Day 1: Incheon to Guri via Seoul

We first tried to take a ferry to the mainland, but the route said to go on a highway where bikes are not allow. So we tried to take the train from the airport. On the way I bumped my front disc rotor into a bollard, and it making groaning noises. When we got to the airport train station, we were told we couldn't take bikes on them (despite my research sayin we could.) Not the best start, and already late by a couple of hours. We found a "jumbo Taxi"- shoved our bikes and bags in, and we on our way!

Day 1 Reflections

The late start, my groaning brake (which took Fat Man Laser Beam an hour to fix, mean that we got to our Guri hotel at around 11pm. We took a small detour on the way for dinner at a Chinese Malatang restaurant. It felt like a huge detour, but on the map looks like a tiny blip on the route, a sign of our exhaustion.

We were tired, not from riding but just from being up all day in a new place doing a new thing. But the Han River Bike path was pretty spectacular. We stopped at many spots. See the media sections for more!).

Day 2: Guri to Yeoju

We didn't learn our lesson and left slowly around 9 or 10AM. We rode on the sidewalks to a Tous Les Jours close by and had breakfast (we eventually stopped doing sit down breakfasts). I stocked up on pastries and we headed out. Guri is on the very outskirts of the Seoul Urban core, so we pretty quickly hit the ex-urbs.

I was kind of amazed by the trail. The first 60 kilometres or so outside Seoul were like bike paradise. Great trail surface, cool air by the river, mechanic stalls, and cafes all along the way. There were fancy bike apparel shops like 60KM out from Seoul, pretty cool. Made me think about how the trails outside NYC barely have anything for cyclists at all.

Day 2 Reflections

The last hour after dusk was somewhat rough. Lot of bugs flying into me. Never felt unsafe though, just felt like we didn't make it on time. Other cyclists on the path were riding to a campsite in the opposite direction. When we got into town people were out and about, but it was still 9-10pm by the time we reached our Yeoju hotel. The guy at the reception was very friendly and said we could keep our bikes in our rooms, perfect!

It was Chuseok (추석) harvest festival time the next day, so we were lucky to find a small restaurant open. The granny there made us some really great food. We decided to spend the next day at Yeoju cause it was a national holiday and also because it's a town famous for it's ceramics and we wanted to check it out.

Photo Gallery

Photos from the journey will go here.

Video Collection

Additional video content will go here.