Susie Somewhere: Taiwan Trip: Caoling Historic Trail

After our return from Taroko Gorge, you'd have thought we'd be fed up with hiking and want some city life, but we found the call of the wild too strong, and on the following day, we got the train north to Fulong to walk the Caoling Historic Trail. This is part of a 200 year old route that was set up to help the Taiwanese settle the fertile Langyang Plain to the East. The section you can walk goes from Fulong (well actually about 2km along a marked track/road from Fulong) to Dali (about 8km). You can apparently continue on along a valley path to Daxi, which makes for a full days walk, but since we wanted to get back to Taipei, we just did the shorter walk.

It's a very well marked and well walked footpath. Apparently on a nice weekend afternoon it can get really busy, but we went early-ish on a sunny Saturday morning, and people were few and far between. It was a lot more tame than the walks we'd done in Taroko Gorge, but there were still a lot of steps. It was much hotter too, and we only just had enough water. There are vending machines at the start of the trail, and shops in Fulong, but nothing at all in Dali except one little ice cream stand.

Decoration in Fulong

On the way from Fulong to the start of the trail

Start of the trail

Lots and lots and lots of stairs

This says "Boldly Quell the Mists" (雄鎮蠻煙). It was inscribed by Liu-Ming Deng, the Taiwanese regional commander, in 1867 because he walked the trail and was struck with how difficult it was, so he engraved this as a monument to the people who opened up this part of Taiwan.

The same guy that engraved the other stone engraved this one with a symbol for tiger. Apparently there's an old Chinese saying "Clouds obey the dragon, winds obey the tiger", so he wrote tiger on here to stop the strong winds he encountered.