Sai Kung

Boats tie up against the wall and sell straight off the deck. Once a price is agreed the fish comes up in a net bag, and the restaurants behind will clean and cook what you carry in, for a table charge on top. By late afternoon there is not much left aboard.

Check the tide table before anything else. At low water a sandbar surfaces and carries you across to the islet beside it; at high water that path is gone. The rock on the shore weathers into rounded lumps that look like the crust of a bun.

Hexagonal columns stand as a whole cliff face here. They formed as volcanic ash cooled and cracked. On the seaward side, concrete blocks poured to break the waves lie heaped like rubble. No bus comes out this far, so it is a taxi in and a taxi out.

This section is 13.5km and takes about five hours. It runs on dirt and steps and passes four large beaches one after another. There is almost no way to cut out early, so you set off with water and hours to spare.

No road reaches it. Getting in takes 90 minutes of walking from the pavilion at Sai Wan, or a hired boat, and that is why the sand stays open even on a summer weekend. Two village shops sell noodles and drinks.

The abandoned salt pans are producing again. The village emptied out entirely, and in the 2010s returning families repaired the pans and the church, St Joseph's of 1890, which stands on the rise above them. The boat from Sai Kung takes 15 minutes.

A whole Hakka hamlet was kept intact and turned into the museum. Eight houses inside one wall, the pigsties and the kiln where shells were burnt for lime are all still there, about 20 minutes uphill from the car park at Pak Tam Chung.

The steps down from the bus terminus put you on the sand. There are two beaches, the southern one wider and the one everybody goes to. On the headland at the mouth of the bay stands an old temple, reachable along the shore path.

A glass-bottomed boat is how most people see the coral. The whole bay is protected, so fishing and collecting are barred and the water is shallow enough in summer that a mask is sufficient, with only a few buses a day out to the village.

The site was an agricultural station. Orchards and herb plots survive as separate sections. An insect house and a shell gallery are there too, and walking in is free of charge. The car park is large, and families come for that reason.

A little island beyond the northeast tip of the Sai Kung peninsula, served by ferry from Wong Shek Pier. Its east side is treeless grassy hill, grazed by cattle and swept by wind. A balanced rock perches on the shore. Shops are few, so bring water.

A golf course that takes up a whole island off Sai Kung, the only public course in Hong Kong where anyone can book a round without membership. Its own boat crosses from Sai Kung pier. Many holes skirt the shoreline, leaving the wind a big say.

Small boats from Sai Kung pier circle the outer islands of the geopark, slipping in among hexagonal column cliffs and caves cut by the sea. On days of high swell they cannot enter the caves. Wear clothes you do not mind getting wet.