Buyeo was once called Sabi, and for more than a century in the sixth and seventh centuries it was the capital of Baekje, one of the three kingdoms of ancient Korea. Baekje was a seafaring, artistic state that traded with China, sent scholars and craftsmen to Japan, and shaped Japanese Buddhist art. The kingdom fell in 660 when a joint army of Silla and Tang China overran the capital. Naseong, the outer city wall, is what remains of Sabi's defences: a long earthen rampart that once enclosed the town, running along the hills to the north and east and meeting the Geum River, which formed a natural moat on the other side. You can walk sections of it under old pines, and the grassy mounds are quiet and unassuming.
The legend of Nakhwaam, the Rock of the Falling Flowers, is told along the river nearby. According to the story, three thousand court ladies threw themselves from the cliff above the water rather than be captured. Historians doubt the number, but the cliff is real and so is the sadness of the tale. The Geum is a wide, slow river, and the view from the rock is pleasant, with a ferry across the water.
The riding here is gentle. Flat farmland, paddy fields and low hills make up the landscape of Chungcheong, with country roads between villages and the occasional old stone bridge. The surface is generally good, speed cameras are frequent, and the terrain suits a relaxed day. Buyeo is a small town, about thirty thousand people, with fuel and decent restaurants, and Nonsan, a bit further, is bigger. Buyeo is known for its lotus ponds, especially the restored Gungnamji, a pond with a pavilion that glows pink and white in July and August.
The museum in town holds the Baekje incense burner, a gilded bronze piece of great delicacy found in a ditch near the temple site at Neungsan-ri, and it is regarded as a masterpiece of the period. It is worth an hour's visit. Come in spring or early autumn, when the air is clear and the heat has not yet built up.