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 306 km round trip from Nagasaki - roughly 12 h 02 in the saddle. The stops in between: Takashima Coal Mine/ Hashima Coal Mine, Ono Village in Sotome, Villages on Kuroshima Island and back through Ono Village in Sotome. An island ride, so the sea is never far.
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/ Hashima Coal Mine.
From the sea, Hashima looks like a battleship: a small rocky island off Nagasaki surrounded by high concrete walls, crowded with tall, empty apartment blocks. The Japanese call it Gunkanjima, battleship island, and it is the most famous ruin of Japan's industrial age. Mitsubishi mined coal here from undersea seams from the late nineteenth century, and as the mine grew the island was extended with land reclaimed from the sea and built up with concrete housing, schools, a hospital and shops. At its peak it was one of the most densely populated places on Earth. When the mine closed in 1974, everyone left within weeks, and the island has been slowly crumbling ever since.
Read the complete Takashima Coal Mine/ Hashima Coal Mine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Takashima Coal Mine/ Hashima Coal Mine comes up about 22 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ono Village in Sotome.
For more than two centuries Christianity was banned in Japan, and in the villages along the Sotome coast north of Nagasaki, communities practised their faith in secret, disguising prayers as Buddhist chants and hiding images of the Virgin as the bodhisattva Kannon. These were the Hidden Christians, the Kakure Kirishitan, and their villages, including Ono, are part of the World Heritage listing of Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region, inscribed in 2018. At Ono the small Ono church, built by the French missionary Marc Marie de Rotz in the late nineteenth century after the ban was lifted, has thick walls built in a local technique of stones bound with mortar, known as de Rotz walls.
Read the complete Ono Village in Sotome write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 77 km into the recorded legs you reach Ono Village in Sotome. Next is Villages on Kuroshima Island.
For more than two centuries after Christianity was banned in Japan in the early seventeenth century, small communities of believers kept their faith in secret, disguising prayers as Buddhist chants and images of the Virgin Mary as Buddhist figures. Kuroshima, a small island off the coast of Sasebo in Nagasaki Prefecture, was one of the places where these hidden Christians lived and farmed, and when the ban was lifted in the 1870s they emerged openly. Their villages are part of the UNESCO listing of Hidden Christian sites in the Nagasaki region, listed in 2018.
Read the complete Villages on Kuroshima Island write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villages on Kuroshima Island, about halfway. Next is back through Ono Village in Sotome.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ono Village in Sotome write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ono Village in Sotome sits at 143 km, about halfway. Next is back through Takashima Coal Mine/ Hashima Coal Mine.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Takashima Coal Mine/ Hashima Coal Mine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Takashima Coal Mine/ Hashima Coal Mine comes up about 284 km into the recorded legs. 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.
Glover House and Office closes the day.
Glover House and Office → Takashima Coal Mine/ Hashima Coal Mine is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Takashima Coal Mine/ Hashima Coal Mine → Ono Village in Sotome is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ono Village in Sotome → Villages on Kuroshima Island is 75 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villages on Kuroshima Island → back through Ono Village in Sotome is 77 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ono Village in Sotome → back through Takashima Coal Mine/ Hashima Coal Mine is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Takashima Coal Mine/ Hashima Coal Mine → Glover House and Office is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.