Milan's bike rides

So this was it. Not quite the whole way around, but nevertheless a total of 465km in three days. Click here to see how he did last year. The one thing I haven’t mentioned this year is the heat. This is Japan. This is summer. It is hot. Nevertheless, he was probably riding at top temperatures of about 34°C to 35°C and that’s at least 3 to 4 degrees lower than last year. It makes a difference!

He says he wants to finish the route next year and then possibly take on the neighbouring island of Kyushu … it’s a bit bigger!

You’ve seen the picture on the right before, but I thought you’d like to see Milan on the morning the adventure started. Taken at the same place (outside the hotel) with Milan in a somewhat pensive stance.

Follow the red line. Milan left Mugi in the southeast of Shikoku at 8am and reached his destination some 150km away in Takamatsu almost exactly 12 hours later. When we caught up with him he looked remarkably ‘genki’ (well, good, strong) and his legs were pumping away right to the end. He said he’d kept telling himself “only an hour to go … for the last three hours”. More details later.

A good breakfast (his “best meal of the trip” he said) to start the day and then he was off on a 17km gruelling coast road with lots of ups and down. Nevertheless, he made good time to the city of Tokushima where he had to take shelter for a couple of hours from a heavy thunderstorm. He then raced the next 40km to where we met him and he followed us in to his goal at the Parkside Hotel in Takamatsu where it all started.

It seems such a shame to bring you all to the island of Shikoku and only write about Milan’s travels. The “Journey of the Soul’ mentioned in the title doesn’t refer to Milan’s bike ride, but to the Pilgrimage to the 88 Sacred Places of Shikoku. It is a 1,200km Buddhist pilgrimage around the circumference of Shikoku. Unlike Milan’s mad dash, the pilgrimage is traditionally done on foot and can take anywhere from 30 to 60 days to complete. Here’s someone who has done it. Once the children have flown the nest, and while you’ve still got the use of your legs, maybe this journey could be your start on the path to enlightenment! (The photo below shows a detail of Temple 24: Hotsumisaki-ji in Muroto where Milan cycled through on Day 2.)

Follow the red line. Milan restarted his ride at Kochi on the left and kept going for 145km until he reached Mugi. As mentioned in the previous post, it was pretty much flat all the way along the coastline. He stopped for lunch at a whale museum and turned down the opportunity to eat whale meat!

Milan rolled into his ‘Minshuku/Ryokan’ at about 6pm saying ‘Today was quite easy’. He went about 12km further than originally planned to try and make tomorrow easier and stayed in a little fisherman’s village called ‘Mugi’. It was pretty much a flat road along the coast and he went through a 10-12km stretch which was signposted ‘Estimated Tsunami Inundation Area’. He wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, but I think we can guess! The picture below was taken in Mugi (not by Milan!) and is typical of the coastline he has been passing.

A quick reminder of what Milan is doing his ride for. Although the video below was taken two days after the tsunami, we’ve heard from people who have gone to Tohoku to do relief work that the devastation is still very much in evidence. If you would like to sponsor Milan, the link to his sponsorship page is on the top-right hand corner of the website.

As mentioned yesterday Milan had gear problems. You can see from the elevation graph below that he would be facing far tougher (and longer) uphills today as he cuts in from the coast and goes through the mountains. The Obon Holidays meant most of the cycle shops in Matsuyama were shut and those open couldn’t fix his bike. So taking our cue from Falstaff — ‘The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life’ — we thought it best not to risk Milan riding in one gear and getting stuck in mountains in the dark. Consequently, he cut across to Kochi on public transport where a specialist bike shop was open and fixed his gears for him. He’ll be riding on tomorrow on another long stretch along the coast.

Follow the red line. He started on the right hand side in Takamatsu and finished in Matsuyama. The distance was a whopping 170km and all the more impressive because (as mentioned before) he did the last 50km with jammed gears. This will almost certainly mean he won’t be able to go over the mountains tomorrow and we’ll have to re-route him. More on that tomorrow.

It was an early 6.30am start from the hotel in Takamatsu and after quite a downpour overnight, the temperature was an inviting 27°C. He followed us out for the first 25km, and then cycled off towards two imposing hills. The first 75km or so seemed to have gone fairly smoothly. We didn’t hear much from him. There was one little hiccup when he took a wrong turning onto a minor road, but that probably saved him a few kilometers. He then hit a major problem at about 131km which was the beginning of a 19km uphill climb. His gears jammed at a high gear and more of that later. Here’s a graphic (below the Japanese translation) of the elevation of his journey to Matsuyama. The last peak on that graphic makes it look like he scaled Everest, but in fact it is over 19km. To make things worse though, it started to rain as well.

Finally, a quote from Milan: “The tunnels are really scary. There are no pavements for pedestrians or cyclists and there are huge trucks coming through and you’re never sure if they’ve seen you or not.”

We brought Milan to Takamatsu by car. We’re in the center of the city where they are having their summer festival. The journey begins tomorrow.

This was the map we used last year (hence 2010 on the front cover) and luckily for us it includes Shikoku. You can see the little post-its on the copy Milan held with him last year. Departure for Shikoku on Sunday and Milan rides off from Takamatsu on Monday 15 August.

Many thanks to Rob Smyth in The Guardian for giving this site a mention in his Over by Over report from the Third Test Match between England and India. If you click on that link, scroll down to the 31st Over. For those that don’t, here’s a screenshot of the entry.

The 66th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Click here for more photos.

We’ve set up a page to accept donations for the ‘Save the Children’ Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Appeal. Only give if you feel you can. Seriously, no pressure at all. Click here to go to the Milan’s Bike Rides Appeal at JustGiving.com

It’s summer! It’s hot! It’s time for another ride! This year Milan has set himself the challenge of riding 720km around the island of Shikoku. It is going to be a sponsored ride in aid of Save the Children Fund Japan Earthquake and Tsunami appeal and we’ll be posting more details about that tomorrow. In the meantime here’s a map of his route. Starting at the green arrow but heading west from Takamatsu towards Ozu … the red line depicts last year’s route. It should take 6 days. If this site is new to you, scroll down to read what Milan did last year.

… but here are some facts anyway.

Duration: 4 days
Distance: 425 kilometers
Highest temperature during ride: 38.8°C
Lowest temperature during ride: 27°C
Average temperature (approx.): 35°C
Top speed achieved: 61kph (downhill into Hiroshima)

Milan set off from his hotel in Takehara at a comparatively leisurely time of 10.30am. He only had 60km or so to do, but potentially this was his toughest day because he was going through the mountains to save time. He later confirmed that it was indeed his toughest day because of the heat and length of the climbs rather than the inclines themselves. He actually moved faster than I was anticipating and when he called for navigational instructions I couldn’t find his location because he was much further ahead than I thought he could possibly be … that was his arrival in the city mentioned below.

And then – for reasons I couldn’t understand at the time – he took much longer to get to the Atomic Bomb Dome than he should have at the pace he was going. The picture below is one of the reasons.

He plays a baseball game on his PlayStation Portable in which he has plays at the Zoom Zoom stadium where the Hiroshima Carp play their home games. He said he became a “tourist” for a while.

It was as he was approaching the Atomic Bomb Dome that I got the idea of looking for a webcam at the Atomic Bomb Dome … and lo and behold there was one and controllable at that. Try it yourself (Japan daylight time) by clicking on the link in the previous sentence. We were able to see moving pictures (not stills) of Milan at the Dome and talk to him on his mobile. Milan’s aunties and cousin in Australia and Switzerland also saw him as did DJ in Tokyo.

From there he went to a friend’s house in Hiroshima (up a very steep hill which he still had the energy to cycle almost to the top) to pick up a cycle bag we’d posted to him, then cycled down to Hiroshima station where he dismantled his bike and got on a bullet train back to Kyoto (see picture below) and home. Pretty much his first words on arrival were, “it’s so good to be back in Kyoto”.

There’ll be more posts as we get some of his stories out of him and I decide the best way to put up the pictures he took en route.

The last day with the shortest distance to complete. On paper this was just under 60km.

It took 4 days to get to Hiroshima, but a mere 1 hour and 43 minutes to get back on the bullet train. The picture shows Milan getting off the bullet train at Kyoto station with his bike in a black bag on his shoulder!

We saw him live on the webcam at the Atom Bomb Dome at around 4pm. That’s him in the foreground. More later.

He arrived into Hiroshima city sometime around 14:30. He’s headed for the Peace Park and the Dome.

Once again the visual for how far Milan covered on Day 3. On paper it was 105km.

Milan’s room mate at the youth hostel last night was also a Kyoto resident who lives very near us apparently. Maybe they stayed up talking because Milan got off to a late start and then I had immense difficulty guiding him off the hostel mountain and back on the road. When he did find his route, he still had to detour a bit because Route 2 was out of bounds to cyclists for a distance longer than we had thought. It was 11 am before he had travelled his first 10km with a further 90km or so left.

He kicked on from there though and approached his destination of Takehara at around 8pm in the dark. If it had been a full moon the view he would have seen as he hugged the coast of the Seto Inland Sea might have looked something like this.

Our friend Wikipedia says, “The coastal area of the Inland Sea is one of the most famous tourist destinations in Japan. Even before Japan opened to foreigners in the middle of the 19th century, the sea’s beauty was praised and introduced to the Western world by those who visited Japan, including Philipp Franz von Siebold, and after the country’s opening, Ferdinand von Richthofen and Thomas Cook.”

Within striking distance of his goal now. Less than 60km to cover tomorrow!

Here’s a great little graphic which shows you the temperatures faced by Milan in the 12 hour period between 7am and 7pm … admittedly he was fast asleep in bed at 7am, not actually getting out until 9.30 or so, but more about that later. Hit the play button to see the temperature change.

And the hottest place in Japan today? Fukuyama in Hiroshima Prefecture where Milan passed through when the temperature hit its peak of 38.8°C.

This is another post that Milan will probably gloss over, but hey we’re on a tour of western Japan here and you might as well learn something along the way. All over the world there are pockets of culture (more often than not in the form of museums) hidden away here and there. Big cities like Paris have small places like the Musée Marmottan, and small cities like Kurashiki have the Ohara Museum of Art. For a city that almost none of you (non-Japan residents anyway) have heard of to have such a gem of a museum is nothing short of remarkable. Go to this page on the Museum’s website to see some of the paintings they have in their collection. The picture above is one of my favourite paintings exhibited there – Ferdinand Hodler’s ‘The Woodcutter’ … and yes, as you can see, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris also has a copy of the same painting.

Milan’s youth hostel was just minutes away from the Ohara Museum.

Here’s the visual of how far Milan went on Day 2. On paper it was 102km. I won’t bother posting the weather map. It is exactly the same as yesterday.

After some 100 kilometers or so, Milan rolled up at his Youth Hostel in Kurashiki in broad daylight at 6.30pm. He got there later than I thought he would and that was mainly because he’d stopped in front of a big hospital for a bit of a rest and fallen asleep. He was, at that stage, only a few kilometers away from his destination. The hostel is on quite a steep hill and they don’t provide food there so he went to the nearest restaurant for his meal. Of course it was dark by the time he came out. These are his words to describe the journey back.

It was pitch back coming back up the hill with no lights anywhere. The whole road up is surrounded by graves and that hill is a category 2 climb. I was so scared I absolutely raced it back to the top of the hill. I used up more energy in that short ride than I did the whole day getting here.

It certainly made me laugh. Then, I read this review of the hostel on ‘Trip Advisor’ written by a guy from Toulouse. For those of you who don’t click on that link, here are couple of snippets.

Don’t go there

- it’s far from the train station (40 mn walk, assuming you don’t get lost)
- even by bus, you still have to walk up a hill for 10 mn through a dodgy area and a cemetary
- the guy at the reception is the most unpleasant Japanese I’ve ever met, cold as ice

Clearly our man from Toulouse shares Milan’s thoughts on the cemetery and Japanese readers will also see that the 3rd of the three reviews corroborates the sentiments on the character of the guy at reception.

A final word on the heat. The news programmes are spending a long time discussing the heat wave that is going on here at the moment. It really is quite phenomenally hot. It is also unfortunate that Milan is in the hottest part of the country. I will be advising him he can give up anytime he wants. He hasn’t said a single word indicating he wants to. On the contrary I’m convinced he wants to see this through, but the weather doesn’t look like its going to abate until at least the weekend. He is taking on board plenty of liquids and we are telling him to eat even if he doesn’t feel hungry (doesn’t seem to be a problem so far!). He certainly is a tough little cookie!

When Milan reads this blog later, this entry won’t interest him much. “Pottery? What were you doing writing about pottery? And what’s that cup doing up there?” Well, pottery is “one of Japan’s oldest art forms, dating back to the Neolithic period” (read more on Wikipedia), and the Bizen style of pottery is one of Japan’s oldest pottery making techniques, introduced in the Heian (794-1185) period. Indeed Bizen is one of the six remaining kilns of medieval Japan – again (read more on Wikipedia).

So what’s all that got to do with Milan’s trip? Well the very center of all things Bizen is the village of Imbe where Milan stopped for lunch today. What he didn’t know was that he has been there before to try his own hand at making Bizen pottery back in 2003. You see the result up there. Not exactly a museum piece, but he was only 9 at the time.

Milan set off from his hotel sometime after 7am this morning. The map below shows temperatures along the coastline Milan will be travelling.

You can see it is already above 25°C at 7am. The weather forecast for the rest of the day isn’t any better. Hot. Hot. Hot. He’ll have to slow his pace down.

Edited later: I’ve changed the original static picture to a moving temperature map for 7am to 7pm on 18 August.

Here’s a visual depiction of the distance covered on Day 1. On paper it was 153km.

Milan arrived at his hotel at 7.30 pm. In the end his wireless CatEye odometer said he had done 174km.

He did go wildly off course so it is possible, but his original route had him doing 158km. We don’t think he was that far off course. Still let’s say 174km. He sounded tired “standing up feels funny”, but he’ll be leaving his hotel at 7am tomorrow morning hoping to do another 140km or so. More updates on the morrow.

He passed the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge sometime after 3pm.

Again, lifted straight from Wikipedia:

he Akashi-Kaikyō Bridge (明石海峡大橋, Akashi Kaikyō Ō-hashi), also known as the Pearl Bridge, has the longest central span of any suspension bridge in the world, at 1,991 metres (6,532 ft). It was completed in 1998 and links the city of Kobe on the mainland of Honshū to Iwaya on Awaji Island by crossing the busy Akashi Strait. It carries part of the Honshū-Shikoku Highway. Read more about the bridge here.

The weather was cool – 26 degrees celsius – when Milan set off at 0515. Pictures will follow when he gets back, but for now here are snippets of conversation on the route out of Kyoto. I was in the car and he was either following or going on ahead.

Joe (through the car window): “You’ve gone too far, turn left and follow me.”

Milan duly turned left and then at a traffic light, went on ahead and then sailed past another road we could have taken to correct our course.

Joe (frantically and finally reaching Milan on his mobile and with raised voice): “Come back, you’ve gone too far again.”

Milan returns, I shout through the window, “we have to turn right at the traffic lights and then left on Kujo”. Milan shouts back, “it’s no good telling me street names, I don’t know Kyoto.” Shaking my head in disbelief, I guide him to Kujo and then onwards. What on earth is he going to do in towns he doesn’t even know the names of – if he doesn’t know his own home town? :+(

Here’s a picture of the bridges at the confluence (a new word Milan learned today!) of the rivers Yodo, Uji and Kizu. In its own way it is quite a geographical spectacle. Wide open spaces carved out by the waters flowing down the mountains from three different directions. There is certainly more time to appreciate that sort of thing when following at cycle pace.

I took him 30 km out of Kyoto and left him on a cycle path on the Yodo river in Osaka.

Joe: “Good luck and cycle safely. I’m sorry I shouted at you earlier. Don’t shout at your own children. Though that’s probably too late now.”

He smiled and went on his way. All he had to do was go down the river, cross at a certain bridge and then find the cycle path 1km further down. Errrr … ‘all’. Anyway, it all went pear-shaped. I was back in Kyoto when I got a call.

Milan: “I’ve been riding on the small river for ages now.”
Joe: “Do you know where you are? If not, show someone pages 28 and 39 on the map and ask them exactly where you are. Call me back when you know.” Some 30 minutes later I got the call.

Milan: “I’ve gone totally off course, but I know exactly where I am now. I’m going to take Route 171 all the way down pages 28 and 39 and join Route 2 at the end.”

The temperature was 31 degrees celsius at 8am, and 33 degrees at 9am. It is probably about 35 degrees as I write this at noon.

He’s doing OK! :+)

Normally on 16 August we would be going to river to see the mountains of Kyoto burn. The following picture isn’t quite the view you get from the river, but you get the idea.

This following bit is taken entirely from Wikipedia.

Gozan no Okuribi (五山送り火), more commonly known as Daimonji (大文字), is one of the iconic festivals of Kyoto, Japan. It is the culmination of the O-Bon festival on August 16th, in which five giant bonfires are lit on mountains surrounding the city. It signifies the moment when the spirits of deceased family members, who are said to visit this world during O-Bon, are believed to be returning to the spirit world—thus the name Okuribi (送り火) (roughly, “send-off fire”). Read more here.

It is so iconic that Google paid homage on google.co.jp today.

We didn’t have time to go. Early start tomorrow.

Here are some photos of the man behind the bike … Kazu Matsumura. It is fairly safe to say that without him the Nagoya trip wouldn’t have happened, which of course means there’d have been no Hiroshima plan either.

If you find yourself in Kyoto and need your bicycle fixed go to Kazu Matsumura.

The final touches before the big ride.

And we’re all set.

This is the destination.

Of course it doesn’t look quite like that now. It looks more like this.

Projected date of departure is still Tuesday 17 August.

This is my route to Hiroshima. It may well change, but for now this is it.

This blog will probably have a very short lifespan so read it while you can.

Last week I rode 165km from Kyoto to Nagoya along the route you can see below.

A typhoon caught me out on the way back and I only cycled half the route back. I’m now planning a trip from Kyoto to Hiroshima. Depending on the route I could be cycling 485km. As long as this blog is up and running properly by the time I leave you’ll be able to follow my progress here.