Vaucluse Dreamer

This morning started early, as we wanted to get to our next stop, as we had planned a bike ride there.

The drive took us along the mountainous East coast of the Kii Peninsula, and we felt a little like moles, as the road seemed to spend more tie going through mountains, than between them. We have experienced lots of tunnels on this trip, but today seemed quite a civil engineering achievement.

After a couple of hours though, we arrived at our chosen destination for today, a beachfront car park, just below Ise and Shima, at the top of the Kii Peninsula. An area well-known for its pearl fishing and its ‘ama divers’, women who free-dive to collect shellfish and pearls

So much of our time, each evening, has been scanning Google Earth for nice places to stop, and we’ve had some amazing views, and today’s looked perfect, as there was a bike ride we could do, that would take us on a nice loop around the spit of land.

When we arrived, it was everything we had hoped it would be, and we parked with the back of the van, feet from the beach; the waves already attracting surfers, even though it was still before 10am.

The only different thing about this park-up, is that it is the first one we have had to pay for. Every other night, we’ve stayed on free public parking spots, but today’s was going to cost us 1000 yen (£5), but that still seemed cheap for an overnight stay, in this beautiful location.

After coffee (another perk of the van), we changed into our cycle kit and set off on the bikes, on a route that took us on a figure of 8 along the spit.

As soon as we set off, we felt this was going to be a good ride. I suppose we have been disappointed by a few that have taken us along hideously busy roads, and sometimes the drivers don’t seem to grasp the concept of giving bikes enough space. But, I’d looked at all the roads for today’s route and they seemed quiet, with wonderful rolling hills, rather than the punchy climbs we’ve had on others.

The route proved to be everything that I had imagined it would be, and we pedalled along backroads, just crossing the busy spine road and wingled our way through pretty villages, and around bays, as we pottered down to the end of the land.

As we cycled along one bay, we noticed a large red Tori Gate to one side, and decided to take a look at what lay beyond it.

What we found was a beautiful aisle of Tori Gates,

which led us to a pretty shrine, where what appeared to be cat-faces with wishes had been hung to one side.

Of course, we had to find out more and discovered that we had walked into the Katadainari Shrine, which enshrines a white fox. It is said that the white fox arrived in the village in the 1800s, and strange things started to happen. The villagers started to worship it, and from that, the Shrine was established, and has attracted worshippers, as the guardian deity of fishermen and fishing.

It was such a beautiful Shrine, from the entrance to the buildings, and I understand the Main Hall has a pretty painted ceiling, depicting birds and flowers, painted by a renowned local artist too, sadly we couldn’t see that.

We spent a while sitting in the peaceful space and enjoying the sound of the sea, before heading on again, following the road through to the tip of the land, where we had lovely views back along the coast towards the mountains we had driven through, earlier in the day.

When we pedalled on, we had to cross a little bridge only to find that it was being guarded by a cat again. It seems to have been a theme of bridges on the last few rides. So we stopped and chatted with the cat, to get its permission to cross, before heading on again.

The funny thing was that when we cycled back, the cat had moved to the other end of the bridge and we had to stop and go through the whole process again. I’m sure it considered itself to be Gandalf, shouting ‘You cannot pass’, at everyone who came its way.

It turned out to be a perfect cycle ride, and was a great way to explore the small towns and villages of the area. It seems that in the summer this would be a lot busier, with campsites, and other holiday accommodation, but on a sunny, but breezy wednesday, in late October, it was wonderfully quiet.

Arriving back at the van, we pulled out our chairs and sat on the sea-wall watching the sea, and the surfers who were making the most of the clean waves, and autumn sunshine.

You can Watch a video postcard from today, here

It was a wonderfully relaxing way to spend the afternoon, although as the sun dropped, we found ourselves scrabbling to pull on extra layers to keep us warm, whilst we enjoyed the last light of the day, and watched the stars start to emerge in the night sky.

We can’t believe that this time next week, we’ll be on a flight out of Tokyo and this incredible adventure will be over. We have now decided that as the weather is due to be good again tomorrow, that we will delay catching the ferry back towards Tokyo, until Friday, so that we can enjoy another day walking and cycling here.

So time to start planning a route for tomorrow, I think.