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 93 km round trip from Nagasaki - roughly 2 h 03 in the saddle. On the way it passes Takashima Coal Mine/ Takashima Coal Mine, Shitsu Village in Sotome and Glover House and Office. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Thomas Blake Glover arrived in Nagasaki in 1859 as a young Scot in his early twenties, and within a decade he had become one of the most influential foreigners in Japan. His house stands on Minamiyamate hill above the harbour, built in the early 1860s, and it is the oldest surviving Western-style building in the country. It has wide verandas, a stone-flagged garden and a view of the bay that must have been a sales tool in itself. Glover traded tea and ships and, more controversially, guns and warships, supplying the domains that overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate. He also helped smuggle young Choshu samurai out of Japan to study in London, and later worked with Mitsubishi on shipbuilding. Some historians say he brought the Industrial Revolution to Japan through the back door.
Read the complete Glover House and Office write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Glover House and Office is where the day begins. Next is Takashima Coal Mine/ Takashima Coal Mine.
Out in the sea off Nagasaki, a low island called Takashima was the place where modern Japan dug its first Western-style coal shaft. In 1868, in the very year of the Meiji Restoration, the Scottish merchant Thomas Glover went into partnership with the Saga domain to sink a shaft here using steam-powered machinery from Britain. The mine later passed to Mitsubishi and became one of the pillars of the company's rise, fuelling steamships, factories and the rapid industrialisation of the country. Takashima is now part of the Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution, listed by UNESCO in 2015.
Read the complete Takashima Coal Mine/ Takashima Coal Mine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Takashima Coal Mine/ Takashima Coal Mine comes up about 16 km into the recorded legs. Next is Shitsu Village in Sotome.
Sotome is a stretch of rugged coast north of Nagasaki, where steep hills drop into the East China Sea, and the village of Shitsu clings to its slopes. During the centuries when Christianity was banned in Japan, the farmers and fishermen of this remote area kept their faith in secret, passing down prayers and rituals from generation to generation, hiding their devotion behind Buddhist and Shinto practices. When the ban was lifted in 1873, many of them returned to the Catholic Church. The Shitsu church, built in 1882 under the direction of the French missionary Marc Marie de Rotz, stands on a hill above the sea, a simple white building with a low profile designed to resist the strong winds. De Rotz was more than a priest: he taught the villagers to make bread, pasta and textiles, built a clinic and a workshop, and his legacy is still honoured locally. The village and church are part of the UNESCO listing of the Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region.
Read the complete Shitsu Village in Sotome write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 62 km into the recorded legs you reach Shitsu Village in Sotome. Next is back through Takashima Coal Mine/ Takashima Coal Mine.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Glover House and Office write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Takashima Coal Mine/ Takashima Coal Mine, late in the day. Next is Glover House and Office.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Glover House and Office write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Glover House and Office. That is the ride.
Glover House and Office → Takashima Coal Mine/ Takashima Coal Mine is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Takashima Coal Mine/ Takashima Coal Mine → Shitsu Village in Sotome is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Shitsu Village in Sotome → Back to Glover House and Office is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.