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It's taken a while for me to get the pictures from this, my first real outing in Korea on the web due to Digital Camera Logistics. Not having had a computer for the first two months, I stored 80 megs of pictures on a friend's laptop before I went to Japan, then had enormous problems getting them back. I have them now though.The day before, we had made arrangements with one of the Korean teachers to climb a mountain with her. She said she would make sandwiches! Needless to say I was looking forward to this. Unfortunately, when Sunday dawned, the day was a scorcher, and she phoned to say she wasn't coming.Marc and I, being new in Korea, and not wanting the sun to leave us with a plan-less day, decided to go anyway. I would like to point out here and now that most people who went to the mountain were intending to go to the water park located a third of the way up.
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We followed the main path, a good paved road, up to its conclusion; an observation platform for viewing the city. We tried to find our apartments, but they all look the same, so we didn't have a whole lot of luck. We did see the World Cup Stadium though.
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Looking around from the platform, it was difficult to spot a way up further. The road had ended, and all we could follow was a dirt track that seemed to go down. Not having anywhere else to go, we followed the track, which did broaden in places. Every now and again, a rope was tied between trees to assist the climber.
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As we walked along the main ridge of the mountain, we came across a number of knolls. These were later explained as burial mounds. I guess you'd have to have a lot of good friends for them to be willing to bury you on top of a mountain.
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On top of the mountain is a fortress. Rather small, but as the information sign boasts - in a strategically important location. Here's a picture of it taken from the next mountain (on a different, and very much less hot day). The quality isn't terribly good as I don't have a great zoom lens, so have had to enhance it in Photoshop.
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The fortress was wonderful. The pagoda provided much needed shade and exposed as it is, the breeze felt wonderful and cool. On entering, we were cheerfully greeted by the Koreans who were relaxing in there, some of whom practiced their English on us, and one wonderful lady gave us some very strange fruit.
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I guess part of the intention of the fortress was to overlook the city, which has now spread to cover the whole flood plain between the mountains. The rivers have been artificially sunk deeper, and are controlled by weirs. When we had a typhoon, the river flooded, but didn't spill its banks. It was close though.
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We were relaxing out of the sun when another Westerner entered the pagoda. This was Cyril, the Frenchman. He was studying at KIAST University. There was something surreal about being an Englishman, Frenchman and Canadian in a pagoda, on top of a mountain, in South Korea. While he and Marc talked French, I walked the fortress walls, taking a few photos. The walls seemed to have no mortar, being composed of worked stones piled on top of each other. The top of the wall was smooth enough to act as a road. Here's a picture of the South-West gate.
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We spent an enjoyable 2 hours just sitting and talking. None of us wanted to face the sun again just then. When we finally did walk down, Cyril guided us along a much shorter route which came out by the Korean War memorial.
We had come by cab, but Cyril also guided us onto the bus, and told us where we needed to get off in order to get home. We arrived back exhausted but happy after our first day out of the city in Korea.