Day 12 – 4 October I woke on the 12th day of my pilgrimage with the sound of the waves susurrating against the shore. Surfers were already in the water even though it wasn’t yet 7am. Today I’d be trying to get round the temples of Kochi city. I hadn’t thought this would be too…
Day 9 – 1 October Leaving Agustin’s in Tokushima, I embarked on what I knew would be a tough day. Looking at the elevation profile I could see I had two temples both up at 500m and with very steep climbs to reach them. First I had to work through a couple on the flat,…
Day 6 – 28 September Riding off from my new friends at the drum club I began to make my way once again towards Temple 1, near the town of Naruto. The ride started off nicely along the coast before popping me up and over some more of the ubiquitous Japanese mountains. It got pretty…
Hey I finished my trip across Kyrgyzstan and China, made home safe and sound and staying here already a few weeks. Numbers are not exact as sometimes in a rain my computer didn’t work, so you have to add another 300-500 km. Last day to Beijing I cycled for 15 hours and made a distance…
Day 1 – 23 September I managed to find my first temple without too much trouble, it was slightly on the edge of the town of Imabari and I needed some helpful people to point me to exactly where it was as I needed to get used to the way the signs worked for the…
As part of my trip in Japan I was very keen to undertake the Shikoku pilgrimage. I had wanted to do this pilgrimage ever since I had heard about it when I was living in Japan and had had it in the back of my mind to do it by bicycle ever since I had…
In Hiroshima I was staying with an old friend from back when I was an English teacher in the area. He very generously put me up for two nights and made sure I was amused while I was visiting with good food and perhaps more beer than I was now used to. On the day…
I didn’t have a lot of plans for Busan. I basically just wanted to have a rest and eat a lot. Both of which I managed to do. I also had a brief stroll along the beach but it wasn’t exactly an idyllic location for relaxation. After a couple of nights in the city it…
As long as you kept to the cycle paths in Seoul riding there was a dream as the routes they had through the city were well thought out and well maintained in general. Luckily the friend I was staying with lived very close to a canal with a cycle path running by it that intersected…
Rolling off the ferry into Qingdao I was immediately struck by how much less polluted the city seemed to be, being on the coast helps I guess. Qingdao was also a quite unusual city by Chinese standards maintaining a lot of its own individual character. Part of this character is informed by its history as…
Riding ROUND 