Deokjeok-do

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15th Nov: We had stayed the night at Incheon, so that we were close to the ferry terminal. We had tried to stay at the same motel as we had when we went to Baeknyeong-do, but since we had arrived late, after 11 pm, it was full. But the lovely man pointed out another motel to us. We were up early, as our ferry left at nine am, luckily the motel was a tow minute walk to the ferry terminal. It wasn't as busy as it had been back in May, I noticed that the old information board had been removed and replaced with a brand new electronic one. No sign left of the Sewol now. We got our tickets from the desk, they were very efficient, as they had them printed out ready for us. We showed our ID as we left the terminal to walk to the boat. I can't remember if we had to show it again as we boarded. We found our seats and got comfy for the journey. I felt sick, not because of the motion of the water, but because of a man sitting there, knocking back a few shots of soju. It wasn't even 9 am! Rotten!

The journey was uneventful, apart from them actually doing a safety demonstration and one woman coming up and wanting to try on the safety vest, to make sure she knew what to do. Guess she doesn't have much confidence in Korean maritime safety. The journey took just over an hour, about 70 to 75 minutes. The sea was smooth. We stopped at a little island across from Deokjeok-do first causing lots of confusion, as loads of people tried to get off there, only to be told it wasn't the right place. It was literally right across from Deokjeok-do. We got off the boat and found a big map to consult. We kind of knew where we wanted to head to, the main beach. These nice men from the boat, made the bus wait for us as it was about to leave. The whole bus hada good laugh at us as we tried to use our T-money (pre-paid transit) cards to pay. This was a cash only operation. Luckily, I had a few thousand won notes in my purse. The bus journey took about twenty to thirty minutes as we followed the road around the coast.

The bus dropped us off at Seopori village, just back from Seopori Beach, which is the most popular beach on the island. When we got off the bus there was a halmoni (grandma) there, offering rooms in her minbak. The blokes told us we should go with her, and we were happy to have someone offer us accommodation, so we didn't have to traipse looking for somewhere. The granny was fab, as we were following her along the street, she was slagging off the other pensions and minbaks, and telling us how expensive they were. Her place as cute, it looked pretty new, small, but fairly clean for the 30,000 won it would be between us for the night. Bless her, she was chatting away to use, I had no idea, what she was saying, but she kept talking, I know she kept calling us pretty.

We were hungry, as we had only had a meager breakfast on the boat. The woman offered to make us some food for an extra 10,000 won, so we agreed. We were shown into her living quarters, and she set about making us some food. She had the most gorgeous little kitty. S/he was tiny, and so cute. We spent our time cooing over the kitten, while breakfast was being made. That was funny, the old woman invited us into the kitchen and the table was all set with the food laid out, so we dug in. Oops! The old lady sat down and started praying loudly. We shot each other glances, hoping we hadn't offended her. The food was canny, nothing special, but filling, we had rice with kimchi, a fishy kimchi stew, samgyeopsal, and her homemade doenjang.

We left the minbak, and headed down to Seopori Beach. It was amazing, so quiet. The beach was big and wide with golden sands. I can see why this place would be heaving in the summer. We had a it of a walk on the each. The tide was quite far out. We then had a it of a walk along the Sannaeum Trail. It was nice walking along in the woods for a bit. We were surprised that we didn't see anyone else on the trail. We came to the look-out and took some photos. The sun was shining down on the water, it looked so pretty. We went a it further along the trail, and when we came to a fork, we decided to head back to the village. The trail back dropped us just a little it further back form where we had started. We headed back to the village, and to the CU (convenience store) to get a drink an some chocolate to snack on.

We took a wander around the village, we spotted a house, well it was just outer walls really, that looked abandoned. We spent ages taking photos of it. It seemed like the whole village was geared towards tourism, as every house doubled up as a minbak, pension or restaurant. However, since we were here in the off season, not much was open. There was a it of construction work going on, too, as people were preparing for the next wave of tourists that will come next summer. I still couldn't get over how quiet it was, there were barely any cars or people about. Where were all the people that had been on the ferry? It had been full when we came over. We took the road heading out of town east. We spent a while walking along the road, and then we saw a clearing in the woods, so decided to take that path. We walked through the woods for a bit, passing a couple of burial mounds. Then we came out at a small beach, by Beotgae sea wall. We had a walk on the beach, it was beautiful and there was not a single other person around. The sun was starting to dip in the sky, and we spent ages taking photos. We walked along the sea wall, and spotted some more people. There were a couple of blokes, I think they might have been fishing. We checked out the map, we wanted to hike to the viewpoint at Bagatsurobong, but we didn't have enough daylight, so we turned around and headed back to Seopori village.

We popped back to the minbak, the old lady made us had over the key, we tried to explain that we were heading back out, but she was having none of it. We headed down to the beach to catch the tail end of the sunset. It was freezing on the beach, so we didn't linger for too long. I can't believe people were camping. They must be freezing! We had spotted a noraebang earlier, but when we went back it was shut. the whole pension, restaurant, and noraebang complex looked shut. We were gutted, we had planned to have dinner there too. We ended up going to the Chinese restaurant that was near our minbak, as only that and another fish restaurant looked open. The restaurant was pretty basic inside. It was freezing, too. I don't know how the couple who ran it coped. It was canny filthy, too. The walls looked like they had never been cleaned. However the food tasted good, which was the main thing. We had fried rice with black bean sauce on the side, and a huge plate of sweet and sour pork. The sweet and sour pork contained apple instead of pineapple, and it worked well.

We headed back to the minbak, to find we were locked out of our room. The old lady had obviously came back and locked the door, when we had left. All the lights were out in her place and we were freezing. Then we heard her voice coming from one of the rooms. We knocked and she came out, looking slightly drunk, she'd obviously been supping the soju. She unlocked our room, and went through her safety spiel again, she was ever so slightly obsessed with the fact that we couldn't leave our money in our purses. Instead, she wanted us to take it out of our purses and and put it inside the pillowcase. So, of course we pretended that we would do that. Once she left, we cranked the ondol and had an early night.

16th Nov: We woke up early. I think around six or seven. Our plan was to take the first bus, over to the second Seopori village, and start hiking from there. We were at the bus stop with loads of time to spare, however the bus never turned up. The shop wasn't even open when we turned up at the bus stop. We waited for a while, but after the time for the bus to come and go, came and went, we headed to the shop, which had know opened and got some food to sustain us on our hike. We asked the lovely woman in the shop about the bus, and she said that the first bus comes at 9 am. I wonder if the timetable was their summer timetable, and they never bothered to update it, now it is the off season.

Now, we were a bit short on time, but still confident that we could do our planned itinerary. We followed the same path that we had yesterday towards Beotgae, but instead of heading down to the beach, we took another fork, which lead us straight to the sea wall. We stopped by the reservoir to take some pictures. You could see the reflections of the hills beautifully in the water. Since we were in a slightly different place from our intended starting point we decided to take the longer trail up to Guksubong, the highest peak on the island. The trail was about three kilometres, so we didn't think it would take too long. It was well signposted at the start, so we set off. the views were great and we could see these gorgeous little bays with beautiful turquoise blue water. It would be lovely to swim in, in the summer. The three kilometres to the peak took forever to hike, we were convinced we had passed it, as we went up and down following the ridge line. We didn't see a single other soul, while we were there. Just when we thought we must have passed it, we saw a signpost that told us we were getting nearer. We made it to the peak, which was such an anti-climax, as there was a military installation there, and nothing really marking the spot. We set the dog off barking, and he kept barking as we walked around the edge of the military base. We stopped for our first snack at the peak, there were no seats, so we just sat on a stone. If we had kept going a little further we would have come across some benches.

The next part of the hike didn't take too long, and we were soon out on the main road that cuts across the hiking trail. There was a delivery style scooter parked up there, which was funny, as there was no one about, we had been hiking for a few hours and hadn't seen anybody. We crossed the road and rejoined the trail. After a few minutes, we finally saw another human being! I think he was the owner of the scooter, and seemed to be some kind of forest ranger. We walked on a little bit further and came across some benches, with a lovely view out over the island. We sat there for a little while, and ate some more of our snacks. Time was marching on and we had to pick up the pace a little. There was a steel tower that looked miles away, but it didn't take us too long to get there. We continued on to Unjubong Peak, although most of the trail was fairly easy going there was some scrambling over rocks to reach the last part, the peak. We had come across a couple of other blokes at another scenic spot and they had pointed us in the right direction. These guys seemed to be forestry workers too.

We decided that we didn't have enough time to go to Bijobong, the most visited peak. So when the road forked not long after Magjae, we took the route that would lead us to Jinil-ri, which seems like the main settlement on the island. I had wanted to take the route down from Unjubong, as it looked to be quicker, but when we were at the peak, the trail looked totally grown over, so we decided not to take it. The route down to the village was slightly under a kilometre. We passed a few more burial mounds. There were graves marking, who the people were, they had their Korean names, but in brackets they had Christian names, so we were thinking they may have been a vicar and his wife, on the island. There were quite a few churches on the island, and we were surprised that there didn't seem to be any Buddhist temples. We wandered through the main village, it was pretty small, and seemed to be mainly residential. All the houses looked really nice, like they had been recently renovated.

We headed down to the beach, in front of the village. The beach was small, but have lovely goldy-white sand. There was only one other person on the beach, someone picking cockles in the rocks. I'm glad we came out of season, as the place was really peaceful and quiet. The beaches are definitely the nicest I've seen on the west coast of Korea. I can see why this place would be rammed in summer. It's close to Incheon and Seoul, only 70 minutes by fast boat, and there are plenty of places to camp, with lots of public facilities to use. We walked to the end of the beach and followed the Dou Trail, which took about forty minutes, and went around the headland to deposit us near the ferry port. We had expected great views, but there were too many trees.

We walked round from the end of the trail to the ferry port. We had a bit of time to kill, and it had just started to rain a little, so we headed to a coffee shop, and I got nice hot cafe mocha to warm me up a bit. Some blokes were playing table tennis inside, so had took over the whole cafe with the table, so we sat outside under an umbrella, and finished off our snacks that didn't have a chance to eat, while we were hiking. We then headed over to the ferry terminal and sat in there for a bit, until it was time to depart. I can't remember if our boat left at four or five, but it got us back to the mainland on time. Ready to begin our long trek home.

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