Songnisan is a mountain with a long reputation, and the temple Beopjusa sits on its lower flank, in the middle of the country in North Chungcheong province, among pines, rock outcrops and clear streams. Tradition says the monk Uisin founded it in the middle of the sixth century, after returning from India with scriptures carried on a mule, and the name means Temple of the Dharma Abode. It was destroyed in the Japanese invasions of the sixteenth century and rebuilt, and its great wooden hall, Palsangjeon, is the only five-storey wooden pagoda still standing in Korea, a tall tiered structure that rises over the courtyard.
Beopjusa is one of seven Buddhist mountain monasteries, the Sansa, inscribed by UNESCO in 2018. They are not only places of worship but also places that have kept alive a tradition of study and meditation, in the mountains, where monks live in a way that has changed slowly. The Sansa temples are loosely arranged, in a pattern that follows the contours of the land, and the sense of a quiet retreat is part of the design.
The riding is a pleasure. The roads around Songnisan National Park wind through forested valleys, with views of rocky peaks, and the road from Boeun climbs in a series of bends to the temple car park. The best times are late spring, with fresh leaves and azaleas, and late October, when the maple and oak turn red and gold, and the crowds in the park can be thick. Winter brings snow and ice, so check conditions. Summer is warm and wet, with sudden storms.
Fuel is easy at Boeun and Goesan, where the stations are on the main roads, and the city of Cheongju, with more than six hundred thousand people, is the large centre nearby. Near the temple entrance there are restaurants serving mountain vegetables, pajeon pancakes and makgeolli, the milky rice wine.
The ride list goes next to Dosan-seowon, the Confucian academy at Andong, a good day's ride south-east through quiet country. The contrast between a Buddhist mountain monastery and a Confucian school, so close in space and so different in spirit, is one of Korea's treasures.