Penang Hills and Trails - FCS Orchard Lollipop
Exploring above the Bukit Pondok Upeh Cycle Loop

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a Grade 2 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.

The main report below is rather complex! For those unfamiliar with the area, I have included a map at the bottom which shows a simpler to follow walk in the same area which we completed successfully in November 2017, it runs anti-clockwise as opposed to clockwise. I apologise for the lack of pictures, but it was done as a 'training walk' and covered totally familiar paths on a day that was rather damp and I didn't want to expose the camera.

The instructions can be summarised as follows.

1. The starting point is shown as the yellow square (you can park a car here). Walk along the road and turn into the FCS Orchard. Most likely the gate will be open and no one present but if there is just explain what you are doing.

2. Turn right before the first building and climb up ignoring the to paths on the left which are just a loop. At the next junction turn left (if you turn right you will end up at the top too) and now make the main climb. The other path will eventually come in downwards on your right. Ignore the level trail on your left and carry on till you reach the ridge and turn right.

3. Go ahead through the rubber until you meet a path coming up from the right. Ignore this and carry on upwards again through durians. When you can see rubber to your right, go over to it and follow one of the levels round and eventually you will some to another patch of rubber, much better maintained with a concrete path running downhill.

4. When you get to the house, go down the short distance to a concrete road. Follow this a very short distance until you reach a birds nest factory and turn left up the hill on a concrete path .

5. Follow this up to the ridge and from there just follow the concrete path and the concrete road until you come to the controlled gates at the bottom. You can easily pass on the left side and shortly after you will reach a T junction where you can turn left for the stating point. 

I had been up rather late following Saturday's UK rugby on the web and Yuehong wasn't feeling very energetic so I suggested a closer look at the area which included the FCS Orchard (http://www.durianorchard.com Link dead by May 2023) which we had passed through recently on our Malihom Bypass walk. The start of the walk was a shambles owing to lack of concentration on my part. Let's just pretend that we started at the layby by the electricity sub station some 3km up Jalan Tun Sardon from Balik Pulau as shown on the map. Technically it's the start of the 'Trek Basikal Berbukit Pondok Upeh' but since we first came here most of the blue signs seem to have fallen over, maybe the locals didn't like them and the bikers...

After a few minutes we got to the T junction, turned left and walked up through the gates which a car with a control had kindly just left wide open for us. I wouldn't advise driving in without permission as if the gate closes, there is no other way out. We were checking routes to the right and first up was a small concrete path which we tested, it looked promising for 100 metres or so and then failed as it ended leaving us a steep climb up to a new concrete road.

This also looked promising but pretty soon it turned into another one of Penang's 'Roads to Nowhere'.

We hoped for third time lucky and went up the next right past a house. indeed it went further than the other two combined.

This road also finished at an open area on the ridge where someone will have a splendid view over the Balik Pulau plains (to the left is a bit naff though) should they build a house here. However, this time a path continued.

We were interested in the area to the right which led down to the FCS Orchard and we noted an easy access on the right should the path fail us. However, it continued for some way until we came to a small dragon fruit plantation, something of a specialty in this area.

When the path finished, we knew there was young rubber not far ahead. There was no problem to go into the old rubber on the right and in a couple of minutes we had climbed up past an abandoned green hut into the open again.

By now we were above the durians on the right which had been replaced by jungle so our only option was to keep climbing on the path which had appeared before us and, as expected, soon we met another path coming up from the left  - we had come down here a couple of years ago on another walk.

The hill is steep enough to need zig-zags but it wasn't far to the top, especially as we had cheated by starting at nearly 200 metres above sea level. We turned right past the water tanks.

The trick now was to cut diagonally through to another rubber estate when this one finished. Last year it was heavily overgrown and infested with red ants who collectively kissed Yuehong as she passed through, this year we knew that someone had cut the grass for us and it made for really pleasant walking.

I had postponed lunch while we were in the rubber as the mosquitoes would have been able to have their lunch at the same time and we enjoyed a long break with views east and west at the top of the FCS orchard.

Apart from our recent Malihom Bypass walk, we had only been here once before in March 2014. At first we reversed our latest visit.

However, at the junction just below the 'swimming pool' we carried on down. We wanted to cross to the other side of the valley on our right but it would have been madness to try at this 'reverse'.

The other estate path came in from the left and at last almost at the bottom we had a chance of a traverse.

Still it wasn't an option but finally we could go the short distance down to the stream.

We crossed and checked out the path beyond but it offered no chance of an ascent and we turned left and walked out to the contour road which would have brought us back to our starting point if we had taken it.

However, it was just 15.00 and doing that would have ended the walk far too early meaning fewer pounds burned and too many Tigers. So we took the next turning right back up the hill, the new Yuehong was as keen as I was to try it out. We could see back to where we had just come down.

There was a single contour path to the right, there was no time to check it but experience suggested it could not go through as the jungle was directly ahead of it. It seemed our path had finished when we got to a ruin of a hut where rats were playing in the woodwork.

However, turning round we could see the path actually continued up, this was excellent news. Very soon it became less distinct but the ridge wasn't far away.

A short walk in the longer grass and then we were back on the ridge path where we had been two and a half hours earlier, exactly at the spot we had marked for possible investigation.

Job done! We walked back down to Jalan Tun Sardon and were in Balik Pulau on a 502 before 16.30 which allowed plenty of time for refreshment and to stock up on mangoes.

It wasn't a long walk but it was rewarding, we had new paths identified and conditions were near perfect almost throughout.