Almost everyone who arrives in Jeju climbs Hallasan. It makes sense: 1,947 metres, the highest mountain in South Korea, and it is done in one long day. What almost nobody knows before arriving is that the island also has a 437-kilometre path that goes all the way round it.
It is called Jeju Olle, and it is not a mountain path turned into a tourist route. It is a course designed from scratch, in 2007, by Suh Myung-sook, a journalist born on the island, after she walked the Camino de Santiago.
01 A ring of 437 kilometres
The whole adds up to 437 kilometres over 27 routes: 21 main ones, numbered and chained one after another around the island, plus six secondary routes and a short spur. The average is about 16 kilometres per route.
That layout is no accident: it follows exactly the inhabited part of Jeju. Because the island is a volcano whose centre is empty and whose villages formed on the edge, the coastal ring is at once the most beautiful route and the easiest one to supply.
The name says it. An olle, in Jeju speech, is the narrow alley joining a house door to the main track. The route is built from hundreds of those passages, strung together.
02 The blue and orange ribbons
The waymarking is the reason this trail can be done without preparation. Two fabric ribbons tied to anything at all mark the route: blue for the sea, orange for the mandarin, the island's crop.
To the ribbons are added arrows painted on the ground and on walls, blue in the direction of travel and orange for the reverse, plus blue horse figures called ganse, planted at the forks where it is easy to go wrong.
There is also a stamp passport, with three points per route: start, middle and end. Completing all 27 earns a certificate. It is a minor detail, but it turns the trail into something you can work through over several trips.
Twenty-seven numbered routes around an island, with a bus at both ends of every stage: there is almost nothing to plan.
03 Sleeping where the stage ends
The difference from a mountain traverse lies here. In the Alps or the Pyrenees, walking for several days in a row means depending on refuges with limited places booked weeks ahead. In Jeju, every stage ends in a village.
That means ordinary lodging, a guesthouse or a pension, a restaurant and a shop. And it means, above all, that the rucksack weighs what your clothes weigh: no tent, no sleeping bag, no stove and no days of food.
The final piece is the bus. The island's ring road follows the same perimeter as the trail, so almost any point on any stage is a short distance from a stop. You can start late, finish early or skip a stretch without breaking anything.
04 The terrain, which is the argument
It is worth being clear about what this trail is not. It is not an alpine traverse nor an ascent challenge: it follows the coast, and the accumulated climb on a typical stage is small. If what you want is vertical effort, this does not provide it.
What it does provide is horizontal variety. A single day can go from sand beach to black basalt platform, from low forest to barley fields walled with volcanic stone, and from a fishing harbour to an urban stretch.
That passage through inhabited ground is deliberate and it is the feature that sets the Olle apart from other long trails: it does not avoid villages, it goes through them. You see the island's work, not only its scenery: salt pans on the rock, citrus greenhouses, shellfish stalls on the shore.
There are also ten routes with wheelchair-accessible sections, unusual on a long-distance trail and a good indication of the kind of ground.
05 How much to do and in what order
Doing all 27 routes in a row takes between three and four weeks. It is a real option and some people choose it, but it is not the one that makes best use of the format.
Five or six consecutive stages, some ninety or a hundred kilometres, is the measure that works: enough to find a rhythm and for the island to change face several times, and short enough to fit a week's trip.
The order matters less than the flank. The south, around Seogwipo, has cliffs and waterfalls; the north and west, basalt platforms, salt pans and wind turbines; the east, beaches and volcanic cones. Choosing one quadrant and doing it whole pays better than picking at it.
06 How to build the trip
The month matters more than any other decision. October and November are the best: the north coast records 6.7 and 9.8 rainy days, with average highs of 21.6 and 16.4 degrees. April and May are the second window, with 9.4 and 9.8 days.
June to September is best avoided. Between 171.2 and 272.3 millimetres fall a month in the north, humidity reaches 86 per cent on the south coast in July, and September is the month of highest typhoon risk in the year.
The second decision is where to sleep. You can change village every night, which is the natural way, or set a base in one place and come back by bus each afternoon. The second works surprisingly well on a ring with transport all the way round.
What justifies this trip is not the scenery, which is good but not unique. It is that it solves the classic problem of walking for several days: here there is nothing to carry, nothing to book months ahead and no obligation to finish what you start. The trail will still be there next year.
