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: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Hwanam it runs 318 km to Hwanam; allow about 5 h 29 of riding. The stops in between: Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yang, Dosan-seowon and back through Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yang. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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.
Read the complete Sansa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sansa is where the day begins. Next is Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yang.
The Nakdong river makes a wide loop around Hahoe, almost turning it into an island, and inside that loop a village of tiled-roof mansions and thatched cottages has stood for some six centuries. Hahoe is the ancestral home of the Pungsan Ryu clan, a lineage of scholar-officials during the Joseon dynasty, and its layout follows Korean principles of geomancy, with houses arranged to face the river and the cliffs of Buyongdae across the water. It was added to the World Heritage list in 2010, together with Yangdong village near Gyeongju, as the finest surviving examples of clan villages of the Joseon period.
Read the complete Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yang write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yang comes up about 111 km into the recorded legs. Next is Dosan-seowon.
If you have handled a Korean thousand-won note, you have already seen Dosan Seowon. The building on the back of the note is this Confucian academy, and the scholar on the front is Yi Hwang, known by his pen name Toegye, one of the most influential Neo-Confucian thinkers of Korea. He set up a small study hall here in the sixteenth century, on a quiet slope above the Nakdong river, and after his death in 1570 his disciples expanded it into a full academy, a seowon, where students came to study the classics and honour his memory. It is one of the nine Korean Confucian academies listed by UNESCO in 2019.
Read the complete Dosan-seowon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 162 km into the recorded legs you reach Dosan-seowon. Next is back through Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yang.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yang write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yang, late in the day. Next is Sansa.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sansa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Sansa. That is the ride.
Sansa → Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yang is 111 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yang → Dosan-seowon is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Dosan-seowon → back through Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yang is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yang → Sansa is 105 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.