Trail of the Lion King

Jen and I had been to a football match at Cheongju on the Saturday afternoon and as Songnisan National Park isn’t too far away we decided to head there afterwards and do a bit of hiking. I’d been to Songnisan for a weekend earlier in the year and on the first day had taken the trail to Mungjangdae. I had planned to hike up to Cheonhwangbong the following day but there had been a lot of ice on the ground and a snapped crampon had prevented me from getting any further than half–way up.

Songnisan - Feb 2011.

In the autumn though, there is no need for crampons and so I took the opportunity to have another crack at the 1,058m Cheonhwangbong peak. We got the bus from Cheongju, arriving at Songnisan an hour and a half later at about 6pm. Last time I’d been there the place was deserted, most of the hotels and restaurants were closed and the main street looked like a ghost town. This time though the place was heaving with people. Unbeknown to us Songnisan was holding its ‘Festival of Falling Leaves’ which is an excuse for a couple of thousand people to descend upon what is pretty much a one street town to drink soju and eat pancakes whilst appreciating the surrounding foliage.

The consequence of all of this nature study was that hotel room prices had doubled. On the plus side though it did mean that there were plenty of places to eat. We didn’t watch much of the concert that was taking place at one end of the street, but we did have some seafood pancakes and dongdongju. If you’ve never had dongdongju, it’s like moonshine makgeolli. As makgeolli is pretty much moonshine anyway, that makes dongdongju a sort of moonshine moonshine. It was quite drinkable though.

It's not quite Glastonbury, but still a decent turnout.

Next morning we set off early and were in the National Park not long after eight o’clock. There were a lot of people milling around but fortunately most of them were either following the trail up to Mungjangdae or were content with visiting the big statue at Beopjusa temple near to the entrance to the park.

Beopjusa

The path up to Cheonhwangbong was fairly quiet, or it least it was for most of the way. As we got to about twenty minutes away from the peak we met the hikers who were doing a loop from Mungjangdae and those who had made an even earlier start than us and who were on their way down. This meant that the single file path became crowded to the extent that we had to keep stopping to let people coming down get past and those behind us who wanted to run to the top to get by.

We reached the peak after about three and a quarter hours and eight kilometres of walking. The first five kilometres had been pretty flat and we’d covered that section of the trail in about an hour, with the final three kilometres being pretty steep and taking the remainder of the time. There were probably about twenty people at the top when we arrived and there was barely room to sit down.

At the top of Cheonhwangbong.

We hung about for ten minutes or so looking down on the clouds and the surrounding mountains. If you could find a view that wasn’t obscured by a couple of Koreans gurning for the camera then it was worth looking at.

Above the clouds.

Because of the wet leaves on the ground the descent took almost as long as going up did and whilst it was easier on the lungs and muscles it was murder on my knees. We were back at the bus station for about quarter past two though and were able to catch the next bus to Seoul. They run every ninety minutes or so but you can’t pre-book them and once each bus is full it sets off. Our bus departed about twenty minutes before it was meant to.

Songnisan to Seoul bus timetable

So, I’ve hiked Songnisan with the crowds and I’ve hiked it when it’s covered in snow and ice. I think I’d like to try to make my next visit sometime when it’s quiet but solid underfoot. There’s probably a three-hour slot sometime on a Wednesday afternoon in April when it might just be like that.

The Jeju Olle Trail is a series of hiking paths that mainly follow the coast around Jeju Island. I think that there were initially twelve routes that totalled over two hundred kilometres, but it seems that as more villages want to get in on the action there are now over twenty different routes. The intention looks to have been to try to divert hikers from the popular hikes up and down the 1950m Hallasan and to give some of the coastal areas a bit of a tourism boost.

The previous day Jen and I had walked the 15.6km route 7-1 from Oedolgae Rock to the World Cup Stadium and as we were staying in the area we thought we might as well return to Oedolgae Rock and hike along route 7 to Wolpyeong.

It’s a short taxi ride from Seogwipo to Oedolgae Rock. Most people arrive by coach though as part of a touring party to visit the location where one of the characters in a television soap opera died. A lot of the visitors had apparently come all of the way from Japan and China just to stand and gawp at a rock because it had briefly been on the telly. Although I suppose they may very well raise an eyebrow at the idea of me travelling six thousand miles to Korea and then watching third division football. Or wandering around an empty stadium if there isn’t a game on.

The monk on the right found a bit of peace and quiet.

The crowds disappeared after the first few hundred metres and there were a lot of wooden walkways in this early section, so it didn’t take too long to cover the first few kilometres. It’s generally as scenic as you’d expect a coastal walk to be with plenty of cliffs, beaches and, due to it being a bit warmer than the rest of Korea, lots of palm and orange trees.

Slightly out of step with the rest of the walk though is the section where the route passes through a sewage disposal plant. I was a little surprised that the trail hadn’t been diverted to detour around it.

I didn't get a photo of the sewage works, so here's one I took of a dog instead

An hour and a quarter into the walk and we reached the World Cup Stadium, or at least the crossroads where you could leave route 7 if you wanted to go to the match. There wasn’t a game on so we just carried on. That’s twice we’ve seen the stadium now without getting to see a match there.

You can just about see the roof.

Some of the fishing villages that we passed through looked as if they hadn’t changed much in years, apart from signs in restaurants advertising their Olle Trail Specials and an occasional newly opened coffee shop. At one place we saw women washing clothes by hand in the seawater.

"Tide's in, dirt's out."

At others there were women bundling and bagging seaweed. I’m not too sure what the blokes were doing whilst all this was going on.

The bags weigh 50kg each.

There were plenty of stalls along the way selling food and drink so you could leave the backpack at home if you wanted. You could buy a box of oranges if you fancied, or just a slice of pineapple.

I felt like the man from Del Monte.

About two-thirds of the way along we passed a site intended for a new naval base. It looked as if the locals were none too happy to have had their land used and there was a peace camp protest, a large police presence and plenty of slogans in both Korean and English painted on the perimeter walls of the base.

I doubt that you would see that North of the border.

It took us just over four hours to complete the 15.1km route to Wolpyeong. There isn’t a great deal at the end apart from a small shop and a fish restaurant. We called in and got some soup and a raw mackerel. The mackerel was fresh from the tank and at one o’clock it looked like this.

Does that count as 'freshly caught'?

Ten minutes later it looked like this;

Served raw - eat with a bit of rice and spicy sauce wrapped in seaweed.

We were fortunate to be able to get a taxi back to Seogwipo afterwards as I don’t think too many cabbies would tend to hang around at the end of that particular Olle route. There was enough going on in Seogwipo to fill in the rest of the afternoon and we took a ride in a submarine to a depth of about fifty metres and then had a walk along to a waterfall.

We were sat just behind the driver.

Both were interesting enough. Disappointingly the submarine didn’t make that sonic beeping noise that they do at the pictures, instead we got some relentless babble in Korean from a crew member who fancied himself as a bit of a comedian. The waterfall was busy but worth the effort too.

It takes a while for the new fashions in Seoul to reach Jeju.

We’ve got plans to do a few more sections of the Olle Trail. With the exception of the start where we encountered the coach-trippers there weren’t many people about and so out of season it should be even quieter. I doubt that we’ll get around all of the trails but with there being not too many hills I think it’s quite possible to do two routes in what would be a 30km day. We’ll see.

The World Athletics Championships have been going on in Daegu for the past week and Jen and I had tickets for the final two days. There’s a handy Provincial Park with some decent hiking just outside of Daegu at Palgongsan, but we had already been there a few months back. There’s another Provincial Park, Geumosan, about half an hour away on the train though and as the athletics took place in the evenings we decided that we might as well stay near to Geumosan and do some hiking there during the day.

We took the KTX from Seoul to Daejeon on the Friday night and then switched to a Saemaul train for the remainder of the journey to Gumi. Saemaul is the first step down from the high-speed KTX. They are a bit slower but still quite posh with velvet seats and plenty of room. I was quite impressed, although I had been drinking and stuff often seems better then.

I have a suspicion that a reasonable proportion of the readers of this blog who visit here intentionally rather than those who stumble across it after a search for ‘Penis fish’, ‘Gorilla autopsy’, ‘The Olsen Twins’ or the occasional combination of all three, may very well be the sort of people who have an interest in things like trains. With that in mind, I took a photo of the inside of the carriage.

One for the rolling stock enthusiasts.

We got to Gumi at about half past ten and checked into the Metro Motel which was pretty much the first place that we found. It was either the poshest place in Gumi or the most delusional as it had Won to Yen exchange rates displayed in its foyer to cater for Japanese tourists. I couldn’t help but wonder why on Earth someone would travel from Japan to holiday in Gumi. The most noteworthy thing I could find out about the town was that a fair bit of public money had been ploughed into the local industry at around the same time that a local boy became President.

For the benefit of any Japanese tourists, that's it. Behind the shops.

Mind you, I was back in Stockton recently and there were loads of people on holiday there which baffled me. Not many Japanese I suspect though. Not unless they were international Pound Shop aficionados.

Next morning we took a five minute taxi ride to Geumosan and walked along a trail which followed the road for a while. The path slowly gained height until we reached a sign that pointed out that the 976m summit was 3.3km away and from then on it became much steeper. It was a steady slog up stone steps for over a kilometre until we reached a temple with an odd looking Buddha.

Nice looking temple though.

Another hundred or so yards up some more steps and we reached a waterfall. It would have been a lot more spectacular in the rainy season, but at twenty seven metres high it was still worth pausing for a closer look.

It was worth pausing for a rest as well.

At this point there were still over two kilometres to go to the top and we resumed with a few flights of stairs. Whilst this was easier than the less uniform stone steps, it did, at times,  just feel like a trip to the gym rather than a walk in the hills. Not that I’m overly familiar with gyms. The steps soon gave way again to a more natural trail, but it was still a relentless grind uphill. We had one stretch of flat walking that lasted about twenty yards and that was it.

The views were magnificent though. Normally the trees obscure just about everything until you reach the top of the hill. Sometimes they still block your view even then. We got a good look outwards towards and beyond Gumi from a couple of points two-thirds of the way up.

Gumi - It looks better from a distance.

With less than a kilometre to go we finally got a flattish stretch of a couple of hundred metres. It was soon back to the slog though for the final section where we were rewarded with a summit littered with mobile phone masts, tin huts and assorted military equipment. The views were crap too.

Time for another sit down.

A slight detour down a different route took us to a temple where the scenery was a lot better and gave us the opportunity to use the monk’s toilets. Oddly, there weren’t any wash basins which leads me to conclude that monks probably don’t wash their hands afterwards. That won’t get them into heaven even if they do get out of bed early to say their prayers. We went back down via the route that we had come up and it wasn’t much easier on the legs descending. Five and a half hours and eight kilometres after setting off we were at the bottom looking for a taxi to take us back into Gumi. My calves still ached four days later.

I had big plans for this weekend, well big plans if you like watching lower level football I suppose. In addition to the National League game at Chungju on the Saturday, Jen and I had been planning on going to the Challengers League Cup tournament on Sunday. It’s a competition for the third tier teams played over the space of a week in the one town, Jecheon on this occasion. There were seven games scheduled for the Sunday, spread over two stadiums. The winners of each match staying on until mid-week for the next round whilst the losers presumably clear off back to their holidays.

My job doesn’t usually interfere too much with my hobbies, not outside of normal office hours anyway, but unfortunately I had to go to a meeting in Oman and my flight departed just before midnight on the Saturday evening. That meant if we were going to do anything on the Saturday then it had to be Seoul-based and there wasn’t any football going on.

There are plenty of hills within the city though and so we decided to have a walk up Gwanaksan. There are a few different trails and a highest peak of 629m. Best of all, it’s only five subway stops from our apartment. If you are going for a walk though, you might as well just go for a walk and so to get there we followed the route of Line Two of the subway above ground from Yeoksam to Sadang. It took us about an hour and forty minutes to walk the subway line and then another twenty minutes or so to find the start of the trail once we’d got to Exit 6 of Sadang station.

It was worth avoiding the subway, mainly because we walked past some baseball cages where if you put a couple of five hundred won coins into a slot a machine fired baseballs at you at speeds varying from 100km/hr to 140km/hr. As I’d never played baseball before I naturally selected the fastest cage. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? After all, my first ever curry as a teenager was a Phal and whilst my mates cried with laughter, my eyes streamed with tears as the heat of the spices prevented me eating more than a quarter of it. For those of you who don’t know, a Phal is a like a Vindaloo, but with two tablespoons of extra gunpowder.

Another one flies past.

I’m not really one for learning lessons though and the first 140km/hr ball passed me before I’d even started my swing. As did the next few. I adjusted a little and eventually hit some of them, the best of which would probably have been caught somewhere near first base whilst the rest varied between being knocked into the ground near my feet or glancing off my bat into the fence behind. Fortunately none of them smacked me in the chops as I don’t think I’d have fancied arriving in Muscat the next day minus a few teeth. Whenever I’ve seen people in these cages they are usually half-pissed after a post-work drink with their colleagues, so maybe it’s one of those sports like pool and darts where a few beers improves your skills.

At Sadang station there was a line of old blokes awaiting the arrival of free food organised by a charity. As I stood around I was twice asked by locals if I’d like to join the queue. Perhaps it’s my age, maybe the way I dress, but I obviously looked a bit like a worthy recipient. We’d packed a bit of a picnic though, so I left them to it.

When we got to Gwanaksan, we followed the signs for Yeonjudae. It was a bit of a slog at first with very few sections were you could walk on the level. There’s an area about half an hour into the hike where you can replenish your water bottles, lift a few weights or hang upside down from a bar like a bat. It was a warm day so we settled for a drink of water.

There's plenty to do for those not tired enough by the hiking

We continued upwards for another hour and a half or so, stopping to look down on Seoul every time there was a decent view. It’s amazing how close we were to the heart of the city. The trail was very crowded, probably I suspect, more with people just happy to get out in the hills on a day when it wasn’t raining rather than with those who were prevented by work commitments from going to obscure football games in even more obscure towns.

My office is out there somewhere.

We didn’t get to the top. It’s one of those where the actual peak is fenced off because it sites some sort of communication tower and there didn’t seem a lot of fun in hauling ourselves up ropes and chain ladders in the final stages just to be able to reach a fence. We took a different route down, slightly longer at about four kilometres and one that mainly follows a river. There were plenty of people taking advantage of the cold water to cool down and I did the same.

I could have done with this during the Phal all those years ago.

We didn’t see much in the way of wildlife, a couple of cats and a dog with bright pink feet. I suppose for all it’s a hill, it’s still in the city. As we approached the end of the trail it got even busier with lots of families picnicking by the water. One couple were actually sat in the river whilst playing some sort of board game.

It's your birthday. Collect £10 from each player.

We emerged near to Gwacheon subway station and after initially hopping on a bus going in the wrong direction ended up taking a taxi back to Yeoksam. Overall we probably did about thirteen kilometres in six and a half hours. That doesn’t seem like much of a pace, but when you stop to play baseball or dangle your feet into a river that’s how long it takes.

At the weekend Jen and I visited Palgongsan Provincial Park. We were going to watch Jeonbuk play away at Pohang Steelers on the Sunday and thought that if we took the train south on the Friday night after work, we’d be able to get a day’s hiking in on the Saturday.

It all went very well. The 8.30pm KTX from Seoul got us into Daegu just over an hour and a half later and we then got a taxi for the twenty kilometre drive to Palgongsan. We had been planning on staying in the Hot Springs Spa but they had no rooms for the Saturday night. Instead we ended up in the Ivvy Motel just around the corner. That’s right, Ivvy with two vees.

We got a very large room for 50,000 won per night. All of the Love Motels in Korea are designed to help guests retain their anonymity by not requiring you to give any registration details, but this one took it to another level. If you have a car, you drive into your individual garage where you can lower the door behind you to avoid your car being seen. Then you climb the stairs to your room where you access it by feeding banknotes into a machine in the wall. There wasn’t even a key because I don’t think anyone is expected to leave the room until they check out. It was well equipped with two bathrooms, two large screen tellies and mirrors over the bed. There was even a beer in the fridge. Oddly though, there wasn’t a door on the toilet.

Next day we had breakfast at a table outside of a GS25 convenience store and then made our way up the trail.

I'm told it's what proper mountaineers eat.

There were a variety of routes and we decided to head for the 1,167m Dongbong peak. The trail was relatively quiet by Korean standards and a couple of hours later we were at the top. There were some decent views to what I think was the North.

Those people were having their lunch.

To the West there was the bizarre sight of a golf course set into the hillside. It really did seem such an odd place to build it. I’ve not played much golf, but random courses where you least expect them is something that might just inspire me to take it up.

Palgongsan Golf Course.

We didn’t really have much of a plan for where to go next and set off towards Gatbawi. There are a couple of quite famous Buddha statues there and so it seemed as good a place as any. The route was quite hard work though with lots of sections where you had to lower yourself down on a rope or by using the railings.

After a while we decided to head for Donghwasa Temple instead. One Buddha statue is as good as another as far as I’m concerned and the route looked to involve a bit less clambering about. We got lost part of the way down as we were using a trail that wasn’t marked on the maps, but after stumbling across a different temple we managed to find our way to Donghwasa.

Buddha statue at Donghwasa Temple.

Duck and pheasant seem to be the local speciality and we ended up having dinner that evening at a duck restaurant which hadn’t been open long. We were the only customers and were given a present of a toothbrush set each.

Next morning it was easy enough to flag a taxi down and get ourselves to the bus terminal for the journey to Pohang. We’ll probably look to stay in Palgongsan again when the World Athletics Championships take place in Daegu in September and combine another of the peaks with a trip to see Usain Bolt.

After watching Chunnam Dragons lose at home to Sanju Sangmu the previous day I thought that I would take advantage of being down by the South coast to go and hike in Jogyesan Provincial Park. I’ve no idea what the difference is between a National Park and a Provincial Park, but Jogyesan has a couple of eight hundred metre high peaks and so I thought it would be worth a visit.

I’d spent the Saturday night in the BMW Motel in Suncheon where thirty thousand won had got me a room complete with sheets bearing the famous logo. I think it’s the cheapest hotel that I’ve stayed in over here and I did wonder for a moment whether I’d actually only rented the room for an hour. The main quirk was that the pillows seemed to be filled with gravel, but apart from that it was pretty good, certainly not the worst place I’ve stayed at by a long way.

Motel BMW, Suncheon

I slept in a bit longer than I’d intended to, possibly because the shutters on the window didn’t let any sunlight in whatsoever, but I still managed to be up and out by 8am. There are two quite well known temples at Jogyesan, Seonamsa and Songgwangsa, and my plan was to hike from one to the other, taking in the peaks of Jonggun (884m) and Yeonsan (851m). I could have taken a bus to Seonamsa temple but as it was only about twenty odd kilometres away and the bus takes an hour I got a taxi instead.

Half an hour and twenty four thousand won later I was at the entrance to the park. It wasn’t far to Seonamsa temple and since I was there I paused for a look around.

Seonamsa Temple, decorated for Buddha's birthday.

I had hoped that I’d be able to get something to eat as I hadn’t bothered picking any food up whilst in Suncheon but all they had were ice creams. That was fine with me though and a cornetto for breakfast it was.

Apparently this is something quite important in the monk world.

A couple of hours spent steadily walking uphill and I was at Jonggun peak. It was pretty crowded and I was a little surprised to discover the ice cakee salesman at the summit. Whilst I’m not convinced that a diet consisting exclusively of ice cream is necessarily the most appropriate for hill walking I had my second one of the day.

Ice cakee at the top.

There was a bit of a dip between Jonggun and the next peak of Yeonsan, but an hour or so later I was there.

No ice cakee this time.

After Yeonsan there was a reasonably flat stretch of trail for a while before the descent to Songgwangsa.  The path downwards seemed fairly steep but probably wasn’t much different to the gradient on the way up. There are a few small waterfalls and deepish pools as you get towards the bottom.

Stream near Songgwangsa

I had a look around Songgwangsa temple. They have a room with a few exhibits in, old monk bowls, printing blocks, that sort of thing. There are also plenty of photos of the monks taken over the last century or so including some during the Japanese occupation where they stand side by side with Japanese soldiers.

Songgwangsa Temple had been decorated as well.

I got a bus back to Suncheon at 3pm, a journey that took an hour and twenty minutes. There are buses back to Seoul from Suncheon every hour or so. It’s a long journey at four and a half hours and it was ten o’clock at night by the time I got back to the capital. The route I’d hiked probably totalled about seven or eight miles but if I hadn’t needed to leave so early to get back to Seoul I could have added another four miles to it by hiking back along the valley to my starting point of Seonamsa. That’s maybe one for next time.