Walking the Haguicheon

Yesterday (OK this was a week ago now) I woke too late to go for my morning run. It was after 10am, the sun was too high in the sky and the temperature was 30 in the the shade. Not ideal running conditions. So I decided to walk my running route instead and take some photographs along the way. After lathering my Celtic skin with sun cream and grabbing a bottle of water I set off.

The River Hagui runs behind the apartment building where I live. It runs down from the mountains in to the Anyang River, which in turn empties in to the huge Han River in Seoul. I read somewhere that the rivers in Anyang used to be toxic, draining the waste of the industries that lined their banks, but they must have been cleaned up and regenerated some time ago because now they are actively used as public parks and serve as conduits for nature through the concrete city.

At 8.30am (and again at 8.30pm) the pathway above is absolutely packed with runners, joggers, power walkers, cyclists and elderly strollers. However at 11am it was too damn hot and, apart from me, the route was sensibly deserted.

Gwanaksan

Craving a bit of peace and quiet and countryside after 3 weeks of Anyang’s unrelenting urbanism (see first post), on Sunday I strapped on my super Asolo hiking boots (thanks big sister!), packed a small backpack of provisions (waterproof, kiwi fruit, water), and walked uphill the half mile or so to the entrance of the mountain trail. The city’s relentless apartment blocks continued up the incline, eventually giving way to a path through fields of smallholdings growing chilli-peppers, yellow courgettes and hot-housed tomatoes, before these too gave way to pine forest.

The path was well-signposted and, despite the weather predicting thunderstorms, fairly busy with hikers. I’d read about how much Koreans are into hiking, and especially into hiking gear. So at first I was slightly amused by the layers of sweatproof, waterproof, neon clothing; the retractable trekking poles; the giant stuffed backpacks and GLOVES everywhere.

Moving uphill, the cover of the pine trees was occasionally left behind to reveal scenes like this, stunted pines jostling with young deciduous trees and low shrubs:

Soon it became apparent why so many people had so much gear. As it rose more steeply the path began to be broken up by rocky outcrops and groups of boulders.

Welcome to Anyang

On Sunday I climbed a mountain. The header image above [edit: now below this post] is a picture I took halfway up. The sky has looked like that pretty much every day since I arrived in Korea on July 1st. I’ve been peering at the mountain through the narrow slit of light between two apartment buildings that reaches my bedroom window every day for the past few weeks. Some days you can barely see it at all through the low clouds. Others you can discern honey coloured rock outcrops on its upper reaches. On Sunday the clouds were no thinner  than usual but I had nothing to do so I thought I’d climb it anyway. The mountain is called Gwanak-san (관악산), the city you can just see occupying the entire plain between the surrounding mountains is Anyang (안양시), my home for the next year.