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.
From Arashiyama it runs 259 km to Arashiyama; allow about 4 h 21 of riding. It goes by way of Tsudo-shiroyama Kofun, Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji and back through Tsudo-shiroyama Kofun. 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.
Saiho-ji has a nickname that tells the whole story: Kokedera, the moss temple. The garden is carpeted by well over a hundred varieties of moss, in shades from emerald to near yellow, spreading between the trees and around the pond in a soft, damp quilt, and a day of rain makes it glow. The effect is accidental in origin, since the moss spread after the temple was neglected in the nineteenth century, but it fits the garden's older bones, which were laid out in the fourteenth century by the Zen master Muso Soseki. Muso also designed the garden of Tenryu-ji, on the other side of the Katsura river, and you can see a family likeness.
Read the complete Saiho-ji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Saiho-ji is where the day begins. Next is Tsudo-shiroyama Kofun.
On the plain south-east of Osaka, among suburbs, railway lines and car dealerships, the land is dotted with huge grassy mounds shaped like keyholes, surrounded by water-filled moats, and covered in trees. They are kofun, the burial mounds of Japan's early rulers and aristocrats, and the Tsudoshiroyama Kofun is one of them, in the Furuichi group, about two kilometres from the town of Kashiwara and not far from Habikino and Fujiidera. The group, together with the Mozu group in Sakai, was inscribed by UNESCO in 2019.
Read the complete Tsudo-shiroyama Kofun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tsudo-shiroyama Kofun comes up about 60 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 129 km into the recorded legs you reach Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji. Next is back through Tsudo-shiroyama Kofun.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tsudo-shiroyama Kofun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Tsudo-shiroyama Kofun, late in the day. Next is Saiho-ji.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Saiho-ji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Saiho-ji. That is the ride.
Saiho-ji → Tsudo-shiroyama Kofun is 60 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tsudo-shiroyama Kofun → Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji → back through Tsudo-shiroyama Kofun is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tsudo-shiroyama Kofun → Saiho-ji is 60 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.