With this leg, I was moving on into the
Samcheok area, and Gangwon Province. Gangwon province is more or
less Korea's playground. There are lots of recreational activities
in the area, from beaches to very mountainous terrain. It will also
be host to the 2018 Winter Olympics in a highly contested area that,
depending on who you listen to, is being destroyed ecologically with
the levelling of a spiritual old growth forest to make way for a
bloated international sporting event presided over by egomaniacal and
greedy overlords, or the jewel of South Korea that will stamp the
country's entry onto the stage of winter sport after which the old
growth will be replaced exactly as it was with nobody the wiser.
Personally, I don't believe that forests can be replaced after trees
have been moved around, it will be another recreational area for
people to go and ski, the area will be a forgotten area of old growth
destruction, and spiritual mountains really haven't got the emotional
pull to have ever made it stop. It will be a shame in the end.
Sigh!
But that is all at a mountain in the
interior, some distance from where I started this day. Oh look!
Another nuclear power plant. They hide lots of those where people
don't really get to see them and know how much of their power comes
from something they rag on Japan for using.
The hike began with a fair amount of
interesting coastal scenery.
But it quickly followed the road into
the mountains, and those were not nearly so scenic. This stretch of
the trail continues to be less than inspiring. Recycling areas and
factories producing concrete are not really my idea of scenery.
There was a nice surprise, though. As
I followed the road up to a pass, I came to a nice little park on the
top of the mountain. It had a nice view down over the mountains to
the coast and the expressway down below. It was nice, but it was a
small spot along the long and uninspiring road.
But I did pass into the final province
I will see on this trail, Gangwon Province. (There are several
different systems to put Korean words into Roman letters. None
capture the process perfectly and, to make matters even more
confusing, each of the main three or four has had precedence at some
time or other in recent history. So, spellings differ, often on
signs within sight of each other. I write Gangwon Province, but this
sign has Kangwon.)
As soon as I entered the province, the
trail went off the road and down a mountainside. This was a nice
diversion...
...although it ended all too soon with
more uninspiring scenery heading into another town. I don't know why
the keepers of this trail are so proud of ugly power generation. And
I know they must be. In order to continue up the coast there was a
point just before here with a road in two directions. One went
almost directly to a bridge across a river, leading onward on the
trail. The other went by a fairly circuitous route the other
direction on the road to pass by the riverbank, giving this view of
the gas plant, before following the riverbank back up... to the same
bridge. The only point I could see for going a fair distance out of
the way to get to the bridge would be to get a good view of this
bunch of gas silos. And my only question is... why? Why would I (or
anyone else hiking this trail) want to see this kind of stain on the
coast when the point of such trails could generally be assumed to be
to experience nature? This makes no sense to me. But anyway...
Shortly after this point, I arrived at
the end point for this leg. This had supposed to be a fairly
difficult leg, rated at a difficulty level of 4 on a 5-point scale.
I hadn't found it particularly demanding, even after 50 kilometres
the previous day. I guess it was the scaling of the heights that was
to make it so “difficult.” Or perhaps it was finding the
motivation to keep going that made it so difficult, since the scenery
was so very uninspiring. In any case, the following leg was supposed
to also be at a level 4 of difficulty, so this made me think it
wouldn't be that bad. Onward!!!
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