Yunogo Onsen to Hiroshima
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As Ben had predicted, the day dawned with heavy rain, which petered off a bit by 6am. But as we had pre-booked all of our accommodation, there was no changing of plans. So we got dressed in our wet weather gear and set off into the grey dawn..
We headed off to our first waypoint, a natural-hewn rock tunnel. Part-way there we split up as my GPS showed me a nice windy way and Ben wanted to stay on main roads in the rainy conditions. I should have stuck with Ben – the road I took got _very_ rural and the forks it wanted me to take led to several closed roads. In the end I ended up back on the main road where I tried to make good time to catch up with Ben. I never saw him and eventually ended up at the rock tunnel shortly after 9am, our agreed-upon meeting time.
I spent half an hour or so there, chatting to some rock climbers and another biker who turned up, but eventually decided to head off as Ben still hadn’t turned up and I had no signal. Our arrangement was that the we’d wait for a bit at the tunnel, then head off to the next combini to wait somewhere dry. Turns out Ben had stopped to warm up a bit and then decided to wait at his stop for a message from me before continuing on. So… back to the rock tunnel I went to try to meet him there again, and this time he turned up a few minutes after I got there.
As I had already seen the tunnel and surrounding area I explored a cave for a bit – it went in surprisingly far and after the initial crouch opened into a rather large passage with several bats roosting on the ceiling. Pretty nifty, although no stalactites – either the cave is too new, or no water can seep down. By now the weather had finally cleared a bit and the heavy rain petered out to a drizzle and then turned dry.
We set off again, this time following Ben’s GPS to avoid the tiny road which mine insisted to follow and soon were on the main roads. Not long after it guided us onto a tiny road though, so I took over, guided us past a very large dam and reservoir, and eventually we came out near a highway. We had a great ramen lunch, then jumped on the highway to Hiroshima. Boring but effective.
Once in Hiroshima we did a quick photoshoot of the Bomb Dome with the bikes before checking in to the hotel – just as it started pouring down rain again. Oh well, with a couple of umbrellas borrowed from the hotel we wandered off through town for some sight-seeing, but as I had already done the museum several years ago, I decided to head back to the hotel and warm up and meet with Ben again later for dinner.
We met up for dinner in an okonomiyaki restaurant, which was full of foreigners. Guess we found all the tourists! Dinner was quite nice, after which Ben headed back to the hotel and I wandered around Hiroshima for a bit checking out the lit up streets. On the way back to the hotel I saw a cheap Thai massage place and decided to spoil myself.
Ride: X km
Stay: Oriental Hotel Hiroshima, no bike parking (but paid parking across the road); basically an upmarket business hotel.
