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 340 km round trip from Kaesŏng - roughly 5 h 52 in the saddle. On the way it passes Jangneung Cluster, Seosan Getbol, Jongmyo Shrine and Hwaseong Fortress. It crosses from North Korea into South Korea - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Jeong Mong-ju was a scholar and loyal official of the Goryeo dynasty, and on the evening of April 1392 he was killed on a stone bridge in Kaesong by henchmen of Yi Seong-gye, the general who was about to found the Joseon dynasty. Jeong had refused to switch sides. Legend says that his blood stained the stone of the bridge, Seonjukgyo, and that it is still visible, and that bamboo grew from the spot, which gave the bridge its name. Sungyang Seowon, the academy beside it, was built to honour him. It was originally his house and became a shrine and school, and still shows Korean loyalty as a theme: a dead man whose refusal made him a hero.
Read the complete Sungyang Sowon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sungyang Sowon is where the day begins. Next is Jangneung Cluster.
North-west of Seoul, close to where the Imjin river flows into the Han and the demilitarised zone cuts the Korean peninsula in two, lies a royal tomb: Jangneung, the resting place of King Injo, who ruled Joseon in the seventeenth century, and his queen. Injo's reign was marked by invasions from the Manchu, and he was forced to humiliate himself before the Qing emperor in 1637, a defeat that still resonates in Korean memory. His tomb, like the other Royal Tombs of the Joseon Dynasty, inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2009, is a grassy mound on a hillside, guarded by stone figures of officials, warriors and animals, with a T-shaped shrine below.
Read the complete Jangneung Cluster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Jangneung Cluster comes up about 35 km into the recorded legs. Next is Seosan Getbol.
Korea's west coast has some of the largest tides on earth. Twice a day the Yellow Sea pulls back for kilometres, exposing vast shining mud flats, the getbol, laced with channels and alive with crabs, mudskippers, worms and shellfish. UNESCO has listed a series of these Korean tidal flats for their extraordinary biodiversity and for the millions of migratory shorebirds that stop here to feed on their way between Siberia and Australia.
Read the complete Seosan Getbol write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 77 km into the recorded legs you reach Seosan Getbol. Next is Jongmyo Shrine.
In the middle of busy central Seoul, behind a gate on Jongno street, lies a forest of trees and a long, low hall that seems to come from another world. Jongmyo is the royal ancestral shrine of the Joseon dynasty, which ruled Korea from 1392 to 1910, and its main hall, the Jeongjeon, houses the spirit tablets of kings and queens in a row of identical rooms behind a single facade of red pillars, stretching for more than a hundred metres. It is one of the longest wooden buildings of its kind in Asia, and its austerity is deeply impressive.
Read the complete Jongmyo Shrine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Jongmyo Shrine, 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 170 km, about halfway. Next is back through Jongmyo Shrine.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Jongmyo Shrine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Jongmyo Shrine comes up about 217 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Seosan Getbol.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Seosan Getbol write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 265 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Seosan Getbol. Next is back through Jangneung Cluster.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Jangneung Cluster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Jangneung Cluster, late in the day. Next is Sungyang Sowon.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sungyang Sowon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 340 km.
Sungyang Sowon → Jangneung Cluster is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Jangneung Cluster → Seosan Getbol is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Seosan Getbol → Jongmyo Shrine is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Jongmyo Shrine → Hwaseong Fortress is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hwaseong Fortress → back through Jongmyo Shrine is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Jongmyo Shrine → back through Seosan Getbol is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Seosan Getbol → back through Jangneung Cluster is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Jangneung Cluster → Sungyang Sowon is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.