One day in Damyang: an old garden, a bamboo hill, and riverside trees

Damyang sits half an hour north of Gwangju, and most visitors give it an hour: the bamboo, a photograph, the bus back. The county rewards a slower day built around a sixteenth-century garden, a hill of bamboo, and a line of trees planted to hold back a river.

Begin at the garden built for leaving

Soswaewon (소쇄원) was laid out in the 1530s by Yang San-bo, a scholar who left court life and did not return. It is small: a stream, two pavilions, and an earthen wall the water runs beneath. Arrive early, before the coaches, and the brook is the loudest thing there. This is the one leg of the day that needs a bus timetable from Gwangju, so check it the night before.

소쇄원은 맑고 깨끗하다는 뜻을 이름에 담은 정원이다.

Bamboo first, then the old trees

Juknokwon (죽녹원) climbs a hill at the edge of Damyang town, its paths named like small wishes. Go up the long way and come down toward the river, where the crowd thins. Across the bridge, Gwanbangjerim (관방제림) is an embankment forest planted in the seventeenth century against floods. Its zelkovas are centuries old, and the walk along the top costs nothing.

Noodles by the river, and the long road out

Below the embankment, Guksu-geori (국수거리), the noodle street, is a row of small restaurants facing the water. Order janchi-guksu (잔치국수), plain anchovy-broth noodles, and take an egg boiled in the same broth from the bowl on the counter.

Finish on the Metasequoia road (메타세쿼이아길), a straight avenue of tall conifers that turns rust-brown in November. Walk it from the middle outward rather than from the car park, then take a taxi back to the terminal.