East from Seoul

Chuncheon sits at the edge of a huge man-made lake surrounded by wooded hills. There are cycle paths everywhere so we hired a couple of bikes and circled the lake - lovely views, great reflections and the autumn colours are just coming. We could have cycled back to Seoul if we'd wanted, but we didn't - 45km was enough.

The bus to Sokcho on the east coast burrowed through the mountains in a series of tunnels - they aren't high but they are steep. Then a local bus dropped us near our hotel 2km from the entrance to Seoraksan National Park. We dropped our bags and walked the rest of the way as the queue of traffic was longer than 2km! It's the closest hiking area to Seoul with easy access so very popular, especially on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Literally thousands of walkers. A lovely but steep walk up a series of waterfalls with good colours in the trees - spectacular.

Well, wrote that on Sunday evening, found the traffic just as bad at 10am on Monday! Another glorious walk though.

Stairway to Heaven has nothing on the climb up these mountains but views and colours out of this world.

Legs not functioning too well now but just had the best spicy chicken (they didn't say it was the whole bird) needless to say we managed.