Finest damn brick layers

I’m no architect, just calling what I like as I see it. The millennium building just down the road from my hotel is impressive and must have taken some care and attention to erect. That’s modern day computer-aided design, which comes with ease compared to the grit and hard graft of centuries past.

The Chinese surely stand out as the best builders in the world. Not in terms of design and certainly not quality, more their brute force approach; the finest damn brick layers the trade’s ever seen. Here in Suwon, my OCD for lapped routes is appealed to greatly; the perimeter of the Fortress covering 7.2K. Although I hadn’t made it all the way around when initially visiting, it looked easy enough for a few laps.

Around “two hours” to walk the circumference according to the ladies at the information desk, though being just over a measured 5K course, it’d be more like a quarter of that when running. And so I set off from the tube for a 24 stop, 45 minute journey from hotel to the nearest station, finally requiring a mile’s hike to reach the start.

My new watch is great; locate a place on Google Earth and enter the coordinates in to its memory. It’s then a case of telling it to point me in the right direction and follow the arrow. It’s difficult to get lost this way and with accuracy down to a few metres, no need to worry about random spasms of say, a TomTom. Departing at just before 6pm, I’m ready to go for just after 7; its rapidly approaching dusk and I hope the two water bottles will suffice. One I hide behind a tree at the start for the second lap or end, should I need it and the other – as is typical fashion – comes along for the ride.

The wrong shoes; I should have worn my cross-country ones. The wrong lighting; the flat paths are fully lit, the break-neck stairs lacking. I do my best pouncing from one large rock to the next, but am always glad to reach a flat section. Along with me for my run is Mr. Sod, who is busily recounting why photography would have been fantastic at night had I brought my kit instead of running. But his words are moot; photo opportunities are rife when running and I’m now accustomed to the disappointment.

The end of the lap and having traversed the road intersecting an entrance temple, I am presented with the steepest climb in history. It’s all stairs and try as I might, simply impossible to continue lifting my body from the ground with each step; I’m forced to hike. Upon realising it’s a paltry 5K lap, I resolve for at least another, which would have been the second of three had I not met an English student wishing to practice; a runner himself.

10K around the wall of Hwaseong Fortress