.

At the other end the wild boar fence is now effectively complete, but the good news is that the rest of this area is still accessible as we showed earlier.

. As before we trudged up the final hill. We'd been out for 4 hours but of that at least 30 minutes had been spent relaxing.

There are endless combinations in this area and this is as good as any, generally I prefer to start and finish in Pantai Acheh so we can have a visit to the Seong Hooi coffee shop, but of course it would have been closed for CNY today. It also avoided half an hour's driving, a saving which was negated by having to crawl all the way home through Batu Ferringhi.