I didn't really want to cavort in a
snow crab festival. For one thing, I find Korean festivals to be
rather lame. They are all the same. And they are all noisy. Leg 20
was rather long and it seemed to be heading over a mountain. The
website lists it as of normal difficulty. Up to this point the legs
had been rated as easy. I wasn't entirely sure it was a great idea
to take this leg on given the late start, the mountain and already
having been up since 5:30 in the morning. But the festival spurred
me on out of town. So I continued on. Within moments I was beyond
the festival area and heading to the heights of the hills above town.
A couple of the festival booths had tried to stop me and try
something or other, probably some snow crab delight. Of course, I am
from the middle of a continent. I have little to no knowledge and
experience of seafood. And it is not one of my favourite things to
eat. This is all the more true because Korean cuisine hasn't reached
the point of sophistication of removing things like bones and shells.
Perhaps it is supposed to add to the quaint charm of eating the
stuff, but I find that if I have to fight my food off bones or out of
shells or spit out grit and sand from the food I'm eating, I get
turned off. Put that turn off together with it being not my
favourite genre of food and that's a recipe for me to pass those
booths right on by. So long...
The festivities were even more evident
from above. I was glad I was outta there.
Then it was on to the quiet solitude of
the mountains around the townsite of Yeongdeok. It was peaceful and
quiet. I passed the odd hiker going the other direction, but for the
most part I had the trail to myself. The only thing was that it kept
going up and down and up and down and up and down. I was really
questioning the decision to press on by the time I got to the top of
the 350 metre peak above Yeongdeok. But... I used to find 350 metre
hills to be not a big deal. I used to be able to hike up much higher
mountains. My broken ankle last year kind of put a kink in that. I
want to get stronger again. And the only way to get stronger and
better is to do this kind of hike. And then do it again. And again.
And that is what I told myself every agonizing step up that really
not overly challenging hill, no matter how many ups and downs it
entailed. I'm so out of shape. Sigh!!!
After the peak, it was across a road
and into another hilly area. But this part followed roads among the
hills instead of going to the peaks. I was grateful for that as the
day was getting long and I still had a fair distance to go.
Then I came into a different kind of
power generation area. For all that Ulsan's harbour area was
somewhat horrifying in its industrialization, or Posco's boast of
cleanness and greenness rang hollow, Korea is trying to change how
much polluting material it puts into the air. They are embracing new
energy technologies. I saw in one television program that Korea has
a state of the art tidal generation station somewhere to the west in
the sea between Korea and China. And here among these hills was a
large, and fairly new, wind-power generation facility. There had to
40 or 50 of the turbines among these hills. In addition, there were
learning facilities for visitors, especially children, who might come
to see the facility. There were parks and walking trails among the
turbines.
And at night they light them up
attractively.
But I arrived in that area as the day
was ending. I still had a couple of kilometres to go, so I didn't
dally too long. I don't know that any of it was open that day
anyway. I hurried down the road, into the growing dark. I was
fairly sure I wouldn't be finding any bus to anywhere by this point,
and I just hoped I would find a nice place to stay that wouldn't cost
too much. I lost the trail somewhere down the hill. I think there
was another road it followed, but I missed the markers in the dark.
But I made it down and found a nice motel that turned out to be quite
cheap, particularly as it was on the beach and somewhat isolated from
the nearest little town. Lucky!!!
This day had started out dubiously with
a long trek to get to my start point and not much nice scenery, but
it ended amongst some rather beautiful wind turbines in a park that
was set up to make alternative energy look attractive. It had been
a good day.
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