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.
85 km from Kashihara-shi to Kashihara-shi, about 2 h 01 of riding. The stops in between: Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama, Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji and back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 800 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Kitora is a small, round burial mound on a hillside in Asuka, the cradle of the Japanese state, south of Nara. From the outside, it looks like a grassy hump, unremarkable. Inside, when researchers inserted a fibre-optic camera in 1983, they found a stone chamber painted with some of the most extraordinary images in Japanese art: the four guardian animals of the cardinal directions, the black tortoise-snake of the north, the blue dragon of the east, the white tiger of the west and the red phoenix of the south, along with figures of the twelve zodiac animals with human bodies, and on the ceiling an astronomical chart showing the constellations, one of the oldest such star charts in the world. The tomb dates from the late seventh or early eighth century, and its occupant remains unknown. To preserve them, the paintings were removed from the walls and restored, and some are displayed at the Shijin no Yakata, a museum built next to the tomb.
Read the complete Kitora Mounded Tomb write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kitora Mounded Tomb is where the day begins. Next is Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama.
Cherry trees are the whole point of Yoshino, and they are planted by the thousand up the side of a ridge in the mountains of Nara Prefecture, about five kilometres from the little town of Yoshino and an hour or two from Osaka. Over some three hundred years, pilgrims planted the sacred shidarezakura and the mountain cherry as offerings to the god of the mountain, and in the first half of April the slopes turn pink, white and green in four layers from the bottom to the top, a wave of flowering that rises up the hillside over about a fortnight.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama comes up about 22 km into the recorded legs. Next is Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji.
Ōminesan-ji is a temple on the summit of Mount Sanjō, one of the peaks of the Ōmine range in the heart of the Kii peninsula, and it holds a special place in Japanese religion. It is a centre of Shugendō, the mountain ascetic tradition that blends Buddhism, Shinto and older mountain worship, and its practitioners, the yamabushi, undergo arduous training on the ridges. The temple is famous for another reason too: the mountain is still closed to women by tradition, one of the last such places in Japan, which has become a subject of ongoing debate.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 46 km into the recorded legs you reach Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji. Next is back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama, late in the day. Next is Kitora Mounded Tomb.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kitora Mounded Tomb write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Kitora Mounded Tomb. That is the ride.
Kitora Mounded Tomb → Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama → Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji → back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama → Kitora Mounded Tomb is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.