Penang Hills and Trails - FCS Orchard Circular
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.

In November 2016, the only suitable 501 departure from Teluk Bahang is at 10.30 (and the last bus back from Balik Pulau is at 17.30), check the Penang buses page for possible updates.

We'd had a tough walk the day before which had left Yuehong exhausted, she demanded (and got) something at the easy end of the scale, a two hour Gibby walk in one of her favourite areas. It's very hard to go wrong if you start on the Pondok Upeh Cycleway road and we left Mavis at one of our two regular parking spots. We walked back north and found that most of the durians here were behaving themselves and flowering at the official time. Turning right, the electronically controlled gate was unusually wide open but it was again closed when we drove past later.

The concrete road up is not the best feature of the area, but at least it was properly constructed and didn't suffer landslides in the recent storms. Just before the last house, we branched off right, I think this is the first time we had actually used this section.

It finished just before the rubber at a point where a space has been cleared for a house to be built. The rubber is young and in the current dry spell most of the leaves had fallen.

There's just one junction, we had used the path on the right as an alternative ascent on one occasion. The only jarring moment of the walk was provided by the site of the adjacent fruit orchard being extended into the only true jungle area in this part of the hill, hardly necessary when there is plenty of abandoned rubber as an alternative not far away.

This kind of climb is routine, we ht the ridge in about 40 minutes and turned right. When this rubber finished we crossed diagonally into another estate.

Now this one has 'history', sometimes it's overgrown and sometimes it's neat and tidy, more significantly in the wrong season it can be home to millions of large red ants. Today, I had no trouble marching through unlike Yuehong, but the good news was that the ants were on holiday just like the mosquitoes in the rubber trees. We skirted the worst of the overgrown grass and came out spot on target.

Just across in a couple of hundred metres we came to the well groomed FCS orchard. The toothache merchants down at ground level were going full blast, that meant a double dose of patent anaesthetic for me while Yuehong demolished the best part of half a water melon. Normally there's cracking views on both side from up here but today was very hazy.

When we set off down, there was an almost immediate emergency application of the brakes, Yuehong had forgotten to restart the hiking app on her toy! After which, it was time to start on what for me is one of my favourite descents in Penang.

There's an alternative route down to the left but we had done that one earlier on the visit so we continued down the main path. Normally Yuehong's knees do not favour downhill sections, but this one is so well graded that she felt like she was flying.

The owners are very welcoming of responsible hikers, but if you come this way, keep the numbers down and don't forget your manners!

In almost no time we were down, turning right at the orchard gate and getting back to the car in around two hours.  It was 'no pain, no gain' stuff as we hadn't even managed 4km.

Never mind, Chinese New Year is almost over and our favourite restaurants are back in business. We stopped in Sungai Pinang and were back home in time for a late afternoon swim. Tomorrow is another day and I have something more challenging planned.