Sunday, June 25, 2006

You Can Never Be Too Fit!

With less than 2 months to go until I head off across the country, I figure it wouldn't be a bad idea to at least try one shorter trip before I go. Hey, I guess you can never be too fit... Last Saturday I loaded up my bike with my small mountain of gear and just took off from the front door on my first ever bicycle tour. Two days and about 114 km later, I cycled back up my driveway and collapsed in a catatonic heap on the grass. Washed-up jellyfish have more spunk than this...



The first day was all up and up and into the mountains - through quiet cedar forests, citron orchards, old abandoned farm houses and babbling brooks. Other than the occasional grey-haired farmer planting out the last of the rice seedlings for the year, I didn't see a soul. I often wonder what will happen to rural Japan in another decade or two, when the last of these old farmers have gone... Will these mountains just revert back to wilderness?

On the other side of the mountains, the road shot straight down to the coast and the busy surfing beach called Ikumi. Not much in the way of waves while I was there, a fact that never seems to deter the hundreds of Japanese surfers out there showing off the latest surf fashions.



I set up camp a few kilometers further up the coast - at a secluded beach called Shirahama. It's quite a scenic spot, and I'd hoped to wake up early the next morning to grab a few dawn photos. In the end though, I was so thoroughly exhausted from just one day (actually more like just half a day) in the saddle that I slept right through until mid-morning.



The next day I followed the coast road towards Muroto. On this stretch, the mountains plunge straight into the sea, and apparently keep going straight down into the ocean depths from there (this is where Muroto extracts it's Deep-Sea-Water from). After lunch with Yocchan in Muroto city, I struggled off home on the last leg of my trip - up the coast and back to Kitagawa. Exhausted!

[photos]

Posted by Andrew Wallace @ 8:26 PM