Frederick Lugard served as Governor of Hong Kong from 1907 to 1912. He later became the first Governor-General of Nigeria and, eventually, Lord Lugard — one of the more consequential figures in British colonial administration. In Hong Kong, his name is attached to this path on Victoria Peak, which was under planning during his tenure and named in his honor. The road runs from Victoria Gap — where the Peak Tram terminates — westward along the hillside, then joins Harlech Road at its far end to form a complete circuit of The Peak. The full loop is approximately 3.5 km. Most walkers take 45 minutes to an hour, though the pace depends heavily on how often you stop to look.

Lugard Road is technically open to vehicles, but practically inaccessible to them. At its widest it reaches 3 metres; in narrower sections it drops below 2 metres. Permits to drive on it are issued only to residents of the few properties along its length. The houses are there — No. 26, No. 27, No. 28 — sitting behind dense vegetation on a hillside where the gradient makes almost everything difficult. The oldest house on the road is No. 27, a two-storey private residence designed by Palmer and Turner and built in 1914. Butterfield and Swire later turned it into a staff mess; a subsequent proposal to expand the 9,500-square-foot property into 17 lettable units was approved despite objection from local groups. The road was listed as a Grade III historic building in 2010.

The history of No. 26 Lugard Road is a compressed version of Hong Kong's social history. A dwelling was built on the site around 1890. In 1899, it was sold for HK$34,000 to Joseph Charles Hoare, then Bishop of Victoria, who named it Bishop's Lodge. Hoare drowned in a typhoon in 1906 — a fate that seems almost too dramatic for a Victorian clergyman — and the property passed to his wife. In 1917 it sold again for HK$20,830, this time to Robert Hotung, the prominent Hong Kong businessman and philanthropist. Hotung surrendered the Crown lease in 1950. One house, a bishop, a typhoon drowning, a prominent tycoon, a surrendered lease: the Peak concentrated Hong Kong's colonial elite in close quarters on difficult terrain, and the records of who owned what tell an unusually clear story.

Most of Lugard Road passes under tree cover. Tropical vegetation grows thickly along the hillside — ferns, banyan roots gripping the cut rock, epiphytes on the older trees — and the path moves through filtered green light for stretches at a time. Then the canopy opens. The views south look over Pok Fu Lam reservoir and the hills of Lantau. The views north — the ones that stop people — open across Victoria Harbour: Kowloon stretching away to the horizon, the container port to the west, the towers of Central and Wan Chai directly below. On clear winter days, the visibility extends far enough to see beyond the urban mass into the hills of Guangdong province. On humid summer days the city disappears into haze, leaving only the nearest buildings and the harbor glittering below.

Lugard Road forms the opening section of Stage 1 of the Hong Kong Trail, the 50 km long-distance footpath that crosses Hong Kong Island from Victoria Peak to Big Wave Bay on the eastern coast. Stage 1 continues from Lugard Road through Pokfulam Country Park and down to Pokfulam Reservoir — the section that takes walkers from the city's highest viewpoint into its quietest reservoir woodland in less than two hours. Beginning a 50 km trail at the top of a mountain, looking out over a harbor full of container ships and skyscrapers, is an unusual start. The trail then heads steadily away from all of it, and by the time walkers reach the reservoir, the view from Lugard Road feels like something from a different island entirely.