EPISODE 13
Another Long Blue Line: Cycling Four Rivers
Listener Frédéric Dith alerted me that long blue lines mark long distance cycling routes, not only in Japan but also in Taiwan and South Korea. During a year of backpacking in Asia, following a burnout from the pandemic and working at a Berlin startup, Fred bikepacked the 633-kilometer-long Four Rivers Cycle Route, traversing South Korea from Seoul to Busan. Fred learned all about South Korea’s engaging system of issuing bicycling passports and repurposing bright red phone booths as places to stamp your passport to show your progress. After completing his goal of cycling the entire Four Rivers route, Fred’s reward was a professional-looking certificate, suitable for framing. After talking to Fred, we also check in with previous guest Hannah Bowley, who has spent the past months riding in Japan and South Korea.
Episode Transcript
Fred: I’m really glad I actually chose to take time off and travel on my own. Overall I feel better than when I started this trip. This bike trip, among the other bike trips I’ve done, like, during the stay in Asia, connected me back to the fact that I just love riding bikes.
Gabriel: You just heard Frédéric Dith talking about the positive effects of accidentally discovering multi-day bikepacking. It all happened during a one-year backpacking trip through Asia, following a burnout from the pandemic and working at a Berlin startup. Fred’s tours got longer and more challenging, culminating with the 633-kilometer-long Four Rivers Cycling Route in South Korea. After talking to Fred, we’ll also check in with previous guest Hannah Bowley, who has also spent the past months riding in Japan and South Korea.
Sandra: You’re listening to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast, you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello cycle touring enthusiasts! Welcome to another episode of the Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast. In the episode “Long Blue Line: Cycling Shimanami,” I learned about a bicycle route with a Smurf- blue line running along its entire 70-kilometer length. Both my guest, Poh Yu Seung, and I thought that this was something unique. One listener, Frédéric Dith, contacted me out of the blue and told me that he had personally followed another blue line, the Four Rivers Cycle Route in South Korea. I was intrigued and invited Fred to share his story. So Fred, thank you for being a guest on the Accidental Bicycle Tourist.
Fred: Thank you for having me here.
Gabriel: This other blue line that you know of just has to be our starting point. Can you tell a little bit about that?
Fred: Yeah, sure. Maybe we can start around why I was in Asia. So my initial plan was to take some time for myself and just travel around the world. For this year I spent in Asia, I spent half of it in Southeast Asia. So I stayed in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia, and came back to Thailand. After Thailand, then I flew to Taiwan, where I stayed just over a month. After that, I flew to South Korea, where I stayed two and a half months. And I ended my trip in Japan, where I spent the last three months of my time in Asia. I actually did ride a bike in these three countries: Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. This blue line, I was able to find it in Taiwan. I did a couple of days riding my bike in Taiwan.
Gabriel: So wait, there’s a blue line also in Taiwan?
Fred: That’s correct, yeah. They have what they’re calling “national routes,” and that’s something I found again in these three countries I visited. After staying a month in Taiwan, then I chose to fly to South Korea. So I landed in Seoul, stayed there for a couple of days. Then I took train to actually visit the east coast of the country. I also went to Jeju Island, which is a small island in the south of the country, which I was also able to actually ride a bike around. It’s really not that long, and I was in a mood of, okay, let’s try to see what this island has to offer. So I toured the island in four days. While I was in Jeju, I actually did more research around other bike routes or what I could do in South Korea. That’s when I found around this Four Rivers Route. That’s a route going from Seoul, so in the northwest of the country, to Busan, which is like the second largest city on the south coast. This route is around 600 kilometers.
Gabriel: Around Jeju Island, also a blue line.
Fred: Yeah.
Gabriel: And the Four Rivers Cycle Route, also a blue line.
Fred: Yeah.
Gabriel: Now suddenly I have the feeling like every road in Asia has a blue line on it. It’s gone from “this is unique” to “there’s a blue line everywhere.”
Fred: The actual shade of blue they use is the same one that is used for like marking signs for, like, disabled people. You see this blue that is used sometimes on signs?
Gabriel: Yes.
Fred: They use the same blue because it has some kind of human touch to it.
Gabriel: Oh, okay. So it’s not officially Smurf blue then?
Fred: I don’t know the exact name. I mean, when you say Smurf blue, I totally get why you would name it this way. So it seems like some kind of, like, standard.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Fred: I was able to see this Blue Painted Line in Taiwan, in South Korea, and in Japan. I actually wrote the exact same route that your previous guest has mentioned.
Gabriel: Shimanami.
Fred: Correct.
Gabriel: I guess now this is showing my ignorance of bicycle touring in Asia because it seems like it’s a standard and here I thought it was really unique.
Gabriel: Fred beat me to the research on this one, sending me a scholarly article from the Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, concluding that there is no international or even country-wide standard for the color of bicycle lanes. In fact, South Korea uses predominantly red to mark its lanes. Fred now believes that the blue long-distance trails in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea might be more random than he initially thought. Perhaps we’re so used to seeing red and green lanes that the blue ones feel just a little bit more special.
Gabriel: And it’s important, I think, to stress that a lot of this was done without a bicycle. You had not said, “I will spend one year bicycle touring.” You wanted to have a year in Asia. What gave you the idea to rent – you didn’t bring your own bicycle, so rent – a bicycle. What was the first place where you thought, I should do this by bicycle?
Fred: I would say the first place I rented bikes was in Vietnam, but it was not for a long bike ride. It was only in a place where I was. I was just renting a bike for one day or two, just to use it as a means of going around and seeing different places. I would say I’m not an experienced cyclist, but I have some shortish rides in my bag. So I had some experiences with full-day riding, but never really something that’s over, like, one day. The first one I set up during my trip was in Taiwan, where I rode only the east coast of the island. It was a three-day trip, around 170 kilometers. I did some research and it looked like the route was fairly safe, the weather was good at this point. And, yeah, I just wanted to start it and I found a company to rent a bike. Actually, it was pretty easy to set up. Even without any planning before, it seems like they have some companies out there who are familiar with, like, how biking basically works. It was fairly easy to plan overall, so I did it first in Taiwan.
Gabriel: We’ve heard about the Giant Bicycle Company, with Giant being a Taiwanese company. They have invested a lot in bicycle rentals and offices where you can pick up and drop off. Was your rental through Giant or was it through another company?
Fred: In Taiwan, it was through Giant. They had basically rental points in every major city.
Gabriel: Right.
Fred: I picked up my bike in a Giant shop and dropped it in a Giant shop. They were the easy choice for me.
Gabriel: Yes, it seems like they’ve really done a great job. It’s become very popular.
Fred: I believe you can go around the entire island, but you only did the east coast. Yes, there’s a painted line to follow. You have signs that’s really well, like, marked, basically. I have my smartphone, but I didn’t really need it. I could basically navigate just by looking at the signs and at the painted line on the road. Yes, I made it to the south of the island.
Gabriel: Very good. After that, we come to what I would think is the main part of today’s discussion, which was South Korea.
Fred: In the south of the country, you have an island called Jeju Island. It’s a really tiny island. The way I think about this island is that it’s similar to what Corsica or Mallorca are in Europe. So, it’s really just like a short flight for any people living in mainland, and it’s mostly known or popular for weekend getaways or getting some more sun.
Gabriel: Do people have vacation homes there as well, like in Corsica and Mallorca?
Fred: It’s definitely catered for, like, tourism, so if you have a lot of guest houses, hotels, I would say if you want to rent a house for holiday days, it should be fairly easy to do, but it felt like a holiday island, basically. In our case, what’s interesting is that you can ride the entire island. It’s around 250 kilometers. It’s literally, like, impossible to get lost. That’s literally just one road going all over the island. You have a good cycling infrastructure there, but only counterclockwise.
Gabriel: Just to clarify, you say counterclockwise because that puts you on the shoulder closer to the water, and then you don’t have to deal with any intersections.
Fred: That’s correct, yeah. If you ever have the possibility to go to Jeju Island, I would actually recommend cycling around it. You spend four days just riding next to the water. It’s just really nice overall.
Gabriel: It sounds nice. When you contacted me, you said that you identified with the term, “accidental bicycle tourist.” Can you tell a little bit more about that?
Fred: Yeah, I’m from France, but I’ve lived in Germany for twelve years now. It was never the plan to actually go on bike rides when I decided to set up on this long trip. Just based on my experience of riding bicycles here in Berlin, I just wanted to give myself a challenge. It was really this idea that this long route that crosses the entire country would definitely be a challenge at this point because I’ve never ridden anything that long. But I did some research, got the motivation, got back to Seoul, and yeah, that’s how I started this trip.
Gabriel: You got motivated to start, and I suppose you had to rent a bicycle again. And, how did that work?
Fred: So the way it worked is that I started with the full distance of the road. So it was around 600 kilometers. I knew that I could actually cycle around 100 per day, so I decided to do it in seven. I was basically, like, in my accommodation and okay, try to map, like, from Seoul, that’s 100 kilometers, that takes me there, so I should stop here. I thought about camping because it’s actually pretty popular in South Korea to camp around like this type of trips. But again, that would have meant that I would either have to rent or like buy some camping equipment, and I didn’t want to do this. I only stayed in hotels and guest houses. And when it comes to the bike, Seoul being, like, a fairly big city, there were a lot of options all around. In my case, what made me decide for a specific shop is that this shop allowed you to pick up the bike in Seoul and drop it in Busan. They didn’t require you to bring the bike all the way back to Seoul, so they have a partnership in Busan, where when I ended my trip, I just dropped the bike in this shop and this shop just shipped the bike back to Seoul, and that was one of the reasons why I chose this company.
Gabriel: Right. We’ve seen that before on Shimanami, and it sounds like this is really part of the infrastructure, which is wonderful.
Fred: In case of people like me who didn’t have a bike, that helped for sure, because there could have been ways to bring the bike back to Seoul, but it would have meant putting the bike on the train or something like that.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Fred: In that case, they are really aware that this route is really popular and people really want to do this route, so they have this arrangement with different shops.
Gabriel: It sounds like since you were staying in guest houses, you were traveling fairly light in terms of bags or panniers. You didn’t need a whole lot of gear.
Fred: That’s correct. And on that point, I can mention two things. I traveled this entire year in Asia with one backpack. I had this idea from the start that I wanted to travel as light as possible, because I was staying in hotels where everything is basically provided. All I had on the bike is just a saddlebag and a bottle holder, so that was, like, as light as you can basically get.
Gabriel: A bottle holder and a bottle.
Fred: Yeah, a bottle holder on the frame. And I think it was like a 10-liter saddlebag where I had a few change of clothes and a toothbrush, so really as light as I could.
Gabriel: You actually spent the whole year with just the backpack. That’s impressive.
Fred: I knew that I would be on a lot of buses, trains, planes, boats. I just figured out that traveling with one backpack was the best solution.
Gabriel: Yeah. If you can pull it off, then that’s super good.
Fred: A lot of people actually ask me how I do it, because they tend to travel with way more things than I do. But it’s manageable, I would say. It was not the worst.
Gabriel: I think maybe one of the challenges with the clothing is the change of seasons from extreme heat to maybe a lot of rain to, obviously, it can get very cold in Asia.
Fred: I don’t feel like I’ve had a problem with this. When I was in the southeast of Asia, it was really warm. I mean, it was the winter in Europe, so it was fairly warm in Asia. When I got to Taiwan and Seoul, it was a bit colder. It was the spring or the end of the winter. I actually had to buy maybe one extra layer somewhere during my trip, but I managed to get by with just one backpack.
Gabriel: Obviously. Okay, so then let’s get back to the Four Rivers Route. You got to Seoul, and that’s the starting point. You’ve now rented a bicycle. You have your bag – your one bag – is packed, your toothbrush is packed, and you are basically ready to start. So there is an official start point. Is that where you went to, the official start of the route?
Fred: There is an official start point. Incheon, it’s in the Seoul metropolitan area. Incheon, it’s where the airport is, the international one. Incheon, it’s not within the Seoul city, but more to the coast of the country. I went there on the first day, I got my bike, and I was there. But what happened is that the real start was delayed because of the weather. I remember that everything was set up. I had my bike. I knew where I was going. I knew where I was sleeping. I think, one day or two before I was supposed to pick up my bike, the bike rental company sent me an email and they were telling me about – really kind of them to tell me that – the weather will be looking really bad in the next couple of days. And what they advise is to postpone my start. When I got the email, the weather didn’t look that bad through my window. So I was like, should I go for it or not? But again, being in a foreign country and not being exactly sure about what I was doing so I just followed their advice. So I postponed my departure for one day and I changed all my hotel reservations and pushed them just one day and it was actually pretty okay. But then on the actual day when I started, it was still raining pretty heavily and after literally ten, fifteen kilometers, I was just soaking wet. The rain was not stopping at all. There was not a single other person, like, on the bike on this day. I was literally alone. Nobody was getting on their bike because the weather was so bad. So here I had to make a decision. It was either ride 90 kilometers just with whatever I had on me, my light rain jacket, and do 90 kilometers to reach my finish point or go to my first hotel, like, either by train or by bus. I stopped somewhere just like to be sheltered of the rain and I thought at this point that it wasn’t safe to ride. It was really raining, really, really bad. So I did some research on my phone and just figured out that the bus station was not too far. And I went there and then I actually went to the end of my first day by bus, got to the hotel, got to shower and just, like, chilled there because it really felt dangerous and not safe to actually ride on this day. So yeah, the beginning was actually, like, a bit tough. I was planning to ride 100 kilometers. I ended up riding like ten, I was completely wet just in my hotel room and yeah, that’s how the first day went.
Gabriel: Okay, so just to get this clear, you paid attention to the advice that was given to you by the rental company. You delayed everything by a day, and so your first day was actually day two and even that day it was raining really, really hard.
Fred: Yeah, actually the heavy rain lasted for like two days. After that everything was okay. I’m actually glad the bike shop actually contacted me because if they didn’t that would have meant riding two days under the rain. In the end I just had one so maybe that’s for the best.
Gabriel: Oh yeah, it definitely was very nice of them to do that. One thing we have to get straight is that, as we heard in the previous episode, there is a passport that you get. I’d like to hear more about it. Oh, you’re showing me the passport right now. It looks like a country’s passport but it has a bicycle on it.
Fred: I’m showing it to you right now.
Gabriel: Yeah, and it says Korea’s Cross-Country…
Fred: Korea’s Cross-Country Cycling Road Tour. It is a passport. I mean, it feels like a true passport.
Gabriel: Yeah, it looks like one.
Fred: You can get it at quite a lot of places around the country. I can maybe do a quick ride about how it works. So, we have a lot of different pages where you have actually, like, routes. All along all the cycling paths in the country you have a small, like, red phone booth, like the one, like, from the UK. I assume were actual phone booths at some point but they were, like, decommissioned. When you find this booth along the road, you usually find, like, a small stamp. You have a small tablet in this booth and there’s a stamp. The game is basically to get through all these points, get all the stamps on your passport. Whenever you complete different routes, you can get back to the places where you got your passport and they give you, like, medals or, like, certifications, like these ones.
Gabriel: Okay, you have a little seal. This is a golden seal…
Fred: Yeah.
Gabriel: On one of your pages.
Fred: Yeah, for example this golden one is for the Four Rivers. So, that’s the route we’re talking about. Actually the Four Rivers is made of, like, three different routes and each of these routes has its own medal, which are, like, silver ones.
Gabriel: Yeah, there’s a silver one and it tells you congratulations.
Fred: Yeah, and it marks, like, the date when you actually got the stamp. Yeah, and I also have this document I found. Like, that’s like, they give you like a…
Gabriel: Okay, now you’re holding up a certificate in Korean and in English. It really looks like you graduated from a university or something. It has a certification number, a certification date. This is super professional.
Fred: They did really something great with promoting the cycling routes in the country. In this passport, so I have like four stamps, but you can complete all the routes in the country. That would take you really quite a long time. It would give you this one. It’s called the Grand Slam.
Gabriel: The Grand Slam, there it is, yes.
Fred: And you would get this one if you get all the other medals in the country. So it means that you would have stamped or used every single phone booth in the country, and you would get all the stamps. And once you get all of them, yeah, you can get it back to the center, they will give you the Grand Slam. And I think the Grand Slam one comes with, like, an actual medal, like a physical one.
Gabriel: A physical medal!
Fred: The really gamified it to a point that pushed me really to ride even more.
Gabriel: You’re like, “They gamified it to the point where I couldn’t resist doing it.”
Fred: Yeah, because I didn’t ride on Day One, I missed five booths.
Gabriel: Oh, you got to go back.
Fred: Yeah, I ended up going back to Seoul and renting a bike for one more day to just get the stamps.
Gabriel: No way! You actually did it.
Fred: Yeah, because if I missed the stamps, I would not be able to get the gold medal. I guess that works.
Gabriel: Wow, wow! This is amazing. The passport looks very professional, like a real passport. Do you have to pay for it or is it free?
Fred: You have to pay, but it’s really cheap, something around like five euros.
Gabriel: Five euros, five dollars, okay. Can you tell where you had to go to get this diploma or certificate? Can you get it multiple places? How is the setup for that?
Fred: So you have what they’re calling certification centers. So these are not the red booths, but basically these are just offices or buildings that are called certification centers. For example, you have one in Seoul at the beginning, you have one in Busan at the end. Basically, that’s where you would find these centers.
Gabriel: Okay, very good. So let’s get back to your tour. You didn’t get to ride as long as you wanted on Day One because of the terrible weather. You got to your Day One destination anyway because that’s where you had booked accommodations. And then Day Two begins, the weather finally starts to improve.
Fred: It felt like the main highway or freeway basically was really far from where I was. The second road was really separated and it was just really like a countryside type of lane. Really smooth and some sections were completely new. You could tell they were putting a lot of, like, care and attention in like having a road that’s really pleasant to ride. This day actually went fairly well. Nothing really spectacular happened, but that was just like the first long day of riding of this trip. A successful day and I managed to reach my hotel and this day went well.
Gabriel: And I imagine that unlike the first day, this time you saw some other cyclists on the road.
Fred: I could see, like, people in both directions. I would say like locals and even other backpackers.
Gabriel: Yeah, it sounds like it was a mix of people, some people doing the long-distance one. Maybe some with a lot of packs, some people with no packs, some people doing just local rides.
Fred: Yeah, some people definitely had like camping equipment. You can tell just by looking at their equipment. They have like a big tent in the back and then like some handlebars that also carry some stuff.
Gabriel: Yeah, and it seems like if you want to camp, you have lots of opportunities to find campgrounds. You mentioned it on this day, but would you say that there were a good selection of campgrounds throughout the route?
Fred: Especially on this day and the one after because I would say they were close to Seoul. We’re still in the north of the country. This region is very popular for just camping, even if you’re not riding a bike.
Gabriel: Okay.
Fred: Some people living in Seoul who just want, like, a getaway. Like, see some nature.
Gabriel: Day Two was uneventful and then Day Three.
Fred: Day Three is the day that I knew, when I was planning, that I would be climbing on this day. And I’m not that good of a climber, to be honest. I decided to make this day the shortest one just because of this climb. Basically, the climb happened right in the middle of this day. I planned this day to be like around 80 kilometers. The peak of the day, basically where I would be taking my lunch break, was like at the middle, around kilometer 40. This one was the hardest climb in the entire trip. I don’t know how people are familiar with like how much you climb, but on this day that was like around 1,000 meters of ascent.
Gabriel: The one climb was a thousand meters or the whole day was a thousand?
Fred: That was for the entire day, but the first half of the day was going up, the second half was going down. So that’s basically how it went. It’s actually not just one big climb, but like two back-to-back climbs. When I was doing research on this part, again, that was a bit scary. I found on YouTube or Instagram some people going on this route. And yeah, I was seeing some of them already struggling when they were telling the story. So I knew that would be a tough day. Yeah, I tried my best. I tried to prepare it. I have a memory of a passenger van, so basically, like, a big van, a white one. And when they were passing me, like they opened the window. And there was a small little child, a little girl, and she was like, “Hwaiting!” So that’s basically the, “Come on!” in Korean.
Gabriel: She was cheering, “Come on!” Like, “You can do it!”
Fred: Yeah, and I saw them like doing that for all the cyclists who are doing this climb. But I found out really funny, it’s like in events like Tour de France, you have like a support van or a support car. Having like this small van just passing by and then opening the window and saying like, “Let’s go, you can do it.” That was a nice push of motivation.
Gabriel: Right. That little girl was your directeur sportif.
Fred: Yeah. Yeah, I guess you can say that. There were other cyclists on the way up. I could see this van again. I guess maybe they slowed down a little and for every cyclist they were passing, they were just cheering up and like, “Hwaiting! Let’s go!” That was fun.
Gabriel: That’s very cute. That’s a nice memory.
Fred: Yeah, for sure. I actually managed to pass the first one, took a break. For the second one, I had to step down, like, less than 500 meters before the summit. That was really tough. What was funny is that it seems, like, the official like half point of some tree, because every single person who was on a bike ride on this day was taking a break here. Like, the summit seems to be, like, there’s like a small rest area. There were quite a lot of bikes here on this day.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Fred: You can feel what they went through because that was like a fairly, fairly harsh climb.
Gabriel: So that’s the summit of the second climb coming from the Seoul direction.
Fred: Correct.
Gabriel: And did you meet and talk to other people who happened to be there, just at the same time?
Fred: At the top, there was already some people who I’m calling like, serious cyclists. So these people who have really nice bikes, nice equipment, and they’re just here for the challenge. But I met another guy. I remember his name was Paul, a really nice guy from Australia. And we happened to just get to the snack shop at the same time and just started chatting, getting coffee and snacks. Yeah, we ended up taking our lunch break together. And I got to understand that he’s quite experienced cyclist. He was really used to, like, riding long distance, like over 200 kilometers a day. Based on his appearance, he didn’t look like an experienced cyclist. He had, like, a flowery shirt. Yeah. Even his bike didn’t say performance or anything. Like he didn’t look like a good cyclist, but I got to discuss with him and he was doing the same route as me, like, Seoul to Busan, the Four Rivers. But he was doing it in a shorter time than I was doing. After reaching Busan, so in the south of the country, he was going to fly to Japan with his bike and keep riding. Yeah, that was a nice encounter at the top of this mountain.
Gabriel: Yeah, definitely. And it seems like you were in similar life situations. You were both just taking a break from it all and getting out there.
Fred: Really, really similar situation. Yeah, I’ve been on the road for like couple of weeks, couple of months now. Not sure what to do with my life. So I just came to South Korea or like came to Asia. And yeah, I mean, this type of story connects you with people you meet along the way. I didn’t ask him how old he was, but I think we are more or less the same age. I noticed that, yeah, maybe I’m not that alone on this trip.
Gabriel: Definitely not. The interesting thing that I’ve learned is, you can’t actually tell how fit somebody is by their appearance. There are people who are riding the latest road bicycles and have very tight clothing on, And it turns out that they’re super slow. and then there’s other people who have some old bike and a lot of packs and some worn out clothes. And these people turn out to be beasts on the bicycle.
Fred: As far as I can remember, he had, like, sandals. He didn’t have even, like, sneakers.
Gabriel: That’s great, yeah.
Fred: I think he was doing the full route in like four or five days. So, two days less than me. Then we exchanged information and I was able to see, like, he was tracking some of his rides on Strava. And he casually just, like, was tracking, like, 250-kilometers single rides. And I’m like, “Okay, I was fooled by the appearance.” If anyone looks at this guy, they would believe, like, he’s just literally going around doing short rides.
Gabriel: Yeah. There, maybe mentioning that he was Australian was the key point, I think.
Fred: I remember that because it was the top of the climb, I was like out of breath, and it didn’t seem like he was.
Gabriel: If you can ride 250 kilometers in a day, then yeah, you can do that climb.
Fred: For sure.
Gabriel: In sandals.
Fred: Yeah, definitely.
Gabriel: Well, very good. And then after that, the rest of the day was a free ride, downhill.
Fred: After that, it was actually downhill all the way to the hotel. I noticed, in few of the hotels I stayed in, there was always a bike parking. There was a spot where you can actually lock your bike, there are a few tools as well. Some of them even offer you to take your bike in your room if you don’t want to look it outside.
Gabriel: That’s really interesting. And Day Four?
Fred: And on that day, that’s when I started to see different signs on the side of the road showing up mountain bike sections. The main road can be completely done on road bikes. It’s like paved road, and everything goes well. But on this day, that’s where you could either go straight and follow the main road or, like, take a turn and that would take you in valleys and forests. Luckily for me, it was marked in English, so “MTB” – like, literally the letters M-T-B – basically showing the routes that you could take, if you had like a mountain bike. I didn’t take any because I had a road bike, but I met on this day, like, one person at one of the booths of the checkpoints. Super interesting person who didn’t speak English at all, so that was already one barrier. So I used my phone to actually try to discuss with him. I understand that he was probably from here or he was living here. He was there not to do the main full road and he was just enjoying the mountain bike path in the area. He told me like he just liked to take these mountain bike roads that were around in the area. His bike was, like, perfectly clean. So I guess he hadn’t started his ride yet. And maybe he was just going there, but that was, like, a really shiny, perfect mountain bike without any logo.
Gabriel: You need to be suspicious of any mountain biker with a perfectly clean bike.
Fred: Yeah. Based on what we could get through the transition app, I understood this was like a titanium frame, which is one of the nicest you can use for this type of frame.
Gabriel: Titanium is really a premium material because strength-to-weight ratio is so good. But of course, it’s difficult to work with and difficult to repair, so you need to be quite an avid cyclist to go with titanium. And of course, it’s expensive, so I’m sure he was proud of it.
Fred: He seemed really proud of his machine, yeah. He was pointing on components and parts on the bike. I couldn’t really understand, but that was like a really, really clean bike. Really nice parts and everything. Yeah, when he left, he was pointing to where he was going, and it was definitely the mountain bike road that the sign was showing. So I understand he would just wanted to ride this path around.
Gabriel: What town did you reach at the end of Day Four?
Fred: At the end of Day Four, I ended up in Gumi. So that’s a really small city, like, in the middle of the country. The day after that, so that was, like, Day Five at this point. Really good weather. No climbs or like no really difficulty. From what I can remember, that was the day where I was riding the fastest. The road was really separated from the traffic, super safe. Quite a lot of people on the road, just following the line, following the signs. I got to my destination fairly quickly. The hotel I booked was a bit away from the road. You can actually follow exactly the road and find hotels really close to the road. For some reason, I booked something that was a bit away, so that meant riding a few more kilometers to get to the hotel. And the day after, I needed to ride back to join the road.
Gabriel: Alright, so that was a smooth day. I do want to take a step back to hear a little bit about how you got to South Korea. Take us back. What were you doing before the trip?
Fred: We can go back to two years ago, like 2022. Yeah, that’s two years ago. I was employed in Berlin startup for a couple of years, and after I would say quite a rough time going through the pandemic and the COVID and everything. I was really feeling like exhausted by my work, I needed something else, didn’t really know where to go, what to do. So I made the decision to quit my job.
Gabriel: Just because Berlin is close to where I am, what Berlin startup was it?
Fred: I was working for Get Your Guide, that’s a startup related to travel.
Gabriel: Oh yeah, I’m very familiar with Get Your Guide, and actually I had the opportunity to tour their facility.
Fred: Oh, okay.
Gabriel: It might be where you were working? It’s in this old electrical substation that’s been repurposed. So it’s a very cool space with brick and glass. So that’s where you were working?
Fred: That’s where I was working, and I was actually working there for five years. So I was in this office, but also in the one before that. That was somewhere else in Prenzlauer Berg.
Gabriel: There were two things that I took away, and you will confirm if this is true, but… One: People use Get Your Guide for a number of travel experiences, but they seem to have gotten a real reputation for tickets that will shorten the line at the Eiffel Tower and tickets that will shorten the line at the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
Fred: I’m not sure about that reputation, but that’s been one of the focuses of the business in the time I was here. So, being able to shorten the line, basically, on the most popular attractions in the world, because they identified it as a real issue of having to wait hours before you can get up to the Eiffel Tower or, like, in the Vatican. That’s been one of the focuses, but they’ve been working on way different things.
Gabriel: That was one focus I took away, and the other focus was through Get Your Guide, you get to have these experiences that bicycle tourists have, but without the uncertainty. So, if you’re bicycle touring in Vietnam, you may end up getting invited to lunch by a Vietnamese person, but with Get Your Guide, you can book that experience. You can say, I want to have lunch with this person.
Fred: There were planned experiences that where you can travel as a small group, they provide the bike, they provide the route, and you just get to the pickup point, you get there, you do the route, and it’s all organized. That’s something you can do.
Gabriel: Okay, so they also facilitate supported bicycle tours.
Fred: It’s not the most popular category on the website, but I know you can find some of these tours in different parts of the world.
Gabriel: Alright, well that’s very interesting. That’s a little bit on Get Your Guide. So you had worked there for five years, you said, and you decided to quit. You were feeling burnt out?
Fred: Yeah, I would say that’s a mix of like, again, maybe a longer experience and I would put a bit of it of basically on the COVID or the pandemic period, which actually hit the company pretty hard, given that it’s a company related to travel and tourism.
Gabriel: Right.
Fred: Yeah, I was at the point where I was feeling like I can take some time off and maybe after that come back to Berlin and start something new here again. So what I did was, so I decided to quit like in the summer of 2022. I left for around one year traveling around Asia. So the way I did it is that I didn’t have much plans going on. I just took a one-way flight to Bangkok and started here.
Gabriel: Thank you for sharing a bit about the motivation for your tour. Now, so many months after that one-way flight to Bangkok, you found yourself nearing the finish line of the Four Rivers Cycle Route.
Fred: I started to think about the finish line. It felt like, “Okay, I’m past halfway, I’m at like two thirds.” I thought that the main climb two days ago was the last one, but it was not. There were two small bumps. The first one was the section that was marked as mountain bikes that you have to take. There was no other route or – I guess you could do a big detour to actually get by – but all the signs you were following were telling you that at this point, this is a mountain bike section. It was not a long one, but when you’re on a road bike, it feels longer.
Gabriel: So I’m very surprised now by this information, because I’ve just been picturing this ribbon of asphalt with a blue line and now I picture this blue line being painted over rocks and fallen trees. What happens to the blue line? Where’s the blue line here?
Fred: I don’t know, maybe I did something wrong in planning, but at some point I got to a point where I was on the main road, so basically this line you follow, and maybe I missed like a sign or something, but I got to a mountain bike section that was, I want to say, it was not long. It was maximum, like, five kilometers. I struggled because I was riding a road bike and some people on mountain bikes would do it easily, but for me it was a bit difficult.
Gabriel: Yeah, I can imagine, but I’m still struggling because Fred, there’s a blue line on the ground.
Fred: Yeah.
Gabriel: And so you’re telling me you got off track, you’re telling me you got to a place where there was no blue line and I’m thinking how can that happen?
Fred: Maybe at some point I was just, like, looking at the landscape and I got distracted. I really think it was just like being distracted and maybe not paying attention or missing a sign. I tried my best to get through it, I had to get off at some point. I did the short mountain bike section on a road bike.
Gabriel: Hey, it’s a rental!
Fred: Yeah, maybe I wouldn’t have done it on my own bike, I’m not sure.
Gabriel: No, it’s a rental. You have to have some advantage of a rental.
Fred: And then later in the day, yeah, there was another climb, not as steep as the one on Day Two. I think this day was supposed to be easy, but I got these two small surprises of a mountain bike section and a climb.
Gabriel: Good, and then you woke up day seven, the last day, to get you all the way into Busan.
Fred: That was the last day. This one was really interesting in terms of the road. It really felt going back to a big city after a living Seoul, that was really, really populated, going in the middle of nature. Something I found really interesting about Busan is that the north of the city is just a ton of hiking paths, not just for the Four Rivers road, but that’s an entire area that’s… I’m gonna call it a big park, that’s how it felt. Locals around and you’re just surrounded, like you just follow the river and you have a lot of people, Busan locals, just riding there back here. To get to the finish line, which is almost on the coast of the city, you have to get in the city, so it really felt like, I’m back in a big city. The actual finish line is actually on like a small island within the city. It’s an island that also has a museum and you get there, so you cross the bridge, you have a small arch that says “finish,” you have like a stone that says, like, “633 kilometers.” And there’s a certification center here that lets you actually, like, show the passport and get the stamp. That’s the finish line that is in Busan.
Gabriel: So one practical question, it seems like there’s multiple phone booths per day. How do you find these? You said you were distracted one time and you missed the blue line. What if you’re distracted and you missed the red phone booth?
Fred: There are a few ones that were a bit tricky to find, but overall… If you follow the signs and if you follow the line on the road, you will pass by the booth. There are like bright red booths, so when I was riding, then I know like in 10, 15 kilometers that’s where I should be looking for the booth.
Gabriel: You knew the next one is in this town.
Fred: Yeah.
Gabriel: And that’s in ten kilometers, so be on the lookout for it.
Fred: There are resources, like, online that actually point to the exact location. Just a few of them were a bit tricky to find, not just next to the road, but like behind the building or you had to take, like, another turn. I think in total, it’s around like 20, 30 different booths for the entire road.
Gabriel: Just by looking at the passport, you know, okay, on today’s route, I’m going to encounter four booths at kilometer this, kilometer that, and then you can be on the lookout for it.
Fred: Yeah.
Gabriel: I know myself, if I’m just told there’ll be a red booth somewhere, I will forget to stop. I will, you know, miss it. If you know, okay, they’re in these four places, then that makes it more likely to find.
Fred: That’s how I basically was thinking about it.
Gabriel: But then you got to Busan and as other people finished, raised their arms in celebration and headed straight for the certification center, you looked at your passport and you saw these blank pages with no stamps and you were sad.
Fred: Yeah. I mean, when I got to Busan, there were definitely other cyclists who actually made it to the finish line. And yeah, they were literally just crossing the finish line, parked their bikes and they could walk straight up to the certification center because then they could get the medal and the diploma. I don’t think I’ve decided at this moment to actually go back to Seoul, but I really wanted to have these medals in my passport.
Gabriel: Were you planning on going back to Seoul anyway? Because you had said it was really nice that they shipped the bicycle back for you, but it sounds like you may have gone there anyway.
Fred: It was undecided. At this point, I was like at the very south of the country and in my head it was either I could fly to Japan from here or I could stay a bit longer in South Korea. Again, go to other parts of the country as I didn’t see. Actually completing the certification was one of the reasons why I chose to go back to Seoul. I dropped my bike to the partner bike shop and they gave me my backpack which was shipped from Seoul to Busan and was waiting for me here.
Gabriel: Did you stay in Busan for some time?
Fred: I was in Busan and I stayed a couple of weeks actually in the region and visited Busan, Daegu and other parts of the region. But then I decided I really wanted the certification so I actually took a train back to Seoul stayed a couple of days in Seoul and just for one day I went to the bike in the same shop where I actually initially went to the bike and they remembered me. Maybe they don’t see that many people who came more than once to rent the bike.
Gabriel: You’re like, “I’m gonna do this again. It was so much fun.”
Fred: I don’t know if they expected me to do the full route again. I was about to explain that this time I just wanted the bike for one day, to get to the booth I missed like on my first attempt. I managed to rent a different bike this time. Still a road bike but a different one.
Gabriel: After getting to that final booth and having that satisfying last stamp placed in your passport, then you needed to ride to the Seoul certification center so you actually then needed to turn around.
Fred: I just made the same route I planned for the first attempt. I got all the stamps and ended in where I actually stayed on the first day of the previous attempt. I got back to Seoul the day after, by bus. My initial plan was to get to the certification center riding my bike, but again the weather prevented me from doing it. It was raining again on this day. So what I did is just that I came back to the bike shop to drop my bike and I went to the Incheon certification center with the metro completely wet again because of the weather and I was able to hand them my passport and show them that I had all the stamps for the Four Rivers route, and a couple of minutes later they gave me back my passport with all the medals in it and this nice diploma. That’s probably one of the best memories of this whole trip.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s a great memory. You should have it framed.
Fred: I should probably have it framed in my place.
Gabriel: Looking behind you I see a very white wall. There is nothing on the wall so there you go. You frame it and you put it up.
Fred: Maybe I should frame it. You’re right.
Gabriel: Yeah. Let’s just say this. There’s room on your wall for a framed certificate. I think it’s nice, and, you know, you can still dream about the Grand Slam one day.
Fred: Oh, I would… I actually have it in the corner of my head doing it.
Gabriel: Yeah, I know it. You’ve been bitten by the bug and then the gamification is working. The Grand Slam is out there, Fred.
Fred: Yeah, because I’ve done the most difficult one basically.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Fred: The other ones are shorter.
Gabriel: Did the Jeju Island route count towards the Grand Slam?
Fred: You actually need the Jeju Island to get the Grand Slam. It counts, yeah.
Gabriel: Okay, you’ve also done that.
Fred: I’ve also done the Jeju Island, that’s true.
Gabriel: You’re well on your way to the Grand Slam, I would say.
Fred: Yeah, I think about it. I mean, I’m thinking about it, to be honest, so let’s see.
Gabriel: And just think about the physical medal. Another thing you can hang up next to the framed certificate.
Fred: I have a lot of space on my walls. Maybe I should do that.
Gabriel: The Korean organizers have really thought of everything.
Fred: The organization is really, really good.
Gabriel: Now Fred, I don’t know you, but it really seems like your one-year trip in general, and your bicycle touring days in particular, had a therapeutic, almost healing, effect.
Fred: I’m really glad I actually chose to take time off and travel on my own. Overall, I feel better than when I started this trip. This bike trip, among the other bike trips I’ve done during this stay in Asia, connected me back to the fact that I just love riding bikes. Sounds obvious, but that’s something that was really, really important for me. The way I was feeling, like, when I was, like, doing this trip on bikes, actually makes me want to ride bikes even more in the future. Overall, something I’m more than happy to recommend to anyone who just interested in doing it or just a bit scared of doing it, I would say, it’s fine, you can plan it, you can do it, and everything will be okay.
Gabriel: Having just heard about Fred’s adventures, now is the perfect time to check back with Hannah Bowley, the protagonist of the episode “Chasing Summer Around the Globe.” This is my first ever follow-up from someone on tour, so that’s exciting.
Hannah: Yay!
Gabriel: Last we talked, you were getting ready to go to Japan and Korea, and your friends were getting their bikes late. Yeah, let’s just start from there.
Hannah: Yes, they were delivered. I think last time we chatted, yeah, I was in Tokyo, my friends were meeting me. They actually were really excited, their bikes were late, because they didn’t have to transport them on the trains. They delivered them the next day to our hotel, so that worked out pretty awesome for them. But, it’s now June 20th, and I’ve been following the blue line since we talked, which has been amazing. In Japan, I did Shikoku Island, and then I also did Shimanami, which you did an episode on.
Gabriel: And how was Shimanami?
Hannah: Shimanami, it was raining most of the day, but I have to say, the beginning when it was sunny and beautiful, it was absolutely amazing. I actually might go back and do it again when I’m back in Japan after South Korea, because I’d love to explore each island that you bike across.
Gabriel: Oh, wow. So you did it all in one day?
Hannah: So we were kind of moving pretty quickly, so we did it in just one day.
Gabriel: Did you have any adventures in Japan, or was it all pretty smooth going? It was three of you, right? Two friends.
Hannah: The craziest thing that happened was, my friend parked her bike in a garage underneath one of the hotels, and in the morning it was raining, and she went to go walk down and slipped and hit her head, and ended up having to go to the hospital in the ambulance and get stitches in her head, which was wild, but after all, the ambulance ride and the hospital stay and everything, she only had to pay 63 dollars, and the care was absolutely top notch.
Gabriel: Oh, wow. She wasn’t even on the bicycle, so I couldn’t tell her always wear a helmet.
Hannah: No, exactly. Where she got hit, she was thinking that she had her bike helmet on, it might have hit… like, it hit pretty low towards her neck.
Gabriel: Oh, gosh.
Hannah: The bike helmet probably wouldn’t have protected her.
Gabriel: I always like to use the names of the people, rather than Anonymous Friend One and Two. So, what are the names of your two friends?
Hannah: Mara and Trisha.
Gabriel: And which one hit her head?
Hannah: Mara.
Gabriel: And she’s okay.
Hannah: She’s okay, yes. She’s fine.
Gabriel: That’s good.
Hannah: She actually got on her bike the next day and kept riding.
Gabriel: No delays to the schedule. Okay, well that was Japan, so you took the ferry to Busan?
Hannah: Yep, from Fukuoka to Busan. It’s a 3 hour and 45 minute ferry. It was great just to arrive in a new country and your bike is already put together. We rolled right off the ferry and could start riding from there.
Gabriel: Nice. Thus began the Four Rivers Cycling Route.
Hannah: Exactly. So in Busan we went to the certification center and we got our bike passport. So the infrastructure is really built for bike tourists and packers, because of the way that the stamps are laid out and the whole map and the bike passport is created. So it’s been unparalleled bike infrastructure. I have to compare it almost to Netherlands, which is a huge statement and I think not a lot of people realize how amazing South Korea is for biking.
Gabriel: And I am among those people. This has really been a discovery for me. I am now getting very excited about potentially going to South Korea myself, somehow, and experiencing it. It is really so charming that they have these passports and stamps and the certification centers. Fred calls it gamification. It worked on me!
Hannah: It works on me too. I get a little boost every time I get a stamp and it kind of helps break up the ride as well. I get the stamp boost in beautiful parks or places that have restaurants or a nice place to stop. So it’s also a good reminder to slow down a little bit for me.
Gabriel: Were there any notable things that happened on the Four Rivers? And you did this with Mara and Trisha as well, right? This was part of the two weeks with them.
Hannah: Yeah, so we did it over 10 days. You get to see everything from the mountainous regions to the farmlands to the coast. It’s pretty incredible, in terms of scenery. The highlights, I would say, are just the fact that you can camp anywhere. There’s pagodas lining the entire path and you can camp in any of them. You can camp in any of the parks. It’s just very unique to be able to ride until you’re like, “Okay, now I’m ready to camp and I’m going to camp right here.” And there’s restaurants along the way. There’s a lot of convenience stores. And there’s a lot of serious people, which was really nice. Mara’s rim cracked in the middle of nowhere, and this guy stopped his ride and drove her to the next town to help her find a new rim, which was amazing. Other highlights include just how excited Koreans are to see us. They give us the whole arm up in the air, “Woo-hoo!” Or they go, “Wow!” A lot of people want to lift our bikes up and feel how heavy they are, because road biking culture is huge. So a lot of the people you see doing the Four Rivers are doing it on a road bike and they have maybe a small hydration pack. So we really stood out with all of our panniers and gear. So people would stop and ask if they could pick our bikes up and they’d try to pick it up and they couldn’t. And then they’d point to our thighs and be like, “Whoa, strong!” Just so many encouraging locals. For the entire Four Rivers, we only saw two other bikepackers that were traveling from out of Korea to do the route.
Gabriel: Wow, that is interesting.
Hannah: Since I started May 1st I’ve only seen six other bikepackers that are not Korean.
Gabriel: Wow.
Hannah: Yeah, I think the large majority of people are just out there for one day, maybe two. But not a lot of people camp here. Glamping is a very big part of the culture. You’ll get to these campsites and they have these really nice setups with huge canvas tents that have TVs inside them. And then we set up our little tiny tents, kinda next to them. It’s really funny.
Gabriel: At the end you took your passport with all your stamps to the Seoul office and you got your certificate for completing the four rivers.
Hannah: Yep, you get a certificate. You can also buy a medal, a gold medal if you’d like, but I opted out of that. I think I might wait to get the Grand Slam medal, which is a special black medal. We’ll see.
Gabriel: It’s like the black belt of bicycle touring.
Hannah: Yeah, exactly. I don’t know if I’m actually going to buy the medal because I don’t want to carry it.
Gabriel: Come on, come on. When did you decide that you would go for the Grand Slam?
Hannah: I decided in October, when my friend Song-I, who grew up in South Korea but moved to the U.S. for school when she was around 12, she did the Four Rivers in October and sent me all the information about the bike routes in South Korea, and so I did some research online, found out about the Grand Slam and I thought, “That is exactly what I want to do.” I love a goal and this is just meeting all my bike goal needs. You get to the end of the route and you have these stamps to measure your distance and you get these rewards. It’s really great.
Gabriel: Yeah, the gamification.
Hannah: Exactly. I’m really into the gamification of it. It’s almost like the system was built for people like me.
Gabriel: That’s great. By the time you arrived to Korea, you knew that you were going for the Grand Slam and your friends were going to only do a part of it. Did they return back from Seoul?
Hannah: They flew into Tokyo to meet me and then out of Seoul a month later.
Gabriel: Right. Then you knew you would be on your own after the Four Rivers. How does it work with the Grand Slam? How many different routes are we talking about? Fred had also been to Jeju Island, so we know that that’s one requirement for the Grand Slam.
Hannah: Jeju Island? That was definitely my favorite part so far. I took a long time on Jeju Island because it was so beautiful. Some of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever been to, white sand, clear waters, and there’s nobody on them. Even though it’s… school’s out and I was there for the weekend, there’s hardly anybody out there.
Gabriel: It sounds like a dream. I guess what I’m getting at is do we know the stats for this? How many total kilometers?
Hannah: It is 1,832 kilometers.
Gabriel: Wow. That is impressive.
Hannah: And I have 120 to go.
Gabriel: 120 to go. And then where do you need to go to receive your Grand Slam certificate and your black medal? Which I think you’re going to want to purchase.
Hannah: Most likely.
Gabriel: This is such an achievement.
Hannah: Also there’s about 100 stamps, I’m estimating, more or less.
Gabriel: 100 stamps. So you’ve been to 100 red phone booths.
Hannah: Yeah, about 100 phone booths. Maybe 80 to 100. For the Grand Slam you have to go to Busan or Seoul. So I’ll be back in Seoul after I finish on the east coast. And it finishes all the way on the border of North Korea up the east coast.
Gabriel: Okay, I’m glad they don’t force you to cross the Demilitarized Zone to get your Grand Slam.
Hannah: No. No, but apparently you can look at an observation center and peek into North Korea.
Gabriel: I assume somebody is going to carefully look at the book to make sure that you have all of the stamps. How can they even do that?
Hannah: Yeah, there’s rules actually in the front of the passport that say if your stamp isn’t clear or maybe the ink pad was running out, then you have to take a picture with the phone booth with your bike, your passport and your face have to be all in it. So last night I actually had to do that at one of the stops, because this ink pad was completely dry.
Gabriel: Oh, wow.
Hannah: Pro tip: bring your ink pad. Otherwise, you know, most of them have been great and the stamps are nice, but no, people in the certification centers take actually quite a while and they look at each stamp to make sure it’s the correct stamp and that you didn’t skip one. So if you skip one, you can’t receive the reward.
Gabriel: Fred, for other reasons he had missed a little bit, so he had to go back and do it. This is serious stuff. There’s no messing around.
Gabriel: As a final footnote to the episode, I did get an email from Hannah. They only looked at her passport for 10 minutes and she didn’t get questioned on the stamps that didn’t have enough ink to be legible. She got her certificate (free) and her black Grand Slam medal (9 US dollars). The medal came with a very nice wooden box, but since it was quite heavy and she still has another six weeks on the road, she decided to just keep the medal.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on the Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
Fred: I think, I’d need to check, but I think it’s, like, three rivers that actually make a big one. There are different names, but it’s basically three different rivers.
Gabriel: But it’s called Four Rivers.
Fred: Four rivers, sorry, not three.