I had an excellent day today. After a good nights sleep, I got up at around 6am and headed to the largest national park in Seoul - Bukhansan.
I didn't really know what to expect, but when I got off the train and everyone else was wearing full hiking gear, I figured I was going to be out of my depths. Fortunately, it wasn't too bad, but it did take me about 6 hours to walk through and over the massive mountain fortress. At a minimum guess, I think I walked around 20km, and got about 600m up.
The hardest part was that most of the signs had no English, so I had to double back a few times throughout the hike where I took a wrong turn and ran into a giant wall of stone or river.
Covering the peaks of the mountain is a huge wall, Bukhansanseong. It was designed as a fortress for if Seoul was ever under attack, and while most of the buildings are gone, the wall and many of the huge gates are still intact.
Most of the creeks and waterways were at least partially frozen over, but at one of the small river crossings, the whole waterfall was frozen!
I had lots of chats with locals too, as there were no tourists in the area, just avid walkers, some of whom spoke some English and wanted to have a chat. One elderly man in particular practically yelled me up one really rough climbing part, telling me that I will be "healthy at the top". He was wrong, all I was, was puffed.
Tomorrow, China xx