Cycling started of with a nice downhill, then the rain started getting all the washing we had done in the stream wet, well maybe not wetter than it was already but it definitely didn’t dry it.

The scenery was lovely today big rivers, lakes, dammed rivers, bridges, small villages, rice fields.

We visited a random shrine that was up a lot of steps it was good but we couldn’t go inside as it was closed. A farmer started talking to us for a while, couldn’t understand much of what he was saying, but he was laughing a lot.

We carried on cycling in the rain got to a village for lunch that seemed to be full of tourists, there were a few market stalls there and I guess it is saturday market day. Most of the towns and villages we have cycled through are empty, so it was very strange to see this swamped village.

As we were having lunch the sun came out and it was time to arrange the collection of wet clothing on the back of the bike.

Nothing much of not happened in the afternoon, we brought some dinner at a supermarket. In the end after dinner we were still hungry so we had to eat some of breakfast, for pudding.

We have stop for the night at a car park just before a tunnel.

 

Our indoor tents survived the night. As we were taking down the tents and preparing breakfast to dog walkers started talking to me and laughing. As my Japanese is limited to no words the conversation was somewhat limited but it was friendly well at least I thought it was!

It was a good ride today with a lunch stop at a high end service station. We got some noodles for about, £3.00 (¥400) they were pretty tasty, and there was lots of free water from a water cooler.

After lunch we pressed on again over mountains, stopping at a 7-11 for the purchase of dinner and breakfast. The choice was a little limited but we won’t stave. This store has the best toilets so far, the toilet seat had an electronic flush sound. The instructions on the wall said that this was exclusively for women, I gave it ago. I also wonder which toilet they used for the sample noise, if the sound is looped of if the recording is actually 30 seconds long, (this is how long it plays for, unless you press the stop button). Enough toilet chat.

We cycled on and over a few more mountains and a through a 1.5km tunnel the longest one I have ever cycled through and found a camp spot near a stream, there are some steps and ladder down to it. We had a good wash in the very cold stream water and it felt so much better to be clean.

The landscape we have been cycling through has changed dramatically from the outskirts of Tokyo. We are now cycling through lovely mountains with rivers stream and good views. There are a few rice fields and very small vegetable patches.

Tonight is the first night of the trip where the camp spot has not had mobile reception so this will be sent in the morning.

 

Today we awoke and had a breakfast of Japanese bready delights. Such as a jam and cream sandwich, a cold meat sandwich and some instant noodles. Due to not boiling enough water we only had a small amount of coffee.

We head down the road to Nikko to visit some temples and shines, this was the first time whilst cycling that I have paid to get into a tourist attraction.

The temples and shines are world heritage site and mixture of both Shinto and Buddhist, the shrines being Shinto and the temples being Buddhist it what I would describe as a temple complex. There were lots of groups of temples for the main ones you had to pay, and then there were other you paid for as like added extras. We paid for 2 others, as all the information was in Japanese it was hard to understand and felt that we should have got a reduce entry fee. The only problem with this was that our Japanese was not good enough to negotiate a discount. Cliff remember quite a lot from when he was there 15 or so years ago.

There were a lot of fairly noise school children around the place but once you got away from those it was very quiet and relaxing. The temples/shires were very interesting to walk around and well worth stopping off and the slight detour.

After the temple stop we pressed on. We found a camping spot in a park, a fairly rural park. As it was raining we set up the tents under a shelter. We are not to sure how this will work as the tents are not pegged down but tied to parts of the shelter, we will see how it works.

VW observations, by this I mean oldish VWs I have seen a few newer ones mainly golfs.

I have seen one VW (old garage) this had a few beetles, and camper vans. On the road I have spotted 2 beetles. One today and one yesterday, both looked pretty good.

Well its time for bed.

 

We have spent the last few days in Tokyo getting ready for the trip.

We did this by buying food. Doing some map shopping with Cliff’s Dad, we managed to get an Atlas of Japan in english and a bilingual map.

This and google maps allowed us to do some route planning. We plotted a rough route up the north west coast of Japan, hopefully to the northern most tip.

The few days we spent in Tokyo were good, and I am looking forward to exploring more when we get back there. Cycling started today in the rain which got heavier and then stop and ended with a bright afternoon, which allowed everything to dry out.

There are so many traffic lights in Japan it leads to a lot of stop start cycling, we made it out of the city and with the aid of google maps, Cliffs navigation and good road signs navigation on day one went well.

I am amazed at how built up Japan is and how every inch of space is put to some use be it a footpath, very small field or housing.

I was surprised when we found a small wood with some flat ground that we have chosen to camp in tonight. It is fairly close to a restaurant, houses and road, but it will make a good first nights stop. Now its time to eat some rice before putting the tents up and getting an early night.

So far as expected Japan is very different to Australia.

I think this post has been fairly boring, I will try and write a better one tomorrow.

 

Our time in Australia has come to an end. We awoke very early at 3:30 and got taken to the airport in the most for appropriate vehicle for the job a Toyota Land Cruiser.

We had a great week or so exploring the Sydney area and we have to say a big thank you to our friends and their family for letting us stay and driving us to the airport so early on a sunday morning. We arrived in good time and went to the check in desk no queues, when we did check in we got told that we had to have a flight booked out of Japan. This was a little awkies as we didn’t know when we would be leaving. This was no time to be chillbanging. We were very tired a confused. We looked online for flights etc this was just very confusing at 5am. In the end we ended up booking some expensive flights out of Japan. We got given a scrap of paper with a hard to read reference number on it. It wasn’t until our stop over in Cairns that we found out when the flight was booked for. We are hoping that we can easily ring jetstar from Japan and arrange a quick refund this is what we got told. If not we will be back in this fair land again! Cairns stop over area offers quite a lot of shops, but the food shops were fairly limited. We are now flying to Japan.

I really enjoyed my time in Australia, it is a great country with friendly generous people. I think it will take a few days to get back into the cycling routine, hopefully it will come back quickly! We also need to decided on a route in Japan.

 

Its hard to remember what I have been up to the last few days but I shall try and remember in some sort of rough order now, which will be just a random list of things I have done over the past few days.

One day was spent sorting stuff out, drying tents etc. Speaking very briefly about Japan, as with all good plans we have yet to make them.

We went to a beech called Dee Why beech and went swimming this was good fun in the waves and there were a lot of surfboards flying around, but they mainly kept out of the swimming part of the beach.

We eat a BBQ which was good.

We got a bus to Chatswood where we could get a train to central sydney got distracted by the shopping centre and Boarders bookshop closing down and the 10 books for $10 dollars deal. In the end we caught the train walked over the harbour bridge hung out at the opera house and walked around an area called the rocks. We then got a ferry to Manly this gave good views of the city, eat some fish and chips good but pretty small portion size, before getting a bus back to frenches forest. I just remembered that we also walked through the botanical gardens.

It is hard to describe, how I feel about Sydney it seems like a relaxed city. General like the rest of Australia which seems relaxed but yet still enthusiastic about things. This might just be because we are mainly speaking to people who are on holiday. I am not sure if Sydney was how I expected or not, I think this is because I was not sure what to expect.

We got a train to the blue mountains, so named because they look blueish because of the oils that come out of the trees and form a sort of mist. Katoomba is the name of the town we are staying in for a couple of days. Flying Fox is the name of the hostel. It has one of the coldest log burners I have ever experienced, it seems like the fire is sucking heat out of the room apart from this it is very nice.

We went on a walk around the three sisters three rockie cliffs. It raining quite a lot but this doesn’t really matter. I best get on with reading some of those books I brought! I am currently reading Sean and David’s long drive. It is not very good and I would not recommend it to anyone.

Yesterday evening we arrived wet and tired at our friends house in Sydney.

It seemed to rain all night and this didn’t ease up for much of the day. There were also some very high winds.

Now the day seems like a bit of a blur but we cycled over some hills to where we thought we could get a ferry to find the time table had been covered up with a notice saying that due to bad weather only some of the ferry route was running. This meant cycling back over the big hills to the road we had been on earlier and heading over some more hills.

In the end we got the ferry to Palm Beech where Home and Away is filmed. It wasn’t as sunny as on the show, I guess they weren’t filming today.

Despite the weather we past through some lovely places, Wagstaff seemed nice and had friendly general store staff.

We are now going spend a few days in Sydney and start planning the next leg of the trip.

The updates might be slightly less frequent for the next few days, but who knows.

Yesterday we were on the road by 7 in order to catch a ferry that was 40kms away by 10:00. It was raining and not all that nice but by the time we got to the ferry it had brighter up a lot. The Tea Gardens to Nelsons Bay ferry was a bit of a gamble on four counts 1. It was 10kms down a dead end road 2. We were not sure completely sure of the times, the website was not very good 3. They might not have taken bikes 4. The next ferry indicated was a 14:30 meaning if we missed the 10:00 it would have been a very long day.

We got to Tea Gardens in good time but it took ages to find where the ferry left from, we found an information board, that provided little information. In the end we headed to the water and found the ferry, and chased it until in docked. We actually caught the 9:30 ferry we didn’t know existed, before we got there. The ferry had a very small door through which we had to carry our fully laden bikes, not an easy task and I was a bit worried about ripping of the steering wheel, but the ferry staff were very helpful.

The ferry went pretty slow stopping at one other place before our destination to pick up two people.

We chatted a little with a couple on the ferry from Nelsons bay they get the ferry every few months have a meal out and get the ferry back the next day. The ferry was so and I was pretty wet and I think smelly.

We arrived in Nelsons bay had an average coffee did a bit of shopping. Rode on and had lunch just out an military airbase and Newcastle airport it was very noisy.

We head on to the second ferry of the day the Stockton œNewcastle ferry this was a much bigger affair than the first ferry and much easier to take bikes on. Although it was equally poorly signed.

When the ferry docked we were only a few minutes away from our hosts house. As she was still at work her brother let us in and we had a chat and shower etc.

We had a lovely meal that was kindly prepared for us. In between meal preparations we went a little walk around the area near the house. We saw an obelisk the southern cross was pointed out to us, the stars that are on the flag. We saw the boggie hole which was a salt water swimming pool cut into the rocks by convicts.

We went back to the house had the lovely dinner before heading to bed.

It was strange how the day started in a soaking wet tent and ended with a good meal in a very comfortable house. I guess that’s the joys of cycle touring, or maybe the website warm showers!

THE NEXT DAY (today)

After breakfast we left the house with our host, she cycled to work so she led us out of the city to a bike path that took us in the right direction. It was a very nice bike path along a disused railway line, there was even a tunnel to go through.

Not much happen after this apart from some more cycling, lunch on the beech, it was fairly cold on the beach and starting to get dull. It rained just after we left the drive throw bottle shop, where we got our dinner beers from. We sheltered in a bus shelter before pressing on not very far before finding a camping spot.

So the pies sort of worked, if we had had more rice I think it would have been better, 2 out of the 3 pies that were warm. By warm I mean not cold.

We left the rest area and headed back onto the highway. We were not on the highway for 10kms to head into Taree for a supermarket stock up. Taree was of the highway and added a few kms to the journey but this was the only place with shops. Strange town seemed a bit dead maybe that’s sunday morning but there was a garage sale, a go cart for sale as well as a boat.

Back on the highway and there were a few hills. There was a lovely downhill but this was followed by a massive up hill. It seems that nothing in cycling is for free.

Lunch was a low key affair at a petrol station that had a lot of lorries. The picnic tables were located in a bog, the heavy bikes sank nicely.

We refuelled our petrol cooker bottle at a cost of 65 cents. I asked the lorry driver how big his fuel tanks were he said he had 2, 750 litre tanks, but he could only fill up to $999 dollars on one refuel.

We headed off again, to find that the rest area where we planned to camp was shut due to some massive road works in the area. So we headed into Bulahdelah and found a park behind a library. Hopefully nobody will mind us camping here.

Early start tomorrow as we have to make a ferry no coffee for us not sure how this will go.

A slow start today as we didn’t have to far too go and two cups of coffee made us drink them. And the sun was drying out or stuff so nicely it seemed a shame to leave.

There were a few curious magpies and other birds that were fighting amongst themselves. Lucky the magpies did not attack us.

The ride was along the highway and fairly uneventful, the road was nice an smooth. Normally when in a car I don’t like concrete roads that much but on a bike they seem to be fine.

We stopped in a small town, called Kew for lunch were we brought some bread refilled our water bottles and got 5 of yesterdays pies for $5 we are not sure how we are going to cook them yet but they should be okay to eat cold or slightly warm.

The rest area seems fairly good so far. I do have to say that the rest areas in Queensland seemed to be a lot better equipped than those that we have stayed in so far in New South Wales, there a few more we have left to stay in so I will keep you updated. NSW also have this annoying habbit of putting toilet roll on square holders meaning the roll does not roll.

The pies are warming on top of the pasta pan I think we will heat them up on a bed of dry rice.

It could be a while until the pies are cooked. I shall let you know how they go tomorrow.