Shimanami Ride to Imabari

October 8, 2024

Our hostel was in silence as we woke at 6:40. Everything about it was designed to work perfectly for people biking through, with very careful instructions for use of the public bathroom, shower and other common areas. We made a little cheap instant coffee and headed out into the gray morning. As we cruised through town, we saw a couple of very touristy places that were active and thought, “We can do better”, for breakfast. That was a nice sentiment, but not well informed. In fact our route, which was designed to be more remote, off the beaten path did not have a single restaurant though the entire day.

Clouds hang heavily over the islands as we head out of the little tourist area we stayed in.

We came upon a fascinating, artistically decaying bus, that seems completely in line with the concept of wabi-sabi.

Guided by the painted blue line on the pavement we climbed to our first bridge to the next island

We passed farms of lemon, fig, orange and kiwi. But we did not see any cafes open. We were no longer on the main Shimanami route, but rather the Island Explorer route, and it doesn’t attract much tourism.

An interesting tiny house that could be an artist’s statement. We did not find any explanation though.
We came to a ferry port, and at least there was a vending machine with coffee, so we got some. It was starting to rain.

Restaurants were not going to be in the cards, we had to accept, so we looked for a grocery store in the next sizable town, and found this one.

Some fruits and vegetables for sale. The current exhange rate is 147 yen per dollar

Since eating on the street is greatly frowned on, we looked for a place to sit down and have a picnic. We found a temple that had some nice seating and bathrooms near the opening.

Stopping for a picnic at the Oyamazumi Shrine.

A 2600 year old tree at the temple seems to have been almost deified. /

A young family took our picture at the temple.

The landscape became more rugged and remote.

There’s more climbing as the route crossed over a mountainous peninsula. We are glad for our ebikes. Typically we ride in the lowest power, “Eco”, but in this case upgraded to “Normal” power level.

Now we were in a heavy shipbuilding region, and yet the workers rode their bikes to work. Not what you would expect of steelworkers in the US for example.

Heavy shipbuilding .

It was raining steadily, and we needed a break. We saw a convenience store, and alice knew they’d have ready-to-heat meals.

There was no place to sit, so we stood outside the convenience store with our little microwaved meals and tried to stay dry from the rain.

We now had energy to push on and were ready to re-join the main Shimanami route. Enough “exploring”, and time to get to our destination. We pushed on, electing the straight head route directly over the island. Again the power boost was apprecicated. We came to another large bridge connecting islands.

Climbing a bicycle approach path to the bridge.

This final bridge turned out to be about 10 km long, and passed over another tiny island.

I held back from the descent from the bridge to be able to show Alice on the winding set of descent trails.

Alice negotiates the long series of descent paths from the bridge level.

The last 5 km into town to our hotel were just us against the rain and wanting to be done. Fortunately I had programmed the route into my bike GPS computer last night and it took us expertly through the unfamiliar town to the hotel, where we arrive at 2 pm . We were soaked and we had completed 79 km.

After showering and drying clothes, we found a wonderful little restaurant and ate a wide variety of dishes for a total of $25 USD. We have anice hotel room. We’ve had two days of rain, but we can dry off. Tomorrow is predicted to be beautiful .

8 thoughts on “Shimanami Ride to Imabari”

  1. Sorry you are getting so much rain. Still, your bike trip seems to be very interesting. A 10 KM bike path bridge is unbelievable. We have trouble getting street markings for bikes in this country, A different set of values. Enjoying your blogs.

    1. Fortunately, we are able to dry off at night and have access to laundry every place we stay, so just throw everything in the dryer and start over!

  2. Wow….that wabi sabi bus could provide a huge number of photo abstracts! Enjoying following you adventures.

    1. Great observation, Bill, and I am sure you would come up with many more variations than I did. It would be a great study.

  3. Thomas B Hoeksema Sr

    Wish I could be doing this. Alice is a resourceful and “Game” co-adventurer.

    1. You’ve got that right, Tom. Sometimes I worry about things going wrong, but she just plows ahead.

  4. welcome to the world of e-bike touring. Glad to see you on such an adventure together.
    Rosemary

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