A bridge to long

Matsuyama to Imbari

Matsuyama apart from the castle is another bland Japanese city. But following the coastline from Hories town is quite pleasant with the Seto sea on the left. The road is so, so some parts are unkept other parts are well maintained, still the trucks are present.

I can’t say much about Matsuyama to Imbari , it’s nice as these screen shots from Google show.

As you near Imbari there are road signs which tell of the underground storage of oil. Huge underground storage of oil, hard to believe but Japan has about 90 days supply and that’s a lot of oil. All underground.

Now as my phone has frozen and been dropped into a river it wasn’t behaving. So when I arrived in Imbari looking for possibly the longest bridge in the world. I had to rely on asking for directions. Asking for directions from locals is an interesting affair. This time I saw a young couple on bicycles, I stop, and in Japanese I ask where is the bridge. They were from Taiwan. Very pleasant people , so cheerful.

Off I go picking up a blue line on the road showing the cycle path until it disappears; you call upon divine intervention and it reappears, seriously Japan the locals may know where to go,  but think about the point of road signs. They are there to guide people who don’t know how to get a particular place. One shouldn’t have interrupt a divine being in order to find the longest bridge in the world.

Once the blue line had been found and the road wound up to the bridge, I let the deity go and resumed my travels , I mean I can’t screw this up , it’s a bridge 

Creak, groan, creak, groan ; up the on ramp onto the bridge, and who should I meet ! Yes the lovely Tawanese couple. What nice people, if they are representative of the country then I want to go there,it was a beautiful day. Warm sunny and the scenery was nice, couldnt complain.

The bridge is about 70km long ( http://wikitravel.org/en/Shimanami_Kaido_Bikeway) a bit of a cut and paste follows as well , I cant be arsed repeating something one can look up by ones self !:

The Nishi-Seto Expressway, also known as the Seto-uchi Shimanami-Kaido (highway above sea), was opened to traffic on 1 May 1999. The bridge connects Onomichi City in Hiroshima and Imabari City in Ehime, as well as six islands (namely Mukai-shima, Inno-shima, Ikuchi-jima, Omi-shima, Hakata-jima, and O-shima islands) within the Geiyo Islands situated near the center of the Seto Inland Sea. The completion of the Shimanami-Kaido has made Ehime more easily accessible from Honshu and driving through the Geiyo Islands possible. The highway also allows passage by bicycle and on foot.

With unique island-to-island bridges, such as the Tatara-ohashi Bridge (the longest askew-arched bridge in the world) and the Kurushima-kaikyo-ohashi Bridge (a triple suspension-type grand bridge), the Shimanami-Kaido provides brand-new scenery in harmony with insular nature. The best viewing spots to overlook the bridges over the Seto Inland Sea and various islands are the Hanaguri Seto observation platform on Omi-shima Island and Mt. Kiro-san on O-shima Island. Thanks to the mild climate, there are many flower viewing spots, such as the Yoshiumi Rose Garden (where you can see various kinds of roses collected from all parts of the world), Citrus Park Setoda (which boasts citrus plants as the main attraction), as well as the Inno-shima Flower Center.

Anyway along I went till about 2pm when lunch called. Came off the bridge and just off the road was a hidden park?, I didnt want to move! The sun was shining, lunch was good and a nice cup of tea.

On the subject of tea. I’m English, I’m not sure one realizes this ! And our DNA needs tea. Now a good cup of tea is an art, an art derived from centuries of culture. Being from the east end of london where tea was stolen from the docks and milk and money was scarce, tea tea needed to be HOT AND STRONG!; Good quality tea leaves , not this “earl grey sweepings from the bottom of the warehouse floor packaged in a lovely box. DONT get me started on starbucks lavender earl grey pure shyt. Thats all I’ll say on that!

Once you have the the tea leaves, one cup, one spoonful ! Now add milk; A LITTLE MILK. Not half a cow, or the entire production of New Zealand dairying industry for 2016. A little milk and you will enter what some religions call nirvana.

So you can now guess that , it was late when I finally rejoined the bridge. 5 pm was approaching fast. The next island was nice enough the road followed the inland sea and some lovely little villages.

After coming off the bridge onto Ma island, I came past;. Sunset beach.

Let me explain sunset beach. Manicured into hell .

A well manicured dry lawn with a stage and a cinder block toilet inter-dispersed with the cheapest tannoys you can find spewing forth J-pops. Well it’s 5pm and I can be arsed looking for a place tonight so I decided to stay. It had showers. Now bear in mind I am the only one there.

1000 yen later and the tent up. The music stops , thank you. I cooked tea then set about showering and washing clothes. ( sunlight soap and elbow grease).

The next morning , 7am the tannoys start, first to tell you that the cycle path is open and that Mrs Jones at number 63 has a bad case  of thrombosis and cannot join the glee club coach outing to the community centre. Then silence . Until 8am then the city hall informs you that it’s time to get up. Then silence. Until 9am when the J-pops start.

By now I was ready to kill. Anything and anyone. So I made a comment to a worker about the noise. He agrees and off he goes. About a hour later the music stops. I nearly died. Some scratching and shuffling leaked from the cheapest tannoys on earth then suddenly enka burst forth. FK. The bastard’s had heard my complaint , but because the rules state this is how to create a nice environment is to pollute the air with akb and thinking of the customer , the fkers had searched and found a record from possibly the 1930s of enka.

Insert total joy and completeness in peace and harmony. Not.

But what was to come would more than make up for this. and it was to beat the plastic whale!

Its all down hill from here !

Its all down hill from here !

The 197 towards yasuhara is a nice road winding up the hill with the river on the left then drops down into a remarkably clean well ordered town, looks like there is some money.
The houses are European in style and none of the clutter such as telegraph poles and the inevitable rooftop spaghetti that has destroyed Japanese towns.
Going full retard and turning right, along the 440 we follow the Yasuhara river, until we get to our favorite pastime, tunnels. This one is new with a reasonable foot path on the right hand side, and its downhill! so one cant complain.!
Nothing to report , I  stopped at a seven eleven for a snack. Then following the 440 which changes to the 33 and back to the 440 in as many meters !
Luckily we didnt need google maps !
Then down a long long down hill and I do mean long into Tobe! lovely.  beautiful views over the town but that wind , a little chilly it could be said.
There is nothing I can say about Matsuyama. Tobe has some history behind it I think. It was a samuri clan who opposed the boys in Tokyo and is something to do with ryomas escape route. Im not sure.  Matsuyama is just another Japanese town , with a big road going to the centre,
It does have a castle.  Insert 3kg of pure excitement, not.
You can probably guess by now I have no to very little interest in “old buildings”  Let me quantify this. “Old buildings” for the sake of looking at old building because this is “history “ is boring. But near me, Koganei has an architectural museum. In this park there is a collection of typical Japanese buildings and from an engineering point of view, fascinating. Old castles and temples  because its history and you are under some obligation to “do it “ , not happening.
After the long decent into Tobe the road levels out and I started to pedal, well I was pedalling and things were going round but forward motions were eluding me.
Stop at a 7/11.  Wheel off , sprag clutch not catching inside the hub , how to fix it? I know hit it , hit it untill its fixed;  that works for machinery and bicycles.
Little did I know, this would come back to haunt me with 9 km to my house at 5 in the morning!
My mate in New Zealand reckons he is an important fella and I never really thought he was but I was wrong , old Horie has a whole town named after him.
I stayed the night in Horie’s place on a what might be called a beach behind a sea wall.
Insert a rant on plastic.
How do you start ?  How can you point out the garbage on the beaches.  Its almost like the Japanese are a related to the mythical Vogons. The buildings,  cars, beaches anything that looks like “nature” has to be tamed , concreteded over and garbage spread around.  Now I know that the average person is not like this and the garbage is mostly not put there on purpose, sometimes you see it. The smoking person stubbing out the cigarette and leaving the butts on the ground but by enlarge the garbage is blown into the sea and onto the beach,.
He is the problem, plastic. The beaches are disgusting, lakes , rivers anywhere there is a high concentration of Japanese people,   its the local residents, they by a lack of thought have destroyed their environment.  The funny thing is; IMHO surrounded by a lack of beauty and nature destroyed by garbage, the Japanese seek beauty, the vacation to New zealand beacause its  “nature”!
Well Japan could be beautiful  IF the locals cleaned the fking place up!
Now how the pollution spreads isnt by malice , its by accident. You buy a bento, take the lid of and while you are eating the wind blows the lid away. You try to find it but cant. The lid blows into the sea and up onto the beaches.
We and especially the Japanese MUST STOP USING PLASTIC. STOP IT. The buck stops basically with the manufacturers, and they wont do anything unless their bottom line is hurt. Stop buying products with plastic wrapping , print out a standard letter and spam the fkers.
Rant over.
One good thing about horie’s place is there was a supermarket within a few min walk,
Dinner was french bread , a foot long “sub”....

The next day I spent half hour picking up the trash, Then a second cup of coffee and everything packed away on the road by 9, so that was good.

Leaving Hories place and following the road to Imbari. the weather was nice and the road was basically ok. Following the route 11 towards Nihamathe footpath was wide enough but the 11 is a main route so trucks and cars and noise nothing to report.
When the road started to follow the ocean things started to improve. Stumbling upon a cycle way I stopped to take a photo of these enormous ships, I have no idea what these things ship; cars, oil or cocaine? they are big!.
Battling a dying phone, I managed to head towards imbari township where I stopped picked up a bento from the supermarket and put the washing though a coin laundry, I maybe on the road but there is no excuse to look homeless.
Clean and fed I headed of towards the bridge. Surely a 70km bridge should be easy to find !