Gwangchigi, the broad flat rock
Route 1 of the Jeju Olle Trail ends where the rock gives way to the sea. The end is called Gwangchigi. In the Jeju language, gwangchigi means a broad, flat rock. The place is named for what the ground actually is.
Street view, Gwangchigi, low tide. Imagery © Tonyne Jeju / Google.
I stood there at low tide. The basalt platform was out of the water, holding shallow pools, algae in the seams, a low flat island on the horizon, nothing else. No sign that anything famous was anywhere near. Just the rock, the name, and the sea doing the same thing it has always done.
The trail is 437 km now, 27 routes. It started with this one, in September 2007, from Siheung Elementary School down to this shore. The person who made it was Suh Myung-sook, born on this island, 23 years a journalist on the mainland, the first woman to edit a Korean news weekly. She walked the Camino de Santiago, came home, and marked a path around her own island. She died in April.
Route 1 is paired with a friendship trail: the Camino de Santiago. The first route points back at the walk that made the whole thing.
And olle itself is the short alley in old Jeju houses, the one that runs from a private door to the main path. A small way out of a house onto the common road. That is what this shelf is. A door, a path, and someone deciding to walk it.
She stopped. The route didn't.
If there is a place like this that matters to you, tell me where it is. I will walk it and write it back to you, edges on. The first walk is free.