When it comes to scenic beauty, Taiwan offers everything from remote alpine summits that take a week's hard trekking to reach to grassy, roadside slopes made for a blanket picnic; a fantastic variety of natural beauty of a rare order can be found squashed into this small island if you know where to look.

What Taiwan doesn't do so well is history, and it's hard for many of us from the old world to get particularly worked up by, say, a few ruined farmers' huts beside a historic trail through the hills, or the remains of a kiln used by charcoal miners a century ago.

What we really need to get the juices running is the romantic ruins of one of those old castles--complete with dungeons--that pepper the countryside back home in Britain and that seemed such endlessly exciting, mysterious places to us as kids.

Those are joys we'll sadly never experience in Taiwan, but there's quite a good substitute in the old fort atop Mt. Li Dong in Hsinchu County, perhaps the most interesting Japanese-built fortification on the island. There's little to explore inside--the structure is essentially an empty shell providing much-needed shelter for a collection of radio aerials and a trig point. It's in its location that the fort really scores.

Perched atop a mountain 1,913 meters high, it's quite a trek (both by car and then on foot) to get there, and since the area is regularly shrouded in mist, especially during the afternoon, the old ruins are dripping with atmosphere.

Built by the Japanese in 1911 to control the surrounding mountains and their aboriginal inhabitants, Mt. Li Dong Old Fort (李崠山古堡) takes its name from a general who was based here with his men. The fort apparently saw some action, as pockmarks caused by gunfire can be seen in the fort's most impressive feature, the fine main gate.

Perhaps the most convenient jumping-off point for the fort is the city of Zhudong (竹東) in Hsinchu County. Head east out of town on national route three, and follow the line of the Neiwan branch railway up to the village of Jianshi