‘Far over the misty mountains cold / To dungeons deep and caverns old / We must away ere break of day / To seek the pale enchanted gold’…..

And so we did ~ venture forth that is, in the footsteps of The Hobbit and his friends, to the misty mountains cold, dungeons deep and caverns old ~ there’s plenty of them in the mountains above Keelung, and plenty have sadly lost their lives in those caverns mining the gold.  And copper.  The old gold mining town of Jinguashi 金瓜石 is located right there, right in the misty mountains, and just above it is Teapot Mountain (580m), the top looking like a teapot when seen from Jiu-Fen.  And that’s where we went yesterday, New Year’s Day, by car and motorcycle, a group of 10 of us from church and chaplaincy….. and y’know, it was a very fun day!

Last time I visited Teapot Mountain was in September (see that blog post here) on a nice sunny and dry day.  Although the rest of Taiwan may have been sunny and dry yesterday, Teapot Mountain definitely wasn’t. It wasn’t actually raining, but had been. Lots and lots! So although we arrived at the actual Teapot relatively dry, by the time we’d clambered in and up and through and out the other side, we were definitely not very dry. Nor very clean. Mud-covered to be precise.  Fortunately we all had gloves to grab onto the ropes and haul ourselves up, but the rocks were soaking wet and slippery and very dirty and muddy.  Ah, yes, and so were we by the end!

But y’know, it was great fun, and, hey a bit of mud is OK…

Hope you noticed the shoes in the last photo ~ how we laughed!

Grateful thanks to the lovely Ching-Yi who drove her car over there with us in it, 90 minutes there, and 90 minutes back.  Those on the motorbikes took double that time, but hey, they were still smiling to the end!

And a great way to spend New Year’s Day too ~ YES!