Travel

Cycling the Shimanami Kaido (しまなみ海道)

What is the Shimanami Kaido?

The Shimanami Kaido (しまなみ海道, Shimanami Kaidō) is a 60 kilometer long toll road that connects Japan’s main island of Honshu to the island of Shikoku, passing over six small islands in the Seto Inland Sea.

Cycling is a popular means of experiencing the Shimanami Kaido. The bicycle route is well marked and maintained, and diverges from the expressway on the islands. The ramps leading up to the bridges were built at small inclines with cyclists in mind. At about 70 kilometers, the bike route is a bit longer than the toll road, but because there are no large inclines, it can be comfortably completed in a day by intermediate cyclists.
Japan Guide

Hot Tips

Don’t Rush it. It’s a simple route, any novice could complete it in a single day, it’s not a great achievement. Take the time – plan and explore the area; talk to the Locals, stop and go for a swim. There’s so much to do.
Visit Ōkunoshima (Rabbit Island) – A quick ferry ride from two potential ports be surrounded by cute and furry friends and spend the night at an amazing Japanese style hotel with sunsets and beaches.
Bicycle Rentals – Ensure you’ve booked your bike rental before arriving. They often shut on weird days of the week but will make an exception if you have booked ahead. I recommend The Red Bicycles Onomichi
One way or Return – logistically speaking… it’s MUCH simpler to ride the bike back to where you picked it up. However if you don’t have the time you can pay for returning the bike via a courier. I’ve not done this but want to note it is an option. I’d recommend return trip and trying an alternate route starting from Onomichi.
Routes of the Shimanami Kaido – there are multiple routes / lines you can follow on your adventure. The main line I find to be good but think the Island Explorer to be the better options; there’s less traffic (cars and trucks), less polluted and better scenery. See recommended (Black) route below.

Things Nearby

It’s a small town – if you haven’t been outside the major cities this will be a charming small town with good cafe’s food and fun little things to do such as:

Onomichi Ramen: Onomichi is a ramen style that consists of soy sauce-based broth that is occasionally flavored with pork, seafood from the Seto Inland Sea, chicken, or dashi. The broth is served hot with flat wheat noodles of medium thickness and a generous serving of seabura – pork back fat. Recommend Denyasu – most places are quite crowded but this one is just as good with almost no wait.
Senkoji Park – Amazong Views and Sakura (cherry blossom) flower viewing. Recommend walking up/down at least once to see the Cat Alley and winding streets and temples.

Route and Points of Interest

Pics

My Life Throughout COVID

Life through COVID was a change – it presented me with opportunities and challenges. I’ve tried a new format of of showing my life throughout these times: Story Maps: https://storymap.knightlab.com/. See my test Story Map below:

The Adventure

Those who know me might know that I’m a bit of a sucker for adventure and done just a little bit of cycle touring (wayyy back in 2018 – https://thetravellingbeancounter.wordpress.com). I had dreamed up this baby a little while after getting back from Japan – the idea of cycling from (new) hometown to (original) hometown. With a good mate’s wedding the weekend following, the stars finally aligned and I set off on the 2nd of December.

Stats

Sport	Date	Title	Time	Distance	Elevation
Ride	Fri, 02/12/2022	Day 1: Sydney to Warners Bay	5:57:24	147.40 km	1,381 m
Ride	Sat, 03/12/2022	Day 2: Newcastle to Scone	6:49:35	168.59 km	1,579 m
Ride	Sun, 04/12/2022	Day 3 – Scone to Tamworth	6:08:54	142.22 km	1,107 m

Highlights (and Lowlights):

Highlight: Fueling up at Manly bowls before starting for my Finance Christmas party at Amazon. Also noting the bike way atleast 80% lighter than what I was riding around Japan on
Lowlight: Crazy traffic and psycho drivers from Manly to Palm Beach Ferry
Highlight: KFC with Rolly on arrival into Newcastle
Lowlight: Gear cable snapping literally halfway into the 2nd day
Highlight: “Day for it” good weather all round, especially when going through the Hunter Valley
Highlight: Powering up the Great Dividing Ranges without stopping until reaching the top
Lowlight: Currabubula Markets had millions of cars on the small rural roads when I was so close to home
Highlight: Accomplishing the trip! Especially with no injuries (besides an aching gooch and dead quads).

Day 1, Mon 11th of April 2022 - Planning: 1 part strategic 1 part stupid

First international travel for ~3years. April 2019 we were in the north island of New Zealand.

We decided to book our trip the day after the most difficult race of my life (to date: 10/04/2022); The Tamworth Trail Blazer 60K with ~3,800m elevation gain. After pushing 165 heart beats per minute for 531 minutes pushing out ~5,700 calories and taking home both the course record, first place and days worth of pain to follow, maybe it was 2 parts stupid, 1 part strategic…

It was a great day and I was too high on adrenaline to feel it but I was chafing and cramping so much that the next few days on planes I thought would be a good time to recover. The worst part was the chafing… definitely going to fix that for my next ultras in May and July – it actually formed a scab on the flight over the Singapore.

Post-COVID Airports

This was actually the time when domestic airports were absolutely insanely understaffed and security lines went outside the terminals – mayhem. Luckily the international terminal wasn’t so bad (LINK). After flying strictly domestically the last 3 years you forget some of the procedures going international: taking out liquids (100ml max), passport photo not looking like you, 3hr check-in rules, etc. But you also forget the glamour of the lounges, luxury shops, duty free (~50% shops open).

The Flight

Actually not that bad… and we were flying economy on Scoot. Worst part was the screaming babies but sitting down for hours on end, watching F1’s and Kimetsu no Yaiba S2, really not that bad. It probably helped that I was still exhausted from the run that I could actually sleep every few hours.
Total rest time: 24.5h
Tamworth to Sydney: 1hr
Sydney to Singapore: 7.5hrs
Singapore to Athens: 11hrs

Places and Maps

Planning Map

Highlights from each area:

Athens

Acropolis – especially the Erechtheion. Private tour guide was great. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey YouTube video guide just as good!
Food – Mousakka, Anchovies, bakeries, everything
Acropolis Museum was a bit of a let down. The Greek inventions museum was awesome though.

Meteora

Literally everything; Monasteries, food, people
E-Bike Sunset Tour
Hiking, turtles, tracks, photos
Via Cordatta
Hotel – buffet breakfast

Kefalonia

Cycling up Mt Ainos
Melisanni Cave
Shipwreck beach – although we had average weather

Rome

Appian way run
Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is everywhere. Borgia tower, Mausoleum of Augusto, Coliseum, etc
Food – Pasta has never been so good. Gelato – Wasabi chocolate
Disappointment: air quality from street smokers

Naples

Pizza and portion sizes
The Tunnel Tour followed by the Catacombs
Pompeii was huge
Disappointing: trash and rubbish everywhere and Visuvio was covered in fog. Japanese food was also horrible.

Santorini

Sunset hike from Thira to the north
The Lost Atlantis
Disappointing – roads are not made for walking or cycling. Need better infrastructure. Prices also very high, recommend going to Lidl.

Why did I choose to cycle Japan?

I have always had an interest in Japan from a young age, I assume it’s from watching all the Dragon Ball, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon, etc when I was young. This is my 3rd visit to Japan and I wanted to improve my Japanese mostly, especially the speaking component as it’s the hardest to practice when you study alone. Although I do believe taking actual Japanese classes is a better way to improve… I also enjoy hiking, so with all the mountains in Japan this was easy pick.

But I chose to cycle as I would be able to meet many people and experience many things that you would usually miss if you were to take public transport or a car. Many people I could talk and interact with. I also would gain a massive sense of accomplishment by completing something so seemingly impossible.

Where did I go?

Journey Statistics

Highlights of the Trip

Other

My old blog site: https://thetravellingbeancounter.wordpress.com
Guide to Travelling around Japan on Bicycle
Top Moments

Future Trips

When I was asked ‘would I do it again?’ as soon as I arrived back home, I was ready to put the bike down for a while and have a rest. It’s been over 3 years at time of writing and I’d definitely be keen to do another bike trip. I had started planning a Taiwan bike trip, which would only be a few weeks and hope to try it in 2022.

I would also like to try something in Europe, maybe in Spain and also cycling from Sydney to my home town Tamworth over a week.