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 405 km round trip from Fujinomiya - roughly 5 h 50 in the saddle. It goes by way of Nirayama Reverbatory Furnaces, Musée National des Beaux-Arts de l’Occiden and back through Nirayama Reverbatory Furnaces. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,000 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The water that falls at Shiraito has spent a long time underground. Rain and snowmelt seep into the porous volcanic rock of Mount Fuji, travel through the layers for years, and emerge from a cliff face southwest of the mountain as hundreds of thin streams, pouring over a curved wall about twenty metres high and some one hundred and fifty metres wide. The name means white threads, and the effect is just that: a curtain of silvery strands falling into a clear pool, with the Fuji-ko pilgrims once performing purification rituals here. The falls are part of the Fujisan World Heritage Site, and the neighbouring Otodome falls, a single powerful cascade, roar a short walk away.
Read the complete Shiraito no Taki waterfalls write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Shiraito no Taki waterfalls is where the day begins. Next is Nirayama Reverbatory Furnaces.
Two pairs of tall brick chimneys stand in a quiet suburb at the base of the Izu Peninsula, looking strangely European against the green hills. They belong to the Nirayama reverberatory furnace, built in the 1850s to melt iron for casting cannons, at a time when Japan felt threatened by Western warships arriving in its waters. The project was led by Egawa Hidetatsu, the local magistrate, a forward-thinking official who studied Western military technology from Dutch books. He died before it was completed, and his son finished the work. It is the only surviving reverberatory furnace of its era in Japan that was actually used for casting, and since 2015 it has been part of the UNESCO site of the Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution.
Read the complete Nirayama Reverbatory Furnaces write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Nirayama Reverbatory Furnaces comes up about 59 km into the recorded legs. Next is Musée National des Beaux-Arts de l’Occiden.
Ueno is where Tokyo keeps its museums, and the National Museum of Western Art sits at the park's southern edge, a few minutes on foot from the station. The building is the point. Le Corbusier drew it in the late 1950s to house a collection of European art that Japan had won back from France after the war, and it later joined the UNESCO list of his works spread across several countries. It is a raised concrete box on pillars with a ramp-like logic inside, meant to grow outward as the collection did. In the forecourt Rodin's Gate of Hell and The Thinker sit in the open air, and on a grey morning the bronze looks wonderfully out of place against the Tokyo sky.
Read the complete Musée National des Beaux-Arts de l’Occiden write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 202 km into the recorded legs you reach Musée National des Beaux-Arts de l’Occiden. Next is back through Nirayama Reverbatory Furnaces.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Nirayama Reverbatory Furnaces write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Nirayama Reverbatory Furnaces, late in the day. Next is Shiraito no Taki waterfalls.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Shiraito no Taki waterfalls write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Shiraito no Taki waterfalls. That is the ride.
Shiraito no Taki waterfalls → Nirayama Reverbatory Furnaces is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Nirayama Reverbatory Furnaces → Musée National des Beaux-Arts de l’Occiden is 143 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Musée National des Beaux-Arts de l’Occiden → back through Nirayama Reverbatory Furnaces is 144 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Nirayama Reverbatory Furnaces → Shiraito no Taki waterfalls is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.