Island life, perhaps everywhere, is divided into contrasting halves. Popular tourist spots hum with coach loads of short stay visitors on itineraries that hardly vary, a dip in the ‘it’ beach, a selfie at the famous spot, a meal of the local delicacy and a walk up to the popular viewpoint. Shopfronts burst with T-shirts, souvenirs and beach toys.

Two streets back, though, life continues as if the seafront was not there. A restaurant might just as likely back onto a car park as to a domestic vegetable patch, and maybe a tethered goat. In that sense I think the nostalgia that most of South Korea seems to feel for Jeju Island is well founded. It is obscured behind the tourism, but in the winding back streets between black pumice stone walls time has slowed down. Far from stopped - half of the farm vehicles are electric - but there is a sense that the ultra modernity of so much of the country has swept in a little more slowly here, perhaps leaving intact a little more of what came before.

Volcanic stone ‘Grandparents’ (Dol Hareubang) litter the Island, cheerful, loving, luck (and fertility) bringing wardens

Having stayed close to the coast, the ‘Olle Trail’ has been a constant feature of our visit. The trail is a fairly new and very Korean expression of thru-hiking / Camino tradition (and borrows directly from both, with references to sister trails, pilgrim shells and hiker in-jokes dotted along its length). We have found ourselves on the trail in one way or another almost every day on the island. Twice our hotels turned out to be within a few steps of the route, a few sections became day walks, and in between we would cross it at random almost any time we were exploring. When we leave the island I suspect it will feel odd for a few days not to see the blue and orange streamers that mark its route.

Day walks on the Olle Trail

Seongwipo, on the south coast, feels like it was left late and with too little time. Just two nights there, mid week and close to the end of the trip, were not enough to get a proper feel for the town but our first impression was that it deserved much more time. Vibrant without being busy, not at all touristy, after more than a week along the northern coast it felt like we had arrived at the ‘real’ Jeju. That feeling was helped enormously by conversations with the local bookshop-cafe owners: journalists, writers, book lovers and coffee purveyors whose warmth and welcome brought the town alive when we stopped in, somewhat bedraggled, after the bus trip to town and an aborted coastline walk in 30 degrees and 100% humidity. We returned the next day and will remember it always.

Back in Jeju City for its airport links it feels like the journey to the UK has already begun. But we have a few days here, and another few in Seoul to enjoy first.