Shikoku Bike Tour - Part 10
Nahari → Kaiyo · Kochi & Tokushima
Today’s route gave us a choice: follow the coast road out around the peninsula, or cut inland through the mountains like we’d originally planned. The peninsula road was showing some closures, so we stuck with the original plan and turned inland instead.
We grabbed a quick bakery breakfast on the way out of town, coffee, a ham muffin, and orange juice eaten standing at the counter, then pointed the bikes inland for what turned out to be the biggest climb of the day.
The road followed a river valley up into the mountains, crossing back and forth over the water on a mix of bridges, an old suspension footbridge slung beside a small hydro station, a couple of red steel truss bridges, and at one point a proper concrete dam with a dark spillway dropping into the gorge below. The forest on either side had really started turning, patches of red climbing up the hillsides above the grey rock.
We took a few detours off the main road onto smaller lanes that led us over a string of narrow hanging bridges strung across the river. At one crossing there was a crew working on the riverbank, replacing one of the old bridges. A sign nearby explained it had originally been built during the Second World War, when all the steel that would normally go into a bridge was being redirected to the military, so the whole thing had been built out of concrete instead. It had that same dark, mossy, slightly overgrown look you’d expect from something out of a fantasy movie, wild nature closing in on this sturdy old slab of concrete.
Near the top, at the sign for the Route 493 pass, we found an old covered wooden bridge tucked into the forest next to a trailhead signboard for something called the Noneyama Kaido, an old post road, along with a mossy little hut with an outdoor sink that looked like it had been there for a hundred years. It felt like stumbling onto a piece of the island nobody bothers to mention.
From there the road climbed hard for a stretch before tipping over into a long, winding descent, the kind where you’re dodging potholes and leaning the bike side to side just for the fun of it. We flew down toward the coast, passing a rocky grey beach scattered with driftwood, and a little further on a couple of guys tending houseboats moored in a calm inlet just up the shore. Neither of us knew enough Japanese to get much beyond smiles and pointing, but they seemed happy enough to have us stopping to look at their boats.
We originally tried to stop at a floating seafood restaurant along the way, but there was no one there, so we continued on.
We found a little restaurant with a view straight out over the water for lunch and both landed on the same thing, a fried pork cutlet curry, rice included, which after the climb tasted like the best thing either of us had eaten all trip. We also stopped at a grocery store on the way out of town since our accommodation for the night wasn’t near anywhere to eat, and stocked up on breakfast for the morning.
The legs were pretty done by the time we rolled into Kaiyo. Our accommodation for the night was a little away from the main town, so we grabbed some groceries as we passed through before arriving.
That night we still went out for dinner, a 25 minute walk down some pitch dark roads. Not many street lights around here, but the walk was a nice change of pace from all the biking.
Dinner was another excellent sashimi platter.
Photos
