Piram-seowon and Hwasun Dolmen Site

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Piram-seowon

   Piram-seowon sits on flat land among rice fields in Jangseong county, in South Jeolla province, its gates opening onto a courtyard with wooden pavilions and a shrine. It was founded in the late sixteenth century to honour Kim In-hu, a Neo-Confucian scholar from the region known for his integrity and his poetry, and it is one of the nine academies inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2019 as Seowon, Korean Neo-Confucian Academies. Unlike many seowon, which were closed by the government in the nineteenth century, Piram survived, and rituals are still held there.

   Read the complete Piram-seowon write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Piram-seowon is where the day begins. Next is Shinan-Muan Getbol.

2. 2. Shinan-Muan Getbol

   At low tide the sea retreats a long way from the coast of Shinan, leaving behind a vast grey plain of mud, glittering with water and printed with the tracks of crabs and birds. Koreans call this getbol, and the south-west coast has some of the broadest tidal flats in the world, a landscape that is neither land nor sea. The Shinan-Muan group, inscribed by UNESCO in 2021, is a stretch of this system, with channels, salt marshes and sandbars, and it shelters hundreds of species, many of them rare, including migratory shorebirds that stop here on their long flights between Siberia, Alaska and Australia.

   Read the complete Shinan-Muan Getbol write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Shinan-Muan Getbol comes up about 71 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hwasun Dolmen Site.

3. 3. Hwasun Dolmen Site

   Walk through the rice fields near Hwasun and you can lose count of the dolmens. Nearly six hundred of them lie scattered across the slopes at Hyosan-ri and Daesin-ri in South Jeolla, the biggest concentration in a trio of Korean sites that were listed as a World Heritage landmark in 2000. They are huge flat capstones balanced on smaller upright stones, some of them over a hundred tonnes, built roughly three thousand years ago in the Bronze Age by a society that left no written word. Korea has more dolmens than anywhere else in the world, perhaps around forty percent of all that exist, and this valley is where you feel it.

   Read the complete Hwasun Dolmen Site write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 137 km into the recorded legs you reach Hwasun Dolmen Site. Next is back through Shinan-Muan Getbol.

4. 4. back through Shinan-Muan Getbol

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Shinan-Muan Getbol write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Shinan-Muan Getbol, late in the day. Next is Piram-seowon.

5. 5. Piram-seowon

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Piram-seowon write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Piram-seowon. That is the ride.