Big beaches and Bigger mountains... Gangneung and Seoraksan

Not satisfied with our trip to Ulleungdo and Dokdo, me and my accomplice Andy decided to spend a little more time in Gangwan-do before heading back to Seoul. I’d promised to take Andy on some real hiking trips during his stay in Korea, and I’d been told that it doesn’t get much more beautiful than Seoraksan National Park. And any excuse to stay in Gangwon a little longer and soak up some more of the fresh air is fine by me.

I’m a big fan of Gangwon province. It’s like the mirror image of its west-coast counterpart, Gyeonggi province. Gyeonggi is one of the most (over-)populated places on Earth: a man-made spaghetti  of urban sprawls, punctuated by crowded roads and highways, endless apartment blocks and the steady hum of 23 million people (almost half of South Korea’s population) trying their hardest not to fall over each other. 

Gangwon province, in contrast, despite being much bigger than Gyeonggi, has less than 2 million people. There is not much of a train network, no subway, and very few big highways. Instead, you can see a lot of mountains, farms, tourist hotspots, national parks and beautiful beaches facing out to the East Sea.

In many ways, Gangwon-do reminds me of rural Scotland. Like Scotland, it’s a hilly, mostly sparsely-populated place; like Scotland, it’s famed for tourism and outdoor activities such as hiking, rock-climbing and watersports; like Scotland, it gets more than its share of cold and snowy weather; and like Scotland, it always seems to takes bloody ages to get there. 

Anyway. After our ferry pulled into Donghae City from Ulleungdo, we headed to Sokcho, the most north-easterly city in South Korea and the closest to Seoraksan National Park. But, fortuitously, we had to change buses in coastal Gangneung City, and so we decided to spend a night there - good choice!

Meeting the locals, Gyeongpo Beach

Gyeongpo beach

My Rough Guide promised that Gangneung boasted ‘excellent’ beaches, and I had heard from some of my students that Gyeongpo beach, in particular, is one of the best and most famous beaches in Korea, so we took a bus there, and were not disappointed. Despite having just experienced Ulleungdo’s craggy island beauty, there was a distinct lack of sandy beaches there to lounge around on. So, it was an impressive and welcome sight to see Gyeongpo’s six kilometres of fine, clean sand stretching before us., with a few sunbathers and people messing around on banana boats around us. Time for a quick swim in the clean blue East Sea and a couple of cans of Hite. Yum.

Gangwon-do Acappella Jamboree

And what I call ‘explorer’s serendipity’ came into play for us, yet again, when we stumbled into a rehearsal for the annual Gangwon Province Acapella Festival, which was to be held that night, just a short walk from the beach. This featured a bunch of, I presume, art college students performing entirely without-instruments – singing, harmonising, and sometimes using human beatbox – to create a very cute and relaxed festival atmosphere in front of a surprisingly small crowd, sat politely cross-legged on the grass. It really was a unique event, and most of the groups were very talented. We spent around an hour there until we realised there were no bar facilities (WHAT?!), so we headed off into a taxi, into the night…

Trying to find the best place to hang out on a Saturday night in a new town, far away from the nightlife of Seoul, can sometimes be quite difficult. So, we drank outside a city-centre Family Mart and waited until we attracted people to talk to us. This method generally works. After a few bottles of Soju with bemused young locals, eager to ask us where we were from, and why we had come to little old Gangneung, we met some foreigners (who had exactly the same questions) and were duly whisked off to a variety of bars, clubs and into the boozey blur of late-night hedonism, Gangneung-style………

Andy managing a smile in 'underwhelming' Sokcho

Thus, Sunday was, predictably, a bad day. Even a dose of Haejangguk (Hangover soup) couldn’t really rouse our spirits. We sat, in mental and physical pain, on another bus, this time to Sokcho, gateway city to Seoraksan National Park. And our arrival into Sokcho was rather uninspiring: downtown Sokcho looked like it hasn’t changed since the 1970s. Compared to Gangneung’s spacious, relaxed feel, this place seemed harsh, outdated and quite uninviting. We found our way to a beach near the Bus Terminal, but even the temporary refreshment gained from a dip in the sea couldn’t take the edge off a nasty hangover and that feeling one sometimes gets when travelling: that, actually, it would be nice to be at home curled up on a sofa, rather than negotiating maps, buses and travel options in an unfamiliar place.

Seorak-dong at night

But nevertheless, negotiate maps, buses and travel options we did, and by the time it had got dark we’d arrived by bus in Seorak-dong, a village located near the entrance to Seoraksan National Park. We found a dirt-cheap minbak, grabbed some food and hiking provisions, and I was asleep by 10pm, which was a good job really, as we were up at 4am the next day to trek Seoraksan’s highest peak, Daechonbong, (a mere) 1700 meters high.

Seoraksan Entrance at Silly'o'clock

So, on Monday morning, as the rest of the world slept, we woke, put on our heavy bags (we had to carry a week’s worth of luggage up the mountain – bad planning, which was to come back and bite us in the ass later), switched on our head-torches and headed for Seoraksan. 

Despite the ungodly hour, and the fact it was a weekday, we weren’t alone on the mountain trail, and we met the usual gangs of brightly-coloured ajummas and ajussis, who as always, despite their fierce, intrepid exteriors, were very friendly to us (me and Andy having the novelty of being the only foreigners there, and almost the only under-40-year olds too). We stopped for breakfast at the rock of Biseondae (and managed to buy some enjoyably hot, if over-priced Ramyeon noodles from the hiking café there), and then, slowly, the ascent became steeper and steeper, the scenery more and more dramatic, and our bags felt heavier and heavier, as we trudged to the peak.

Colourful trees, colourful hikers

Seoraksan really is a beautiful place, and to go in Autumn is a visual treat, as the trees change colour into a cacophony of brown, orange, red and green. As we climbed the inside of the valley and up out onto the ridge, the epic scale of the place was also revealed to us: Seoraksan park is a vast network of mountains and valleys, with rocky peaks and tree-covered sides, broken up by the odd stream and waterfall. But the feeling of awe as we finally reached the peak of Daecheongbong was outweighed by a sense of relief, that after 8 hours of hiking, we were finally going to be going down at last.

at Daecheongbong - the peak

 

So after a stop at the top for photos and a bottle of Makgeoli (the hikers’ favourite poison, don’t-you-know), we headed off for a 3-hour descent to the little village of Osaek. Our reward for our 11-hour hike was Oseak’s USP: a natural hot spring. I can’t think of anything better than, after a hard day’s trekking, immersing yourself in a hot spa for an hour.  B.L.I.S.S.

on the way down to Osaek from the Peak

After some underwhelming Galbi-tang (Beef Rib soup) and some rather more delicious local-speciality Hwangtae-haejangguk (dried pollack hangover soup), we raised a toast to ourselves and our knackered feet, with a couple of cans of Max, and I was asleep in our minbak by 10pm. Spent!

 

I would love to say that I really enjoyed hiking up to Daecheongbong, but we carried so much stuff with us that it was a bit too much of a struggle to really describe it as ‘fun’. But, looking back at my pretty photos in the comfort of my fully-reclined bus seat on the return trip to Seoul, it was a satisfying achievement. If I go back to Seoraksan I would love to tackle some of the other, less demanding peaks (with a smaller bag) next time.  

Seoraksan

And so it ends, my week to Gangwon-do and the East Sea took, with a tally of 4 cities, 2 islands, 4 ferry trips, 5 intercity buses, 2 sizeable hikes, 1 heavenly hot spring, 2 sandy beaches, 1 singing festival, X cans of Max, Y cans of Hite and Z bottles of Makgeoli.  Yum.