Ride: Jeonju, South Korea to Buyeo, South Korea
Distance: 78.3km
Terrain: Nothing major to report here as the path was nicely laid out, save for the usual thigh burners that pop up every once in a while. Make sure you don’t get sucked into Highway 1 - Naver will fail you here again and it’s up to you to pick an appropriate path in parallel. We took the 722 to the 718, which saved us.
To interact with this map, visit Jess’s Strava account here.
We’re strong now. “80km?" No bother, we’ll bang that out by lunchtime.”
A cool, overcast start to the day was most welcome after the last few sweaty rides, as it allowed us to get some good work done before it inevitably warmed up. We seemed to finally come into some luck, as the whole day was smooth sailing in general. The bike path started right by the hanok village in Jeonju and carried us smoothly and safely out of town.
There was some brief drama as we almost got sucked onto the dreaded Highway 1. But a quick study of the map at maximum zoom had us on a quiet back road, where we progressed for the next 40 kilometres or so until we hit another riverside path, as lovely as all the others. Which brings us to our next point - on days that you’re deviating from the bike path (and even sometimes on days that you’re on it), it’s definitely worth rechecking the route that Naver prescribes. They claim to take you only on bike friendly roads, but sometimes those assertions are just wrong.
Wanggung-ri Relics Museum, which was on the way. We didn’t stop in, but the brutalist architecture caught our attention and reminded us of something that looked more at home in North Korea.
Nature called, so we stopped in Geumma in search of a place to relieve ourselves. It was one of the more populous towns along the way, yet nothing seemed to be open. But a cafe around the corner looked promising, so we peered in and tried to find signs of life but only saw a construction guy in the backyard welding some bookshelves together. Ultimately, we gave up and started to head on our way.
All of a sudden, a woman scurried over on her bike.
“Hello! Wait! Can we offer you something to drink?”
It was the owner, who had come back from running an errand (the construction guy from before was her husband), and she ushered us inside the cool space. They did have a bathroom after all, and once we made use of it, we settled on a bench while she bustled around. Turns out that the cafe wasn’t officially opened yet, and they were still putting the finishing touches to it. But it seemed they saw something in us that they recognised – the husband was a bit of a cyclist himself, and they knew how well a fresh strawberry milkshake would go down on a hot day like this. The wife was particularly chatty and asked about our story. When she found out that that Jess was American, she proudly talked about her daughter, who was learning English in school.
We were grateful for their kindness, and even more so when they refused to take our money. “No no, we’re not even really open. Please take this as a service, and remember us.”
Jess got a bit teary as we said goodbye.
Located at Geumma 4-gil, Iksan, Jeollabuk-do, South Korea. Go say hi!
No climbs of any note today, which meant nothing really for us to complain about (another first!). We rolled into Buyeo in time for lunch and a look around.