Monthly Archives: April 2025

Riding to Tokuyama

We woke up after a lot of rain in the night luckily the tents were still waterproof.

Started the day by moving all our stuff down to a large covered shelter as we thought it might rain. It was good to lay everything out. And have coffee and bread with peanut butter for breakfast, along with a pot noodle, well a bit fancier than that, but in essence it was a pot noodle.

There seemed to be a lot of staff walking around the campsite, and one of them came to talk to us. I think he said that it was okay for us to be there and that it opened at 9 o’clock it was hard to work out what opened at 9 as the campsite was closed, he said that two.

Finally we got slowly moving, the day started with a very steep descent, through a bamboo forest.

Cycling was through a mixture of fairly busy roads and some lovely rural routes. The route planning that Cliff did paid off well, and cycling following the route on GPS made it a lot easier than having to check a map regularly.

We stopped off at Kintaikyo Bridge
錦帯橋 which was very impressive one of the top three bridges in Japan. It looked lovely with all the cherry blossom 🌸 🌸🌸🌸

We stopped for lunch outside a supermarket. We went a bit crazy and got quite a bit of food.

The weather was good, apart from a head wind. We stopped at a post office to buy a few stamps, for the previous referred to postcards.

We made good progress to Tokuyama, where Cliff dad met us again at the Route Inn Tokuyama Ekimae Hotel
ホテルルートイン徳山駅前

We spend a bit of time in the hotel room laying out our wet things including tents. Then we put the air con on hot to dry everything. This seemed to work. We had a shower before heading out for a lovely meal with Cliff’s Dad and his uncle and family. We had a lot of food which was very tasty in a small pub type restaurant

Nishimura
にしむら

We got to bed a bit later than we would have wanted to but not that late. Have to get up very early for the ⛴️ ferry tomorrow.

Train to Hiroshima

After a bad night’s sleep we had breakfast in the hotel room enjoying the free vending machine coffee.

Forgot to say that I had a bath and shower in the hotel last night. I was annoyed that I didn’t see the free bath salts at reception until this morning!

We went back to Cliff’s Dad’s apartment to collect all our stuff and start our ride to the train station. It was raining and not very nice. We didn’t have that long to take the bikes apart and put them in our bags but somehow we managed it. Luckily Cliff’s dad was travelling with us which made carrying our stuff a lot easier.

We got on the train and thanks again to Cliff’s dad and Cliff had the correct seats for oversized luggage. This is an area behind the seats which has just enough room for our bikes.

We are on the super express 65.

The journey was around 5 hours but it seemed to go by fairly quickly with chatting, looking out the window and a quick nap. We got the bikes off the train fine but had to carry them quite a long way which is pretty difficult when it is basically in a bin bag and you have four other bags to carry.

Putting the bikes back together went okay, my mud guard had a bit of damaged which we sorted then the riding started.

We left Hiroshima and headed south along the coast. It was a good ride and the navigation went well. The ending up in a closed campsite. Wakichohachigaminesogo Koen Camping Ground
蜂ヶ峯総合公園 キャンプ場

The climb to the top of the hill was so steep I had to get off and push.

The campsite was closed but we stayed there anyway. The driving range nearby made lots of golf noise.

A wild boar came snuffling through. Did cause any problems so far. It started to rain lots in the night.

Japan 31 March 2025

Today was a convenience store 🏪 breakfast, building bikes which wasn’t too bad. Then lunch at 

どうとんぼり神座 麻布十番店 https://kamukura.co.jp/shop/6393/

After lunch we went on a small bike ride to get some cooking gas from Snow Peak. Bikes seemed to be riding well.

After this we got a few provisions from the supermarket.

Feeling sleepy we had dinner in the hotel room and then went to bed.

In 🗾 Japan, Sunday 30 March

The flights all went smoothly and we arrived at the airport to Cliff’s dad waiting to very kindly collect us in a hire car.

The front of my bike box had ripped open but luckily nothing was damaged.

We dropped things off at Cliff’s Dad’s and headed to the hotel https://www.olympic-inn.co.jp/azabu/smart/

It took a little while but we got to sleep okay and then I slept okay for the night.