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There's a cycle path that runs across South Korea from Seoul in the North West, to Busan in the South East, about 700km.
I thought I would give it a go, with an old and very tolerant friend.
We are about 450km in, with two days to go so I thought I would post up some pictures.
The cycle paths put everything in the UK to shame. Even Dutch cycle paths would have their work cut out.
Heading out of Seoul it is three lanes (south, north, pedestrians) for about 150km. Cafes by the side of the path for the first 75km of so, and regular public conveniences (BYO loo roll).
And bridges, so many. When i think about how long it takes for one cycle bridge in the UK, here they are everywhere.
OK, let's see if I am clever enough to add photos.
A bit tricky to add info about these on the phone. Not helped by being a bit hazy about pace names. The old building is the "tomb of the beloved cow" not exactly sure what that means but seems to be related to the development of hangul by King Sejung the Great in the sixteenth century.
Cycled past a stunning sixteenth century Confucian school today. There was just us, and the lady on the kiosk and otherwise deserted.
Then back on the never-ending cycle path.
Love this. More updates as you go please!
Just got back from a Korea trip last Sunday. Didn't manage to convince the wife to take bikes but truly an amazing country to spend some time exploring and thought it would be a "tick off the list - done" visit but now we're both wanting to go back and explore further!
Love the photos and definitely need more updates!
Pete took this of some rice fields earlier today. They are all being harvested now with tiny combine harvesters not much bigger than a large van.
Loving this - thanks so much for sharing!
I had spicy cold rice noodles for dinner tonight. Like every other meal, the restaurant owner came out, watched in horror as we tried to eat it, and then gave us a crash course in eating Korean food.
One restaurant we went to they flat out refused to serve us because we could not convince them we knew about spicy food. Everything we selected from the menu (painstakingly translated via papago) was rejected as too spicy for us. Eventually we left and went to the Korean bbq place down the road where we ended up with amazing grilled duck and a crash course on how to cook it. It was delicious. 맛있어요!
Wow, there's a new addition to the bucket list! 2 brief questions -
1. Is it very hilly? (On hang on that map suggests about 3000m in 700km, so no, not really. I guess that's because it's following rivers.)
2. What are you doing for accommodation?
I lived there for a year in 2010. I know what you mean about the spicy food - they couldn't believe that Westerners could eat the hot stuff.
Tip - soju and bikes don't mix (I still have the scar).
Is it very hilly?
The 4 rivers route itself is mostly flat with some little punchy hills. The big pass in the middle is 550m. But I suspect that if you went off the route to investigate further it could get very hilly and steep.
View from the pass. You can see the motorway in the distance which goes through the big tunnel.
What are you doing for accommodation?
We are using Airbnb. It has a lot more than booking.com. It has generally had a fair number of places to choose from. First night was right on the Han River with amazing views, second night was in a giant apartment block that looked like it would be very sketchy - but in fact was fine.
One place we went, the Airbnb owner came running after us all the way down the street to tell us that the restaurant we had planned to go to was closed (all via papago).
(View from the balcony of the Han River. You can just make out the cycle path on the right of the river. This is 70km from Seoul and it's almost continuous from there.)
Is it very hilly?
We're doing about 120km per day with around 700-900m of climbing (as measured by my garmin anyway).
Enjoying these posts, somewhere I'd love to go.
Last day today, arrived in Busan about an hour ago, just about to head out to find something to eat. A few pictures from earlier today:
Five (yes five!) recycling bins at the Airbnb. Rishi Sunak's war on recycling has not yet reached Korea.
It was about 80km today, mostly on cycle paths again. We had tuna 김밥 - gimbap for breakfast (like sushi rolls), features a lot in "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" so had to try it. Restaurant owner clearly thought we were simpletons but left us to it.
Have seen a few snakes on the paths - they generally try to get away as fast as they can.
Will post a few more when we've eaten dinner.
Landing at gimpo in about 3 hours. Won't be cycling just working 🙁 looks amazing. Maybe one day.
My wife watches lots of K-Dramas so hopefully a trip like this will get her out on the bike 🙂
Sketchy bridge, just ride off the edge into the river.
Gayajinsa Shrine for the river ferry deity, dating back to the three kingdoms period and Silla - I think that means over a thousand years old. This was just off the cycle path, about 30km from Busan.
Lots of these sections of elevated cycle path skirting round the edge of a river.
First sight of Busan. The tarmac section is the cycle path.
Final stretch of cycle path. Noizytastic.
Riding across the enormous weir/flood control barrier for the Nakdonggang river (which we've been following for the last 300km or so).
We actually skipped about 80km of the river to give ourselves time to visit friends, so would have been following for more like 500km.
Nakdonggang River center. It has a tiny bike museum. They really take their cycling very seriously.
Downtown Busan. Kimchi stew for dinner (they had to check that I knew what it was) , followed by cake in a bizarre night club/dessert restaurant playing very loud k-pop.
That's it. Back to Seoul tomorrow on the train, then flight to London, and back to the IT, zoom conferences, leveraging synergy and all that stuff. Now I'm wondering about a return trip, so much more to see here. Thankyou everyone who read this and got this far!
Really amazing - thank you so much for sharing!
P. S. Molgrips, if your wife is in to kdramas, then the start of our route (slightly off the official course) went right past the hotel used for "King the Land", the Hyatt.
We are hoping to visit Gyeongbokgung Palace tomorrow in Seoul, the main one where all the tragic historical dramas are set (although I think there's actually a fake mock up somewhere used for the filming). I will try not to cry.
Obligatory photo from the finish line. 
Really nice!
Did you meet many other cyclists outside the cities? Is the route more tourism oriented or for daily transport?
Off the route you were following, is there good cycling infrastructure - I mean separated from cars - in the towns and cities?
Did you meet many other cyclists outside the cities? Is the route more tourism oriented or for daily transport?
Met a few at the big pass in the middle, and then quite a lot more as we got to about 100km from the finish. Tended to meet on the big slow climbs.
Away from towns most cyclists were doing the 4 rivers. Near towns it was everything, with lots of just ordinary people on ordinary bikes and ebikes just getting about.
On the edge of Seoul there were loads of cyclists on very shiny road bikes with super noisy bottom brackets and rumbly carbon rims, all dressed in lycra, flying around at warp factor ten.
Off the route you were following, is there good cycling infrastructure – I mean separated from cars – in the towns and cities?
Variable. One place had a full completely separate path that took us from the main path, through a park, to our Airbnb. Others it was just cycling on the road. But generally roads are slower and quieter - 30km/h and even 20km/h speed limits are the norm in towns as far as I could see. Korean drivers generally seemed a lot more bike - aware. Certainly nothing as awful as some of the roads in Oxfordshire.
Having said that, I did read that Korea has (had?) a problem with drink driving and of course there are no end of k-dramas that revolve around horrific car accidents (Still 17, I am not a robot, etc).
EDIT: now I think back, I think there were quite a lot of either segregated cycle paths, or very quiet roads. If you are planning a route best is to check a combination of open cycle map (surprisingly good), naver maps (very up to date but baffling) and kakao maps (slightly less confusing).
This is fab, the pictures look amazing.
That looks well brilliant and nice.
Just for Molgrips' wife, we went to the 경복궁 - Gyeongbukgong Palace.
This is the main palace of the Joseon kingdom, and where lots of historical kdramas are set. It really is stunning. Molgrips, if you have seen Mr Sunshine ("sad ending") then this is for you.
Loads of people dressed in hanbok - traditional Korean clothes which you can rent from a store over the road..
Amazing place. Lots of it was demolished by the Japanese during the occupation but it is slowly being restored and rebuilt.
I was there yesterday! Got caught in the downpour just after lunch. Wondered where all the costumes came from 🙂
Amazing pictures - Thank You for sharing.
Looks like you had a great time. I love Asia but I've only visited South Korea once and then only for a day. It looks like a great experience!
I put together a video of the ride:
It's probably not very interesting if you're not into cycle paths....
I returned with my long-suffering friend.
We set off from Incheon and headed through the megalopolis towards Suwon.
I was in Suwon a decade ago but spent the entire time in a grubby Samsung office trying to fix hopelessly broken software. This time I wanted to see a bit more of the place.
The castle is prettier nice but chucking through the rest of Suwon is a drag. Giant six lane freeways and huge intersections where the traffic lights take forever to cycle through. Took a couple of hours to escape on to the river path heading south.
By Monday we had joined the Five Rivers trail about half way down and ended up going through the brand new city of Sejong. This has been built out of marshes in the last decade as far as I can tell. We did not stop here but it does have an absolutely amazing double-decker circular 'bridge' across the river. It's about 0.5km in diameter and takes about ten or fifteen minutes to gently cycle around. Bottom deck for cyclists, top for pedestrians, nothing for cars. Soothing piano music plays from loudspeakers every few hundred yards apart. It really is quite astonishing.
No way to get a photo. But I tried.
We got given these as a side dish in the evening. Fried butterfly pupae. I had them when I was here in Suwon all those years ago. Never. Again. Ever.
Yesterday we arrived in Baekje, once the capital city of the Baekje kingdom but conquered in the seventh century by the Han Chinese and the neighbouring Silla kingdom (who should probably have known better than to play with fire). This is a monument to the maidens of the palace who threw themselves from the nearby rock to their deaths below rather than fall into their enemies' hands. All rather sad. I think the monument is actually fairly recent, just a century or so.
Today, cycling west next to the river as it slowly turned into the Yellow Sea at Gunsan.
Lots of this was amazing, but some is a bit grim, I have to be honest.
Tomorrow going to head further south, eventually to Mokpo.
What a great trip. Cracking photos. Whats with the 11 month gap between posts?
11 month gap is because this is a different trip to cycle new areas! Sorry, I should have explained that better!
Last year was the Four Rivers route. This year we are just making it up as we go along based on the weather forecast.
Amazing, been there for work a while ago. Big shipyards in south. Would love to go back on holiday. Time available off work means we probably want something organised.
I missed this thread when it came up originally. I've great memories of working in Korea as a nipper back in the 90s. I'd love to do this trip. Thank you fir all the pictures. Properly nostalgic.
Your original trip was a real inspiration. It put South Korea on my to do list, and when I do it it'll be along the four rivers route. Thanks for sharing.
Gunsan had some quite interesting colonial history but did not have time to explore. We went to a Korean place for breakfast; usual problem of having not enough Korean to identify anything meant that while my breakfast was delicious, Pete was very grumpy about his cold rice noodles. Every day is a learning day.
We left the city on some big wide dual carriageways but these eventually gave way to some much nicer roads and eventually we found ourselves on a cycle path which ran beside the river into Jeungeup. There the cycle path ran right through the middle (paused for coffee and mystery cake) before the road kicked up into the hills. Through a tunnel, past the guy on the saxophone belting out jazz, to the lake.
Mostly downhill from there into Damyang. Lovely cycle path (apart from idiots in weird rented miniature cars). Rice fields looked glorious in the setting sun.
Pete found a photo of the giant cycling/walking ringbridge at Sejong. It's gigantic.
Also missed the first instalment, this is fantastic thanks for sharing. I wonder how/why they invested so much in the route?
Last day today. Left Damyang and followed the Yeongsan river downstream.
Reached the enormous city of Gwangju after about 20km; the path stays by the river and entirely bypasses the city. Unfortunately there was no way to avoid the fighter pilot training going on - loads of fighter jets flying around from the nearby airbase.
Gwangju was the scene of pro-democracy protests in 1980 which killed hundreds of people but eventually forced the government to hold free elections.
Stopped off at what had to be the fanciest cafe ever, views across the river. Had coffee and cake. To be honest, the views were better than the cake.
Stopped to admire a Jeongja built in 1520 - a kind of meeting place for scholars, so a bit like STW but with nicer views.
A lot of cycling. I could really have done with a beer at this point, but sadly that was not an option.
Eventually arrived in Mokpo!
If you've got this far, thank you for reading my ramblings. Thanks also to Pete for coming along on both of these trips, my incredible wife of course, and thank you also to the amazing and generous people of Korea without whom this would not have been nearly as much fun, or even possible.