Penang Hills and Trails - Another 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, the off piste sections are short and readily manageable. 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.

You would have to try very hard (although I've done it) to screw up a walk in the area above the Bukit Pondok Upeh Cycleway. We'd done Gertak Sanggul to death, trampled all round the Sungai Ara Valley and spent a delightful afternoon above Sungai Pinang. With Yuehong's unpredictable dodgy knee, I played safe for what was supposed to be her last walk of the season, today being Monday and then she could have a day off for the domestics before flying back to the UK on Wednesday.

We did a not dissimilar walk back in January, if I had thought I could have chosen the right coloured T-shirt and recycled some of the pictures. As it was, I didn't. We left Mavis at one of our two regular parking spots and this time went up the small path just before the FCS durian orchard, a route we had only ever followed once, hence a revisit was overdue.

It's a standard concrete path albeit one with weeds growing out of it, the owner here seems rather casual. On the right ahead was our other durian orchard for the day, the FCS, and that is a very tightly run ship.

I wanted to check out this junction, Yuehong made a face as it was obviously a dead end. It was full of mature durian trees which were so overloaded that branches were breaking off, one of which narrowly missed me. If you get hit by three durians at once, it cold be very bad news. After I had done my survey, I invited Yuehong down to enjoy a 'windfall', what I judged (correctly) to be the best of many on the ground. It yielded immediately to the Swiss Army knife and you tell how delicious it was by the look on her face afterwards.

Somebody now had energy to burn, from the hut we reversed direction and went up towards the top of the orchard.

The last time we came, it was guesswork, but now it was easy to see where to go. As we went through the gap, we met the wrong kind of farmer on his motorbike. By which I mean he thought he could tell us that the path up was a dead end because he didn't want us here. I asked Yuehong to explain that we had been here before and that we knew that the path ended above the dragon fruit but another one started about 30-40 metres further on through the old rubber. She did her job well, he shrugged his shoulders as if to admit defeat, he went down and we went up.

I've yet to see a healthy dragon fruit plant, in my book they rank along with water melons and jackfruit as 'not worth the effort'. The path ended, we scrambled up past the last dragon fruit and went into the old rubber.

As Yuehong came through she exclaimed "It's a lot easier than I remember!". There's an abandoned hut to the left and then we were out in the sunlight again.

This was familiar rubber from the last hike here and we turned right at the junction to continue the climb.

That's the FCS orchard behind and I would like to think that this vegetable patch to be will see a single season before giving way to fruit trees, that was an awful waste of a classic jungle tree. Now Yuehong had energy to burn. I had planned to continue up the path to the ridge but she had other ideas, by turning right here we could take a short cut. It was a bit overgrown but I knew better than to object.

That's our target, the bright area beyond and this rubber at least was easy to get through.

There was a suitable terrace below and never mind the undergrowth was thin enough to see where to put our feet.

We knew that the rubber would finish and below was a fruit orchard. Last year it had been cut back by this time and given that the durian season is running some two months early, we had expected an easier passage. I begged Yuehong to let me guide her through and she must have been in a good mood as she agreed.

It would be easy to drift left or right, but it pays to keep focused because it's easier where the trees are closest and there is a key point to aim for at a small col, success means arriving at a point where there are several derelict motorbikes. Failure would mean going too far down on either side...

We've been here frequently in the past and it's a while since I got it wrong, but basically it's a question of spotting the right ridge of rubber (which lies ahead) and this leads directly to the top of the FCS durian orchard.

It was (liquid) lunchtime, it's a great spot and we were serenaded by the mellifluous tones of the toothache merchants below. When we had all finished, we headed down, this time I planned to use #2 route as it is more scenic than the direct descent, so we turned left and started to climb again.

Now that's a 'natural swimming pool' if ever I saw one, but you wouldn't get us into it. As the path curved we had a view back to the hill we had just come over.

More views were in store although it was a rather murky day, the Balik Pulau plain and then Bukit Elvira in the distance.

The body language suggested that today's walk had not been sufficiently challenging, a man just can't win. Next, we passed a rare treasure, probably the only clove tree left in the orchard. There aren't many around these days, I've got a very short list of them, none are particularly healthy and this was no exception. Yesterday's tree had already expired, just a few dead leaves had confirmed its identity from the aroma.

We rejoined the direct route and made our way out, Mavis was just a few minutes away. 

On checking the toy, Yuehong was 40 metres short of 4km so she did a quick trot down the road to make up the distance, sometimes one can become a slave to technology... Afterwards we had our last visit to Sungai Pinang for this trip, we've been based in Penang for 4 months and the time has flown by.