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| The Shimanami Kaido |
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| Room at Sen Guesthouse |
It took us five hours to check out of the fabulous
Sen Guesthouse - thank you Matthew and Nori for your patience - as we spent a long time chatting with a couple of great Canadians that we met there - talking about everything from the relative merits or otherwise of the British and Canadian education systems, the advisability or otherwise of travelling Ryan Air, the BBC and how seriously to take Max Kaiser. Somehow the hours ticked away and it was two o'clock before we finally left the hostel. In truth it was so lovely there that we were tempted to stay another few nights but our budget would not stretch so far. And the Simanami Kaidō was beckoning...
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| Shower room |
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| Getting breakfast ready... |
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| ...sushi...yum |
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| Reception |
We had only cycled 20k or so when we reached Oura where there was a michi-no-eki and a small beach. We decided to pitch camp for the night. We were close to the road but Mick was convinced that it would be quiet by nine o'clock or so.
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| A lone guitarist at Oura |
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| Our camp next to the road |
The traffic did not go quiet, if anything it got busier with lorries and trucks hightailing it up to Imibari. But the view out to sea was lovely and the air next to the coast was fresher despite the road.
The next morning we took a while to get sorted. By the time we had brewed a few cups of coffee it was gone nine. A few kilometres on, we were feeling peckish - a bag of peanuts had sufficed for breakfast - and pulled in at a little restaurant overlooking the ocean. It was now quarter past ten and the proprietor was still cleaning and intimated that she was still closed. I spent so long with my phrase book trying to establish what time she opened that in the end she gave up and invited us to come in and sit down. She showed us the menu and using one of our few Japanese words we asked for udon - thick noodle soup which a) we loved and b) we could ask for. If the lovely lady was losing patience with us she didn't show it. With various gestures she conveyed that all the meals on the menu were udon, which one would we like?
'Omaka-se-shi-mas,' I said. (
You decide for me). She was having none of this cop out however. Eventually we agreed that I would have udon with tempura. Mick would have no tempura but would have extra rice. I'm not too sure how we got to this point but everyone seemed happy. It was the best udon we had tasted here, superb, served in a little boat with a separate stock that you dunked everything in before eating it. That's what we did with it anyway.
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| Superb meal |
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People who have completed the Shikoku 88 pilgrimage over 100 times
leave a brocade nameslip. Total respect. |
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| One happy chappy |
Sated, we expressed our thanks and headed on the road towards the first bridge of the Simanami Kaidō. En route we passed an interesting golf driving range - the driving range consisted of a huge lake. We wondered how this worked - did you bring your own golfballs and resign yourself to only having one shot before losing them? Or did you hire them and were they retrieved at the end of the day? If so, how? We had no idea.
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| Our favourite juice - 9 veg and 3 fruit |
The Shimanami Kaido is a seventy kilometre route connecting Imibari, Shikoku to Onomich in Honshu via seven bridges connecting six islands in the Seto Inland Sea. Although primarily a car route across the islands, six of the seven bridges have a bespoke cycle path. There are three suggested routes across the islands: recommended, intermediate and advanced. Needless to say, we were not opting for the advanced.
We crossed the first bridge(s) the Kurushima-kaikō Ōhashi Bridges, a suspension bridge over 4000 metres long. Halfway across there was a little rest area and we stopped and made a brew of coffee, enjoying the super view of the islands that pepper the Seto Inland Sea, and the huge number of boats of all sizes weaving their way amongst them. By the time we reached the other side I felt unaccountably weary considering the distance we had covered. At the michi-no-eki I found a bench and fell asleep. By the time I awoke it was too late to carry on so we set up camp in the little park there, accompanied by a trio of stone animals, and watched the sun setting over Shikoku. It felt like the end of one stage of our journey and the start of another.
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| The bridges ask for a small toll |
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| One of the access paths |
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| Camping next to a stone otter |
The following day we managed another 20 kilometres and another bridge before we reached Hakata park. We were not in a hurry and the roads were quiet and a pleasure to cycle. We liked Hakata Park so we stopped another night before tackling three more bridges the following day. Our final night on the islands was at Innoshima Amenity Park, accompanied by a huge dinosaur. The whole route is clearly incredibly popular with Japanese cyclists, we saw hundreds of them - on road bikes, on hire bikes, some racing along, some pottering along with their families. All the road cyclists seemed incredibly pleased to see a couple of gaijins cycling the route. One chap came over to us while we sat at one of the rest stations and asked where we were from. When we said 'England' he whooped with delight and insisted on taking our picture, email address and home address. He promised to send a copy of the photo, I wonder if he will.
Finally it was time to leave the islands on the short ferry hop to Onomichi and back into the world of busy traffic. But we agreed it had been an amazing ride. Time now for a few hours looking around Onomichi before heading up the coast road to Hiroshima.
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