After a couple of weeks of being in Seosan and Seoul, I headed back out to the trail. I took the bus to Daegu on the Friday night, which was very convenient if not incredibly helpful in the end because of the distance still to travel to get to the start point. Saturday morning still held a two and a half hour journey, with three different buses, and through Pohang anyway. Oh well. The trip to Daegu was convenient. Ha ha!!
On the other hand, having left off at a
bus stop on the previous leg (even though there was once again no
sign to mark the actual end of the leg), it was easy to get to the
start point once I was in the neighbourhood. Yay!!
Arriving at said bus stop, I headed off
and straightaway up a hill and into the woods along the shore. Part
way up, there was nice view of the town down below.
It was a nice way to begin the leg. It
also showed how much spring had arrived in the two weeks between
visits to the trail. Flowers were everywhere, and all the trees were
green. I kind of expected to see lots of visitors on the trail this
weekend as the weather had turned quite nice and they love their
hiking in Korea. But there were still very few people along the way.
It may have had something to do with all the dust in the air. Every
spring, the winds kick up and a bunch of the Chinese desert flies up
and into the atmosphere, with a fair amount of it landing in Korea.
The air quality gets quite iffy, with a haze covering much of the
landscape. The evidence of that desert can be seen in puddles after
rain, with a film of yellow muck around the edges. (Of course, in
the time I have been doing this trail, I also have come to think that
Korea contributes a fair amount to the air quality as well. However,
the yellow dust is certainly from the Chinese desert.)
At the end of the first part of this
leg, I came upon a little exhibition area. I think some historical
scholar lived in this area some hundreds of years ago and this was
the site of his home or perhaps his library. And it was just sitting
out there in the woods, at the end of a road some distance from town.
There were sorts of audio-visual equipment and displays inside,
along with a guest book. And not a soul manning the place. This is
one of the most interesting aspects of Korea. I'm sure there were
some kind of monitoring CCTV cameras in place, but this would be so
in North America as well. And such a setup would never survive long
in North America for being at the very least vandalized, and probably
robbed as well. But this spot was sitting in this clearing,
completely unmolested. Good on you, Korea.
Then it was back to the shoreline and
beaches. Something I noticed on this trip was a great deal of water.
In the past three years, Korea has been in a drought. But this year
it seems to have broken. There is water in the rivers and streams
again, something I haven't seen a lot of in the past couple of years.
And the ground is damp for a long time after the rain. Before this
spring, it might rain, but an hour or so after the rain stopped, the
ground would look bone dry again. It is good to see damp ground days
after a rain. Maybe the drought is over.
What hasn't changed is Korea's penchant
to destroy the charm of coastline. I had come into what they were
calling the Whale and Clean Beach Road. That makes it sound pristine
and lovely, a place one can go and see shore birds, clean beaches,
beautiful vistas, and a nice natural area.
And then they decided to do this...
It's hard to decide what it will be,
but Korea has recently begun to get into a glamping craze. I suspect
these will be nice campsites, with all a “camping” family might
need, from tent to barbecue area, and eventually a nice view,
although currently the shore view is obscured by a set of dunes.
Now I can't really cast stones and say
that Koreans are the only ones guilty of this. Authorities near my
hometown of Calgary are trying to prevent people with recreational
ATVs from destroying a natural area by the mountains, people who
really don't seem to care that the natural area is suffering. But in
an area they are touting as clean and natural, to put this kind of
glamping site in is asking for the pristine area to become degraded.
And my time in this country has shown how little regard Koreans have
for what they do with their trash. I suspect this Whale and Clean
Beach area will not remain so for much longer, unfortunately.
But for now, the views along the beach
are really quite nice.
And as I reached the end of the leg, I
found that they take the trail more seriously in the Yeongdeok area.
They want trekkers to be able to stay on the trail and find things
like transportation. There were new markers to be seen, markers on
the ground, indented instead of just painted, pointing the way. (It
is fairly apparent, however, that they really only consider one
direction for the trail, as these markers mostly only point one way.)
The end of the leg had signposts pointing the way to a nearby bus
stop. Things are looking up for knowing what I need to know to get
to and from the trail as I get farther north.
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