I left Kyoto, riding down the beautiful Kama river to start with. I was riding from one former Japanese capital to another: Nara, though it was 1200 years since the city had held this position. The ride between the two cities was pretty uninspiring as it was mainly on narrow busy urban roads. Nara itself…
Day 15 – 7 October The next morning I woke and decided to give my bike a much needed clean. I wasn’t in a massive hurry again as I’d arranged another Warmshowers.org host for that evening. After cleaning my bike I set off up the western part of Shikoku’s coast towards Temple 39 about 50kms…
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 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…
Riding ROUND 