서울둘레길 2.0 Trail 21
– To my Seoul Trail main page.
– To the official Seoul Trail website.
This is the Bukhansan Mountain & Dobong-gu part of the trail and is 7.3km. Below is the link to the route on Naver Maps:
Trail 21 naver.me/FynPisue
Another chilly day so got up late (cosy bed!). I used the start of the day to go back to the end of Trail 2 to get a stamp I couldn’t get the first time because I had the old version of the book. That took about an hour as I went past the quarry area again before heading down to Madeul Station (마들역), Line 7, to go to Dobongsan Station (도봉산역) and the start of the Trail. I revisited the stamp booth 1 to get the last missing stamp for the new stamp book, then started on Trail 21 (final trail). I would be going anti-clockwise, east to west this time.
I entered the a hiking clothing stores and restaurant area near the station and stopped for hwangtae tteokguk, a nice filling soup of rice cakes and dried fish. Then I continued on to the Bukhansan Park entrance and into the park.
You go past a very new-looking Neungwonsa Temple on the right, then the older-looking Dobongsa Temple immediately after that. A cat was waiting for me on the wall!
The trail now goes off road and is forested most of the way. The hill were quite moderate, no big inclines. The trees are mostly bare now and the leaves are thick on the ground. About half way, you come across an observation tower you can go up to see around. It’s a double tower linked by a little walkway. From there, saw how hazy the air was today.
A bit further on is a fence and gate warning you to keep the gate closed behind you. The fence is designed to keep wild boars from heading into the residential areas. That made me a little apprehensive about entering to be honest!
Eventually you get to roads and houses and in a park is a huge gingko tree planted during the Joseon period, so anytime from 1392 to 1910 (not very specific!). Old in any case. There’s another section of forest then onto the last road section to get the stamp. From there, it’s about 1km to the Bukhansan Ui Station, the last station on the newish Uisinseol line. Like the Sillim Line to Gwanaksan, the trains are driverless.
