You can take the lift from the cycling highway down to the island, but take note that there are no shops or restaurants there. On a side note, Umashima is the first little island on the Shimanami Kaido, once used for breeding war horses, but is now a quiet place with little beaches and abundant bird life. Fat, fluffy and friendly, it was clear that she is fed quite well by someone within the castle grounds.Īfter passing over Umashima Island at around the 22km mark we had crossed over to Oshima, arriving a little late for lunch. We didn’t have that much time to spend wandering around, most likely because we were distracted by an adorable mackerel tabby cat that roams freely around the grounds. Stage 7: Imabari to OmishimaĮntrance is free but the museum in the keep charges 500 yen, which I suppose is worth paying to see the collection of samurai armour inside. We wanted to make a visit to the Oyamazumi Shrine, which has a museum housing the greatest collection of historical samurai weaponry and armour in the whole of Japan. Each day would be a 50km+ ride without too much of climbing, rides easily completed around sundown. We opted to stretch the ride out to two days, spending one night at a lovely ryokan called Chaume at Omishima. This is because Shikoku was both cheaper and easier to get to from Osaka Airport, considering we could take a bus straight to Tokushima, where we started our cycling tour. Our chosen route was done in reverse of what cyclists normally do, starting in Imabari, Ehime Prefecture and ending in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, instead of the other way around. ![]() Some islands are bigger than others obviously, but you can stretch out your ride significantly if you wander around each one extensively in a single day. If you look at the full route of the highway, it doesn’t circle through all of the islands in entirety, but skirts through some parts only. Just a quick note: You can spend a whole week on the Shimanami Kaido alone, exploring each island in a leisurely fashion. And we were infinitely glad that we did, even though there were many parts of the six islands that we didn’t get to explore. ![]() So we decided to stretch it out a bit further to get a bit more mileage. The gran fondos on Shikoku were obviously not enough to satisfy our inner masochists (every cyclist has one, the difference is how persuasive this hidden demon can be). To be fair, this is what most cyclists will do.īut the Folding Tales crew likes a bit of a sufferfest when they travel, so Eka, Maya and myself wanted to go one step further. Even for a newbie cyclist or a tourist out for a joyride on a rented bike (yes they are available there, even e-bikes), you can finish the entire length of the Shimanami Kaido in a single day. Essentially the highway is a network of bridges that take you up and down one island to the next, and only stretches 70km.
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