CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Suwon it runs 393 km to Suwon; allow about 6 h 47 of riding. The stops in between: Area 2, Seooreung Cluster, Gwangneung Cluster\t and Sonjuk Bridge and Phyochung Monuments. It crosses from South Korea into North Korea - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Hwaseong is a love letter from a son to his father, written in stone. In 1762, Crown Prince Sado was locked in a rice chest by his own father, King Yeongjo, and left to die, one of the darkest episodes in Korean royal history. His son, who became King Jeongjo, never forgot, and he moved his father's tomb to a site near Suwon and built a grand fortress there, completed in 1796, intended perhaps as a new capital. The engineer and scholar Jeong Yak-yong used cranes and pulleys to speed up construction, and the walls, gates, towers and bastions combine Korean, Chinese and Western ideas of fortification. UNESCO listed it in 1997.
Read the complete Hwaseong Fortress write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hwaseong Fortress is where the day begins. Next is Area 2.
Built and expanded as an emergency capital in the early seventeenth century, its walls run for kilometres along the ridges, with gates, command posts and temples inside, and it became a World Heritage site in 2014. The fortress is remembered for a bitter episode: in the winter of 1636 to 1637, King Injo fled here as the armies of the Qing invaded, and after a siege of more than forty days in the cold, he came down and submitted, kneeling before the Qing emperor. Koreans still regard it as a moment of national humiliation and resilience at the same time.
Read the complete Area 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Area 2 comes up about 35 km into the recorded legs. Next is Seooreung Cluster.
Joseon kings chose their final resting places with the same care they gave to their palaces, and the Seooreung cluster in Goyang, just north-west of Seoul, shows how. The name means the five tombs of the west, and the forested grounds contain the burial mounds of several Joseon kings and queens from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Each tomb follows the principles of pungsu, the Korean form of geomancy: a mountain behind for protection, open land in front, ideally with water flowing past. The mound sits on a terrace, surrounded by stone figures of officials, warriors and animals standing guard, and below is a T-shaped shrine where rites were held. The forty Joseon royal tombs were added to the World Heritage list together in 2009.
Read the complete Seooreung Cluster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 79 km into the recorded legs you reach Seooreung Cluster. Next is Gwangneung Cluster\t.
Gwangneung is the tomb of King Sejo of Joseon and his queen, Jeonghui, and it sits inside one of the best-preserved forests in Korea, north-east of Seoul between Namyangju and Pocheon. Sejo seized the throne in 1455 from his young nephew Danjong, who was later exiled and killed, and he spent much of his reign strengthening royal power. In death, though, he asked for modesty: he ordered that his tomb be built without the usual stone burial chamber and without some of the stone ornaments, to save the people labour and expense. The two mounds lie on separate ridges, with a shrine between them.
Read the complete Gwangneung Cluster\t write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gwangneung Cluster\t, about halfway. Next is Sonjuk Bridge and Phyochung Monuments.
The Sonjuk Bridge is a small stone bridge in the Korean city of Kaesong, and it has the most bloodstained history of any bridge on the peninsula. In 1392, as the Goryeo dynasty collapsed and General Yi Seong-gye prepared to found the Joseon dynasty, his son Yi Bang-won invited the scholar Jeong Mong-ju, a loyalist of the old dynasty, to a meeting. On his way home Jeong was struck down on this bridge, and tradition says that the dark stains on the stone are his blood, and that bamboo grew from the spot. Jeong became a symbol of loyalty, and a stone memorial and pavilion were built beside the bridge in later centuries.
Read the complete Sonjuk Bridge and Phyochung Monuments write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sonjuk Bridge and Phyochung Monuments sits at 197 km, about halfway. Next is back through Gwangneung Cluster\t.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Gwangneung Cluster\t write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Gwangneung Cluster\t comes up about 277 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Seooreung Cluster.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Seooreung Cluster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 315 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Seooreung Cluster. Next is back through Area 2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Area 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Area 2, late in the day. Next is Hwaseong Fortress.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hwaseong Fortress write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 393 km.
Hwaseong Fortress → Area 2 is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Area 2 → Seooreung Cluster is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Seooreung Cluster → Gwangneung Cluster\t is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Gwangneung Cluster\t → Sonjuk Bridge and Phyochung Monuments is 80 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Sonjuk Bridge and Phyochung Monuments → back through Gwangneung Cluster\t is 80 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Gwangneung Cluster\t → back through Seooreung Cluster is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Seooreung Cluster → back through Area 2 is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Area 2 → Hwaseong Fortress is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.