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.
A 338 km round trip from Ganghwa-gun - roughly 5 h 50 in the saddle. It goes by way of Kaesong Walls, Pajusamreung Cluster, Uireung Cluster and Hwaseong Fortress. It crosses from South Korea into North Korea - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Ganghwa Island lies in the mouth of the Han River, just north-west of Seoul and Incheon, and on a clear day you can look across a narrow channel of tidal water straight into North Korea. The town of Kaesong is barely twenty-five kilometres away. That closeness gives the island an edge, with watch posts and fences along parts of the shore, but its fame is much older. The Ganghwa dolmens, together with those at Gochang and Hwasun in the south, were listed by UNESCO in 2000, and Korea holds a remarkable share of all the dolmens known in the world.
Read the complete Kanghwa Dolmen Sites write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kanghwa Dolmen Sites is where the day begins. Next is Kaesong Walls.
The walls of Kaesong tell you what a medieval capital thought about safety. Goryeo's rulers lived behind several rings, an inner enclosure around the palace, a middle wall and an outer wall of earth and stone running around the hills for kilometres. The outer wall was begun in the early eleventh century, partly in response to Khitan invasions from the north, and was rebuilt and extended later. Parts are still visible along the ridge lines, with gates at key points, and they are now part of the World Heritage listing of historic monuments and sites in Kaesong, inscribed in 2013.
Read the complete Kaesong Walls write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kaesong Walls comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pajusamreung Cluster.
Close to the most heavily fortified border in the world, three royal tombs of the Joseon dynasty lie in a quiet pine forest in Paju, north of Seoul. Pajusamreung, the three tombs of Paju, include the resting places of Queen Jangsun and Queen Gonghye, both married to kings and both of whom died young, and of King Jinjong, honoured after his early death. Like all the Joseon royal tombs, they follow a precise layout of spirit gates, stone paths, shrines and grass mounds guarded by stone officials and animals, and they are part of the World Heritage listing of the Royal Tombs of the Joseon Dynasty.
Read the complete Pajusamreung Cluster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 84 km into the recorded legs you reach Pajusamreung Cluster. Next is Uireung Cluster.
Seoul is a city of ten million people, and it still has forested royal burial grounds on its edge. The Joseon dynasty, which ruled Korea from 1392 to 1910, buried its kings and queens in forty tombs scattered around the capital, each placed according to the rules of geomancy, with a hill behind, water in front, and a quiet clearing for ancestral rites. Nearly all of them survive, and in 2009 they were inscribed together as a World Heritage site. The cluster on this stretch of the map, east of the city towards Guri, belongs to that family of graves.
Read the complete Uireung Cluster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Uireung Cluster, about halfway. Next is Hwaseong Fortress.
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 sits at 169 km, about halfway. Next is back through Uireung Cluster.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Uireung Cluster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Uireung Cluster comes up about 218 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Pajusamreung Cluster.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pajusamreung Cluster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 252 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Pajusamreung Cluster. Next is back through Kaesong Walls.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kaesong Walls write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Kaesong Walls, late in the day. Next is Kanghwa Dolmen Sites.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kanghwa Dolmen Sites write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 338 km.
Kanghwa Dolmen Sites → Kaesong Walls is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kaesong Walls → Pajusamreung Cluster is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pajusamreung Cluster → Uireung Cluster is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Uireung Cluster → Hwaseong Fortress is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hwaseong Fortress → back through Uireung Cluster is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Uireung Cluster → back through Pajusamreung Cluster is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Pajusamreung Cluster → back through Kaesong Walls is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Kaesong Walls → Kanghwa Dolmen Sites is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.