Five days in Jeju: a black volcanic island where the divers are grandmothers

Pick up the car and drive twenty minutes south of the airport to the peace park before you do anything else. In April 1948 an uprising here was put down by government forces over the following year with a savagery that killed something like thirty thousand islanders, a tenth of the population, and the subject was illegal to discuss in Korea for four decades. The memorial hall is calm, thorough and hard to leave, and everything you see for the next four days sits on top of it.

Back in town, Samseonghyeol is three depressions in the ground inside a wooded compound, from which, the story goes, the three founders of Jeju emerged. It takes twenty minutes and it tells you that this island has always regarded itself as a separate place with its own beginning.

Finish on the coast at Yongduam, a lump of lava on the shoreline that looks convincingly like a dragon's head coming out of the water. The pond and the little gorge a hundred metres east are prettier and quieter, and both are lit after dark.

The north east, in a loop. Manjanggul is one of the great lava tubes anywhere: a tunnel drained by molten rock hundreds of thousands of years ago, of which about a kilometre is open, ending at a stone column seven and a half metres high. It is ten degrees inside whatever the weather is doing outside, and the floor is wet, so bring a jacket and sensible shoes.

Bijarim, a few kilometres inland, is a forest of nutmeg trees on flat gravel paths, with one Torreya in the middle of it that is over eight hundred years old and the oldest tree on the island. The short loop takes half an hour and the long one twice that, and it smells extraordinary after rain.

Then the coast road east to the haenyeo museum. The women divers of Jeju work without air tanks, hold their breath for two minutes at a time, and are now mostly in their sixties and seventies with no younger generation replacing them. The museum is small and the subject is not.

Check out early and drive east. Seongsan Ilchulbong is a tuff cone that erupted underwater and cooled into a crater the shape of a crown, standing on its own peninsula at the eastern tip. The climb is a stepped path of about twenty-five minutes and the name means sunrise peak, which is when to do it if you can face the alarm.

Seopjikoji, ten minutes down the coast, is a grassy cape with a lighthouse, a black rock shore and the cone you just climbed filling the view behind you. It takes an hour at a stroll and needs nothing else from you.

Then turn inland for Seogwipo. Seongeup is on the way: a genuine village of thatched roofs and lava-stone walls where people still live, rather than a reconstruction, with black pigs and stone grandfather statues and guides who will show you round the inside of a house.

The south coast is where Jeju's water comes out of the rock. Jeongbang drops straight off a cliff onto the shore, which is said to make it the only waterfall in Asia falling directly into the sea, and the walk down to it is over wet black boulders that need care.

West of town at Jungmun, the coast is a wall of hexagonal basalt columns, packed together like a honeycomb and dropping into the surf. It is a five-minute walk from the car park and a fifteen-minute look, and it is one of the most photographed pieces of geology in Korea for good reason.

Carry on west to Sanbangsan, a lava dome standing alone above the fields with temples cut into its southern face and a grotto shrine under the cliff. Climb as far as the temple terrace for the view over the sea to the small islands offshore, and stop at the coast below for the sunset if you have the energy.

A short last morning in Seogwipo itself. Cheonjiyeon is a ten-minute walk from the middle of town up a lit path beside a stream, and the fall at the end of it drops into a pool held by a pair of small dams. It is the tamest of the island's famous waterfalls and the easiest to reach.

Then the market, which is where to spend your last hour and your remaining cash: black pork skewers, hallabong juice pressed in front of you, dried fish, and boxes of tangerines that will survive the flight home.