Sheung Shui - Long Valley

Even with all of the current civil unrest in Hong Kong, I still wanted to follow through with my original plan of visiting China during my stay in Hong Kong. While I was in Korea I did a lot of traveling by land during the weekends, and I wanted to keep that tradition going during my stay in Hong Kong. I had recently applied for a visa to China, and once I receive it I plan on visiting the closest city to Hong Kong, which is Shen Zhen. 

Speaking of Shen Zhen I was actually able to get pretty close to it by traveling to a place to Sheung Shui, a location in Hong Kong that is pretty much around the border between China and Hong Kong. I spent about half a day in Sheung Shui, and most of my time was spent in two places. For this post I want to talk about my visit to Long Valley, which is a fairly large part of wetland not too far away from the metro station. I was a bit worried at first because I thought it would not be walking distance away, and I wanted to avoid using public transport as much as possible. (it's just a weird quirk that I have where I want to see as much as possible without distractions.) 

It was not too long of a walk, where I spent about 20~30 minutes to get to Long Valley. Once I got to this patchy, grassy area, I got distracted by the cows grazing bellow the bridge. It's always a curious sight to behold when you meet creatures that are beyond people, dogs, cats and pigeons. I felt like I was starting to create some distance between the city, and the air felt like there was a lightness to it. Notice how I used the word 'felt', cause my city boy senses are far too unreliable after living in heavily polluted city environments. 

After getting past the herd of cows I walked a few minutes more until I got to a farmland type area. I wasn't too sure if this area was the destination that I had wanted to come to, but the visuals were just much too beautiful to pass by. Of course, I eventually found out that I was at the wetland area, but it didn't matter too much compared to how satisfied I was about being here. 

There were vast empty landscapes of just fresh greens, and just across the distance there were hilly vistas decorating the background. It kind of reminded me of the farmland areas that I came across when I was in Korea. 

I spent about 20~30 minutes just walking around while taking a few snap shots here and there, so I can imagine this not being the most interesting experience for some people, but I thought it was a really calming and relaxing experience that I wanted to capture in a small box. Unfortunately I was limited on time, as I only had a few hours remaining before the sun was going to set so I had to keep moving.