A Trip to Shikoku

It was Ingrid's birthday in October so we took a short holiday to Shikoku, the least visted of Japan's major islands.

Now, while many modes of transport are available, we decided to cycle.

There are many islands in the Inland Sea between Honshu and Shikoku, and there are many bridges between them. It's actually a national park, called Setonaikai, and has superb cycle paths and hardly any traffic on the rare occasions you do have to share the road.

Considering it was late October, we had prepared for bad weather. But it was glorious!

This area is famed for oranges, which are a good accompaniment to ice cream!

After quite a few hours of cycling we got onto te last and longest bridge, from Ohima to Shikoku itself. I'm not gonna pretend I was not flagging at this point, but it was a great trip.

After we ditched hour trusty steeds at the bike hire shop, we got a slow rinky dink local train to the town of Saijo, where we had a fancy hotel.

This might not look like much to the uninitiated, but this hotel room has its own private onsen! Just what your aching buns need after a day in the saddle. A great place to eat crisps and drink (orange flavoured) beer.

We also went out for a fancy dinner in the next door restaurant. We had a private room, but as far as we could tell, there were no other customers. Ingrid is looking super serious because the food has not arrived yet.

It was an amazing dinner. The place is called Musubi, if you are in the area do go!

After a hard day of cycling, obviously the next day we decided to climb the tallest mountain in western Japan, Ishizuchi-san (石鎚山). Because nobody had sore legs. The bus to the trailhead was absolutely packed. The mountain is apparently a popular pilgrimage route. Certainly there were quite a lot of people who did not look very confident on the rocks.

After a short cable ride, the hike started in the usual way -- a long walk in a forest.

However the official pilgrimage route is so steep that these chains are provided at several points to help you ascend the near vertical rock face! If you don't facy it, there is a bypass, but it was pretty good fun!

It was still blue sky above, but the clouds were starting to rise up from the vallet below.

The summit is that pinnacle. It required bit of scrambling, but nothing tricky. Main issue is that it's very busy, and you have to stop and wait for other people to pass.

Looking back from the summit to the shrine, you can see a pretty spectacular ridge line, which seems to extend pretty far, but we had no time for that!

On the way back down we quickly ran into the clouds, which were even worse at te cable car station!

The next day, we headed west. We had to change trains at Matsuyama, so we decided to go for a walk in the rain. (It was not raining when we started...) They have cool old fashioned trams.

And it is surprisingly difficult to see the huge hill in the city centre, atop which is the famous Matsuyama Castle! We had no time ot visit, but we did see it.

Our destination was Ozu, where we stayed in a well preserved historical building. Apparently it used to be a candle merchant's house; now part of a hotel.

We saw a few fishermen trying their luck in the river.

The hotel breakfast is in a different building so we had to wear our hotel yukatas in the street to go there.

Ozu castle! It was partially destroyed in the 19th century, but rebuilt in 2004 using historically correct methods based on old photos from before its destruction.

This is possibly the smallest and cutest train we have yet seen. It was the first of four, increasing, trains that took us home. (Turns out there is a rail bridge and no need to cycle to Shikoku!)