The Taipei City Government will offer guided English hiking tours on the Tianmu Shuiguan trail on Saturday, and plans to expand the service to hiking activities on another 20 trails.
The guided tour will be held to promote the natural beauty of the trail and the history of Taipei City.
To attract members of the foreign community, the hiking tour will be available in English for the first time, the city government said yesterday.
Huang Li-yuan (黃立遠), a division chief at Taipei City’s Department of Economic Development, said the department cooperated with the ROC Natural Trail Association to train more than 400 guides to offer tours on 20 mountain trails in and around Taipei.
As many foreigners live in Tianmu, the department decided to start with an English guided tour there on Saturday. The English tours on the other 20 trails will be offered intermittently, he said.
Chang Yu-chuan (張尤娟), secretary-general of the association, said the 1.1km trail was built by the Japanese in the 1930s to facilitate work on a drain to let spring water flow from the mountain, so the trail was named Shuiguan (water pipe) Road.
The Tianmu Shuiguan Road also connects with the Old Tianmu Trail (the ancient path of Tianmu), which leads to the third water purification plant. The hiking tour on Saturday will include an introduction to the trail’s history and its ecosystem, she said.
Interested hikers should register with the association in advance. The hiking activity is limited to 300 participants in total, and the English tour is open to 20 foreigners.
Huang said the association would seek to offer English and Japanese guided tours at other trails if more foreigners are interested in participating in the hiking activities.
For registration and more information about other guided hiking tours offered by the department, please call 1999 ext. 6631 or call the association at 02-2358-3839.
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