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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Togitsu it runs 997 km to Togitsu; allow about 17 h 10 of riding. The stops in between: Villages on Kashiragashima Island, Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado and back through Villages on Kashiragashima Island. The line favours views over speed.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 65 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Sotome is a stretch of rugged coast north of Nagasaki, where steep hills drop into the East China Sea, and the village of Shitsu clings to its slopes. During the centuries when Christianity was banned in Japan, the farmers and fishermen of this remote area kept their faith in secret, passing down prayers and rituals from generation to generation, hiding their devotion behind Buddhist and Shinto practices. When the ban was lifted in 1873, many of them returned to the Catholic Church. The Shitsu church, built in 1882 under the direction of the French missionary Marc Marie de Rotz, stands on a hill above the sea, a simple white building with a low profile designed to resist the strong winds. De Rotz was more than a priest: he taught the villagers to make bread, pasta and textiles, built a clinic and a workshop, and his legacy is still honoured locally. The village and church are part of the UNESCO listing of the Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region.
Read the complete Shitsu Village in Sotome write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Shitsu Village in Sotome is where the day begins. Next is Villages on Kashiragashima Island.
Kashiragashima is a scrap of rock off the northeast coast of Nakadōri, in the Gotō Islands west of Nagasaki, and for a long time nobody wanted to live there. In the nineteenth century the island was used as a place to isolate smallpox patients, and that very isolation drew a small group of Hidden Christians, Japanese Catholics who had kept their faith in secret through more than two centuries of persecution. They settled in a cove, farmed the steep slopes and fished. After the ban on Christianity was lifted, they built a church out of the local sandstone, quarried and carried by hand, under the direction of the master builder Tetsukawa Yosuke, who designed many churches across the region. Completed in 1919, it is a sturdy, beautiful building, and the village is part of the UNESCO listing of Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region, inscribed in 2018.
Read the complete Villages on Kashiragashima Island write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villages on Kashiragashima Island comes up about 259 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado.
Hirado is an island at the far northwest of Kyushu, joined to the mainland by a bridge, and it has a stranger history than most. In 1609 the Dutch East India Company opened a trading post here, and for a while Hirado was the only place in Japan where Europeans traded openly, before the shogunate shifted them to the artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki in 1641. The town still has a harbour and a castle on the hill, and the sea is never far from any road.
Read the complete Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 500 km into the recorded legs you reach Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado. Next is back through Villages on Kashiragashima Island.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villages on Kashiragashima Island write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villages on Kashiragashima Island, late in the day. Next is Shitsu Village in Sotome.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Shitsu Village in Sotome write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Shitsu Village in Sotome. That is the ride.
Shitsu Village in Sotome → Villages on Kashiragashima Island is 259 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Villages on Kashiragashima Island → Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado is 241 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado → back through Villages on Kashiragashima Island is 241 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villages on Kashiragashima Island → Shitsu Village in Sotome is 259 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.