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 393 km round trip from Nagasaki - roughly 5 h 47 in the saddle. On the way it passes Sakitsu Village in Amakusa, Misumi West Port and back through Sakitsu Village in Amakusa. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 66 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Nagasaki is a city of steep hills around a deep harbour, and on one of those slopes above the old foreign settlement stands a small white Gothic church that is, in its quiet way, one of the most important in Japan. Oura Cathedral was built in the early 1860s by French missionaries, who had been allowed to serve the foreign community in the treaty port after Japan's long seclusion, and it was dedicated to the twenty-six Christians who were executed on a hill in Nagasaki in 1597. The church faces the site of that martyrdom, and it is the oldest surviving Gothic-style church in the country.
Read the complete Oura Cathedral write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Oura Cathedral is where the day begins. Next is Sakitsu Village in Amakusa.
A small Gothic church with a spire stands right at the water's edge in Sakitsu, a fishing village tucked into an inlet on the southern coast of Amakusa's Shimoshima island. It looks almost Breton, a surprise in rural Kyushu, and the story behind it is one of the most moving in Japanese history. When Christianity was banned in the early seventeenth century, the people of Sakitsu kept their faith in secret for over two centuries, disguising prayers and objects as Buddhist or Shinto practice, and using things from their own fishing life, such as abalone shells whose inner patterns recalled holy images, as objects of devotion.
Read the complete Sakitsu Village in Amakusa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sakitsu Village in Amakusa comes up about 120 km into the recorded legs. Next is Misumi West Port.
At the tip of the Uto Peninsula in Kumamoto, where the land narrows towards the islands of Amakusa, there is a small Meiji-era harbour that looks almost unchanged since it was finished in 1887. Misumi West Port was designed by the Dutch engineer Rouwenhorst Mulder as part of Japan's rapid modernisation after it opened to the West, and its long stone quays, drainage channels and carefully fitted granite blocks were built by Japanese stonemasons using their traditional skills. For a while it was a busy export port for coal from the Miike mines across the bay, but when the railway reached another harbour its importance faded, which is precisely why it survived. It is now part of the World Heritage site of Japan's Meiji industrial revolution.
Read the complete Misumi West Port write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 198 km into the recorded legs you reach Misumi West Port. Next is back through Sakitsu Village in Amakusa.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sakitsu Village in Amakusa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sakitsu Village in Amakusa, late in the day. Next is Oura Cathedral.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Oura Cathedral write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Oura Cathedral. That is the ride.
Oura Cathedral → Sakitsu Village in Amakusa is 120 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Sakitsu Village in Amakusa → Misumi West Port is 78 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Misumi West Port → back through Sakitsu Village in Amakusa is 74 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Sakitsu Village in Amakusa → Oura Cathedral is 120 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.