Today was our big bike ride day. We woke up and walked to a nearby bike rental place ~7, and by the time we got our e-bikes and took a short ferry across the water to the start of the Shimanami Kaido bike route, it was 8:30 am. We planned to bike one way on the “blue route,” which was ~45 miles until we reached the town of Imabari (i.i.imabari! Cycle Station).
(Note: our bikes were the exact same, which meant Benton’s was pretty small, but it also meant that Lucy could be more liberal with her use of the e-bike assist settings; Benton bikes more regularly than Lucy, so the plan was if Lucy ran low on battery, we could to just switch bikes. This didn’t end up happening, and in hindsight, Lucy could have used more ebike power earlier on).
The weather could not have been more perfect (mostly clear skies, and pretty cool, but very comfortable for biking), and we made our way around the first island (Mukaishima Island), before climbing up to cross the first bridge of the day. On the next island, Innoshima Island, we stopped for coffee daifuku and then biked a bit more before stopping again to get more daifuku; the second daifuku had a whole clementine inside, which was strange but tasty).
We continued biking along onto Ikuchi Island, where Benton stopped to use a restroom. When Benton came out, a man pulled over and offered us some oranges (lots of oranges were growing on the island). We managed to talk him into only giving us 4 (the oranges were tasty). 🍊
We continued along on Ikuchi Island, stopping to explore Kousanji (a temple that had a really neat cave feature) as well as The Hill Of Hope, before stopping to get a quick lunch at 和食 万作 (and grabbing some lemon daifuku, Benton’s favorite of the day, from Setoda Baigetsudou).
We biked for quite a bit longer (until we got to the island of ĹŚmishima Island), which had a nice biker rest stop area (we got some fish cake as well as some ice cream). At this point, we were making pretty good progress, so we decided to take the slightly more scenic route around the island (instead of continuing straight along through to the next island).
After making it about halfway around the scenic route, we realized that we were falling behind schedule, so we took a shortcut back to the biker rest stop where we had started. After a short pee break, we continued on. At this point, Lucy’s quads were pretty tired, and she switched her bike into the maximum assist mode (“sport”).
We were rapidly running out of daylight, so we didn’t make too many stops the rest of the way. We got to the final bridge just after sunset (while there was still light out), and the view was super pretty. We then continued along the final bridge (2nd Kurushima-Kaikyo Bridge, by far the longest bridge of the day), and into Imabari, where we arrived right at 6:30.
The next (and final) bus back was at 7:30, so we returned our bikes and then grabbed some quick banh mi from BetoLabo. Once we got on the bus, it was about an hour to our bus stop, followed by a 15-minute walk (through an eerily dead town) to take the ferry back into Onomichi. Lucy slept most of the way.
Finally, we got some food at CoCo Ichibanya in Onomichi, before crashing for the night.
All in all, we biked just under 65 miles (due to our scenic detour). A fun, exhausting day.
Note: This entire day of the trip happened largely thanks to Benton’s former coworker, Dawsin, who briefly lived in Japan and wanted to go on this bike route, but didn’t end up finding the time. 10/10 recommendation.
