South Korea Summary

South Korea has been full of surprises, pretty much all of them have been good. We started out with this idea of how easy it would be to ride from Busan to Incheon, and quickly with it being 633km directly along the cycle pathways. We were wrong, with unknown punctures and into a land where the language is alien to us it caused a few stresses along the way. Luckily the one constant on this trip is each other and supporting each other. Once we settled into things and finally sorted the wheel issue out, things turned around. We were back to relaxing and enjoying our path through South Korea.

Days 64 – 67 Seoul, Seoraksan, Incheon

October 27th – 30th. Seoul, Seoraksan and Incheon. 72km

A couple of days off the bikes over in Seoraksan National Park. We based ourselves in Sokcho city, about a 3 hour bus ride from Seoul. We camped on the beach for two nights and travelled into the park to do a couple of hikes. It was raining heavily when we left Seoul, but the weather was great for our time there, if a little windy and getting chilly overnight. A few photos:

Japan in summary

Just a few words about our overall time in Japan and a few figures from our time cycling. Japan was our home for 5 years so it was a great way to start off our cycle trip. We visited many places we had never been to and saw a different side to Japan. Life on a bike is of course very different to our lives we left behind in Iwamizawa. Not that we weren’t treated well in Iwamizawa, we were, but being on a bicycle and interacting with people was just different. The generosity of complete strangers was overwhelming. We talked to more people, in Japanese, than we did in our daily lives back in Hokkaido. It was just a great way to round off our time in a country we loved.

Day 60 – 63 Jeomchon to Seoul

October 23rd to 26th Jeomchon to Seoul 252km

I don’t want to jinx it, but we made it up to Seoul with precisely zero flat tyres since our last blog post. It looks like the rim tape was the problem. Our 24 hour break in Jeomchon was great for us too, as we were getting a bit fed up with the constant stop start, and worrying about when the tyre would go flat again. We had a relaxing hotel stay and made the most of the generous midday checkout time the next morning.

We also met a couple of other touring cyclists who we’d been following on Instagram. Tatyana and John from Singapore are here in Korea for a few weeks and coincidentally were staying in the same hotel as us. Another coincidence is that they were touring around Hokkaido over the summer and had been in touch with us through Warm Showers back in June. They travel light on their road bikes, so although we’re all heading in the same direction, they’re way ahead of us now, so our paths probably won’t cross again unfortunately.

Days 53 to 59 Busan to Jeomchon, South Korea

October 16th to 22nd Busan to Jeomchon 358km

We arrived into Busan harbour on the ferry as the sun was setting. By the time we’d picked up our bikes from a weird side entrance in the terminal’s carpark, it was dark. And a bit scary. We weren’t in Japan any more.