CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 173 km round trip from Ōtsu - roughly 3 h 54 in the saddle. On the way it passes Ujigami-jinja, Nara Palace Site, Fujiwara Palace Site and back through Nara Palace Site. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
This part of the ride is 30 km of Ujigami-jinja → Nara Palace Site.
Mount Hiei rises between Kyoto and Lake Biwa, and in 788 a young monk named Saichō built a small hermitage on its slopes. It grew into Enryaku-ji, the headquarters of the Tendai school of Buddhism and one of the most powerful religious institutions in Japanese history. Many of the founders of later Buddhist schools, including Hōnen, Shinran, Dōgen and Nichiren, studied here. At its height, the mountain held thousands of temples, and the monastery maintained an army of warrior monks who regularly descended on Kyoto to intimidate the court. In 1571, the warlord Oda Nobunaga, tired of their political meddling, attacked the mountain, burned the temples and killed thousands of people. The monastery was rebuilt in the following decades, and today its halls are spread across the forested summit in three main areas, connected by footpaths and roads. The main hall, the Konpon Chūdō, houses a lamp said to have burned continuously for over a thousand years. Enryaku-ji is part of the UNESCO listing of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto.
Read the complete Enryaku-ji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Enryaku-ji is where the day begins. Next is Ujigami-jinja.
Uji is a small city on the river of the same name, south of Kyoto, and it holds two treasures that face each other across the water. On the west bank stands the Byōdō-in, a temple whose Phoenix Hall, built in 1053, appears on the Japanese ten-yen coin. On the east bank, up a quiet lane, is Ujigami-jinja, a modest shrine whose main hall is considered the oldest surviving Shinto shrine building in Japan, dating from the late Heian period, in the eleventh century. Its simple wooden structure, with a cypress-bark roof, stands in a small courtyard surrounded by trees, and it is far less crowded than the Byōdō-in. Both are part of the UNESCO listing of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto.
Read the complete Ujigami-jinja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ujigami-jinja comes up about 29 km into the recorded legs. Next is Nara Palace Site.
For most of the eighth century, Nara was the capital of Japan. The city, then called Heijō-kyō, was laid out on a grid modelled on the Chinese capital Chang'an, and at its northern end stood the imperial palace, Heijō-kyū, a vast compound of halls, offices and gardens. When the court moved away at the end of the century, the palace was abandoned and the land eventually returned to rice fields. Today the Nara Palace Site is a huge open space on the western side of the modern city, part of the UNESCO-listed Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara.
Read the complete Nara Palace Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 59 km into the recorded legs you reach Nara Palace Site. Next is Fujiwara Palace Site.
Before Nara, before Kyoto, there was Fujiwara-kyō. In 694, the Empress Jitō moved the Japanese court to a new capital in the southern part of the Nara basin, the first in Japan to be laid out on a Chinese-style grid of streets, with the imperial palace at its centre. It lasted only sixteen years, until the court moved north to Nara in 710, but it marked a turning point in the history of the Japanese state.
Read the complete Fujiwara Palace Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fujiwara Palace Site, about halfway. Next is back through Nara Palace Site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Nara Palace Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Nara Palace Site sits at 114 km, about halfway. Next is back through Ujigami-jinja.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ujigami-jinja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ujigami-jinja comes up about 143 km into the recorded legs. Next is Enryaku-ji.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Enryaku-ji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Enryaku-ji closes the day.
Enryaku-ji → Ujigami-jinja is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ujigami-jinja → Nara Palace Site is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Nara Palace Site → Fujiwara Palace Site is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fujiwara Palace Site → back through Nara Palace Site is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Nara Palace Site → back through Ujigami-jinja is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ujigami-jinja → Enryaku-ji is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.