137.9.0 km; 6hr 4min; (22.6km/h) Temples 20-23
This was an amazing days cycling! Ive never taken so many photos and videos in a day, I could have filmed the whole day and watched it again.
Early start 6am for breakfast, its a wonderful experience to roll the bike out of the temples porch area and walk through the grounds back through the main gate to Tatsueji. Its a chilly start but this does not last long as we're soon on the slopes up to Kakurinji, temple 20. The first 2km are steady, but the final 3km is the real tough part of this climb, I would say 14-15% in places. This section is an out and back road from the the main road and this is a pattern for most of the bigger climbs. This means you can leave your panniers and tent at the bottom of the climb, go visit the temple, then descend back to your luggage and reload. I would be very surprised if you have any problems doing this yourself, I would think it more likely a wild animal might have a sniff at your bags rather than anything be stolen by humans in Japan. If you're concerned, just leave a message marking them as henro luggage to be sure.
Great to get a first view of the distant ocean from Kakurinji, only a few hours away now. Beautiful roads along a wide river in a deep valley on the way to Tairyuji, temple 21. This is the first cable car of the route, theres another one at 66 and 85. Of course you can walk to them all, and its possible to cycle to all the temples as well, but this one and 66 I'll enjoy the lift. Here I buy a one way ticket and take my bike up the cable car, but be warned its a steep descent down the east side and the road is very broken plus sticks, leaves and stones litter the surface.
More great scenery, koinoburi (large carp shaped windsocks, flown around this time for families sons ) flying high above and between houses and rice fields on the route. I head to route 55 which is the road south, it goes all the way from Tokushima to Murato Misaki as far as Kochi. For a main road, its sooo quiet! The distance can really be eaten up on this road, long gradual climbs and the descents just go on forever.
I hadnt planned on cycling much further than Byodoji, temple 22, but I end up teaming up with Junichi san who is trying to cycle around the island in 5 days! Hes one day delayed now because of the heavy rain on Saturday, so its a massive 200km down to Murato Misaki for him today. So with a tail wind from the storm still blowing and help from Junichi san, we make rapid progress along the pacific coastline.
Some nice surf beaches here, I think Uchizuma is one of the best. Not a surf town at all, so if you want to reach the waves here you'll need some transport as I dont see any surf rental shops around. Nice to watch, but no real desire to get into the ocean at this point, the cycling is too good at the moment.
Just route 55 skirting the eastern side of the cape, virtually no traffic, and the sea to our left, powered by Family Mart energy gels it feels great to speed down the coastline southwards.
We arrive at Cape Murato just after 5pm and find a minshuku (B&B) absolutely on the southerly point of the cape, again 6000yen is the cost here. The minshuku has a nice bath, good to get cleaned up then explore the shoreline of the cape.
Later the minshuku owner shows us her 88 temple scroll which is incredibly expensive and we are honoured to be shown the scroll, but I dont understand much else about what she is telling us about it.
Minshuku have sentaku (washing facilities) by the way, so a very useful place to wash and dry all your clothes after the first few days. I recommend this pattern of camping a few nights then use minshuku for washing clothes, better nights sleep every few days and I'll do that again in the future. There are still many coin operated laundries by the side of the road, especially in larger towns, so its no problem to wash clothes.
No comments:
Post a Comment