sengkang riverside walk
when my group picked it as the venue for this saturday's walk, i realised that it would be my first visit to the place. ever looking for new terrain to cover, we decided to explore the newly opened sengkang riverside park. as with all new parks, which do not have mature trees to offer the protection from the elements, especially the sun, it is best to have the walk early in the morning or in the later part of the evening.
if you drive, it is not a big problem to get to anchorvale street where the visitors' centre is located. a discovery for me is that you could get to punggol by way of jalan kayu. when you are on jalan kayu, after passing the ubin thai temple on your right, look out for the turning into sengkang east way. a short distance into sengkang east way, turn left at the junction into fernvale street. you will drive past two light rail transit (lrt) stations - thanggam and kupang - before you reach the visitors' centre on the left.
this is the visitors' centre with the free public car-park next to it. you can opt to coupon park at the anchorvale community club, which is located across the road from the centre. we toured the community club and the sports and recreation centre. the swimming complex has the usual children's pool with slides and tubes. what really make us envious of the residents of punggol and sengkang are two olympic-sized pools - one outdoor and one indoor. the adjacent sports complex has poligras olympia hockey pitches.
the sengkang park is the one where nparks has set aside one parcel of land for planting fruit trees. we could identify most of the fruit trees like the mango, durian, banana, dragonfruit, breadfruit, starfruit and jackfruit. but there were some we could not, like the one shown in the picture above.
of course, we could not miss out on the floating wetland, one of the unique features in this park. the wetland was recently declared open by the prime minister. there is this giant mangosteen which is actually a shelter. we did not see any heron, kingfisher or tern but we did come across two snakes - one dead and one slithering - at the park.
a nice and quiet park for walkers, joggers and cyclists. i was told by my friend that in the evening, there are lots of kite flyers. at the moment, it is not well served by public transport. the lrt does not seem to be frequent or as well used as the one at bukit panjang.
