South Korea
Damyang
Bamboo thick as forearms closes overhead and the outside world goes quiet.
The bamboo closes overhead, stalks clicking and groaning in the wind, sunlight filtered into shifting green columns. The air cools several degrees, and the car park ceases to exist.
Damyang has been Korea's bamboo capital for three centuries, and Juknokwon's eight managed paths walk you under culms topping twenty metres, a canopy complete enough to keep the floor in twilight. The craft tradition is the point as much as the grove: baskets, instruments and rice steamed inside fresh-cut culms that take the wood's grassy fragrance. Beyond the garden, Gwanbangjerim's old riverside trees and the metasequoia avenue extend the walk, a two-kilometre tunnel of dawn redwoods planted in the 1970s.
Solo
Eight bamboo paths offer plenty of room to wander alone before following the river trees into town.
Couple
Listen for the bamboo canopy, then share tteokgalbi and bamboo rice after the green walk.
Family
Themed garden paths and the straight metasequoia avenue make distances easy to understand with children.
- Juknokwon's bamboo tops twenty metres and keeps its floor in twilight.
- Damyang has been Korea's bamboo craft centre for three centuries.
- Rice steams inside fresh-cut culms and takes the wood's fragrance.
- The metasequoia avenue runs two kilometres of planted tree tunnel.
Daetongbap steams rice inside a cut bamboo section, Damyang's signature.
Tteokgalbi, grilled minced-beef patties, are the town's other famous plate.
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