My original plan had been something like being able to
complete the trail up the east coast somewhere in the summer. Well, summer just got so gross that I didn’t
want to do much of anything. With the
summer becoming a wash as a result, I still had it in mind to be able to
complete the trail before a full year since I had started. But weekends filled up and it was taking a
long time to get back out to the trail.
By mid-November I was getting really itchy feet. The weather had been really mild through the
fall and I wanted to get the last few legs done before the cold set in. Thinking that had to happen anytime, I decided
to head back out before it happened.
Because it was so late in the year, I thought it would be
easy enough to get to Sokcho, a fairly direct destination, in plenty of time on
a Friday night. People wouldn’t be
traveling as much as during the summer.
That was how it was supposed to work.
I don’t know if it was the mildness of the fall or just the particular
weekend I had chosen, but traffic was horrible.
It took me almost three hours to get in to Seoul. It’s billed as a 90 minute bus ride (almost
never does that happen, however… from Seoul to Seosan is usually a bit
less). Then I found that I couldn’t get
a bus to Sokcho until 11 at night. My
nice easy, and early, night getting to Sokcho now was going to be around 2 in
the morning for arrival. Then there
would be a place to stay and getting to bed.
It was looking like it was going to be a very late night, and a
resulting late start in the morning. I
was suddenly unsure I was going to be able to do the remaining four major legs
on this weekend. Sigh!!!
I got to Sokcho and found a nice-ish place to stay for a
reasonable price (which I didn’t think could happen with such a busy parade of
people apparently going to Sokcho), and got some rest. I woke up refreshed after about 4 hours of
sleep. Well, that was nice. But would the energy I felt last?
I got some breakfast and headed out on a bus to my start
point in the little harbour just north of the city. It was another gorgeous day, and warm. It was definitely a strange fall. By this point in a normal year in Korea,
there is some snow and it’s cold. I
headed off along a sea that seemed much quieter and more desolate…
…and now almost constantly guarded by fences and guardposts.
That didn’t stop wildlife from going about its business,
though.
I somehow expected that north of Sokcho, there would be very
little in the way of people and towns and cities. I’m not sure why I thought that, but I
figured that I would not want to be living all that close to the lunatics to
the north. I guess I forgot that there
were people here before the war, towns and villages and settlements all over
the peninsula. People wouldn’t just leave
their homes because a belligerent neighbour threatens, almost constantly, to
annihilate them without ever really doing anything more than talk. So, contrary to what I expected, there were
plenty of little towns and people as I walked closer to the border.
So that’s how they make those concrete breakwater things
that look like jacks from the kids’ game.
And I guess they do get a little boring when they are all
that drab concrete colour…
At the next little town, there was a pavilion overlooking
the sea and coast…
…but the razor wire and fencing really is everywhere and
takes away just a little bit of the serenity of the setting.
It did have a nice view though.
There was ever-growing evidence of the military presence and
preparedness for anything North Korea might try. These concrete structures were at many spots
where a road would go through a hill. In
the event of a North Korean attack the South could retreat along the road and
blow little blocks holding these big blocks up.
The big blocks fall into the roadway and make it impassable. It wouldn’t hold back tanks for long, but it
would give a little bit of a time advantage.
Even with all the military presence, there were still
fishing harbours, and a continued presence of water activities. This harbour was a hub for scuba divers. Most of the buildings down below were dive
shops of one sort or another.
North of that little harbour, the lonely desolate coast
continued. I imagine it’s got more
activity during the summer, but there were not many people around in November.
The beach at the end of this leg was quite rocky. But with nobody around, it was quite all
right by me.
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