Day 11 - Mountain Mist

88.5 km; 4hr 35min; (19.2km/h) Temples 60-64

Very light rain fell overnight until about 7*30am so it was dry in time for the ride to day, despite the late(!) start. Very comfortable sleeping on the grassy field, another camp spot I would recommend to anyone traveling this area.

Breakfast at combini, then its temples 61, 62 & 63 which are tightly clustered
before the serious climb of the day up to Yokomineji. You can leave your bags at temple 63, just ask the monks nicely and they will be happy to oblidge.

Long climb this one, the first section takes you up to a lake which has the best views of the day by far. Take your photos here, the rest of the climb is dense bamboo an dine forest! The ascent, descent and relax at the temple takes a full 3 hours so its a good thing not all the temples are as difficult to get to as this one. The descent is very tricky, its very steep, many cars and the roads are still damp from the mornings rain, so its slow going - and heavy on my brake pads - I'm down to the metal here and need to adjust them to get some more life out of them before they're replaced.
Chilly as well at the top, but the warmth returns as I arrive on the lower slopes.

After the descent and reloading the panniers on my bike its a case of eating lots of combini food/mos burger/evening snack and riding towards the foot of temple 65. The road along route 11 is a long drag, but a quick look to the right and the view of the high mountains, which are never clear from clouds today, is enough to raise the spirits.

I end the day in Iyomashima town which is the least scenic nights stay I have on the entire meguri. First attempts to find accommodation at a hotel and ryokan are full, but very helpful taxi drivers phone around for me and find that Hotel London, a business ryokan, has a room for me. Nice to have a bed, wash my clothes and dry my tent out!
At least that's what I planned, and indeed washing my clothes was the easy part. But there was only one drying machine - and every other henro in the ryokan had the same idea, it turned into quite a battle to get to the dryer to load the clothes, just like a student accommodation block. Even when I did manage to load my wet clothes, someone removed them before they were fully dry and so I gave up and went to sleep, waking at 4am and doing the drying then! So I was stuck in my yukata all evening, I even had the indignity of being called a 'ojiisan' (old man) by some younger female henros. Obviously this was due to my old persons attire and not my youthful physique.