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 172 km round trip from Kitakyushu - roughly 2 h 59 in the saddle. The stops in between: Hetsu-miya, Onga river Pumping Station, Shimbaru-Nuyama Mounded Tomb Group and back through Shimbaru-Nuyama Mounded Tomb Group. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Japan's modern industry has a birthday, and in Kitakyushu they celebrate it with a rusting blast furnace. The Imperial Steel Works at Yawata began producing iron in 1901, a state-run enterprise financed with money from the war indemnity that China paid after the First Sino-Japanese War, and it was built to give a country that had just opened to the world its own supply of steel. German engineers advised on the early design. The works grew into the heart of the northern Kyushu industrial belt, and Yawata became a city that smelled of coke and smoke for most of a century.
Read the complete The Imperial Steel Works write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Imperial Steel Works is where the day begins. Next is Hetsu-miya.
Hetsu-miya is the third of the Munakata shrines, and the only one you can drive to. Munakata Taisha honours three goddesses, the daughters of the sun goddess Amaterasu in the old myths, and each lives in a different place along the sea lane between Japan and Korea: one on the remote island of Okinoshima, one on Ōshima and one here on the mainland, at Tashima, beside a calm pine grove close to the shore. The grounds are plain, with a simple wooden hall and an air of sea and pine, and in autumn a festival draws crowds and boats.
Read the complete Hetsu-miya write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hetsu-miya comes up about 33 km into the recorded legs. Next is Onga river Pumping Station.
Steel needs water, a great deal of it, and in the early twentieth century the new Imperial Steel Works at Yawata in northern Kyushu needed more than the local streams could provide. The answer was this pumping station on the Onga river at Nakama, built in 1910, which drew water from the river and sent it through pipelines to the steel works. Remarkably, it is still in operation more than a century later. The red brick building with its tall windows is part of the UNESCO listing of Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution, alongside shipyards, coal mines and iron works that tell the story of Japan's dramatic transformation into an industrial power.
Read the complete Onga river Pumping Station write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 54 km into the recorded legs you reach Onga river Pumping Station. Next is Shimbaru-Nuyama Mounded Tomb Group.
In Fukuoka prefecture, on the shore of the Genkai Sea, a group of burial mounds records the power of the Munakata clan, the family who were priests and sea-lords of the strait between Kyushu and Korea. Shimbaru-Nuyama is a cluster of tombs from the fifth and sixth centuries, small and large mounds scattered over a low ridge, and it belongs to the World Heritage listing for Okinoshima and the associated sites of the Munakata region, inscribed in 2017. Okinoshima is a remote island in the channel where ritual offerings were made for centuries to pray for safe voyages, and no women are allowed to land, and men must purify themselves in the sea before setting foot on it.
Read the complete Shimbaru-Nuyama Mounded Tomb Group write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Shimbaru-Nuyama Mounded Tomb Group, about halfway. Next is Mikadobashira.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Shimbaru-Nuyama Mounded Tomb Group write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Shimbaru-Nuyama Mounded Tomb Group comes up about 87 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Onga river Pumping Station.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Onga river Pumping Station write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 119 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Onga river Pumping Station. Next is back through Hetsu-miya.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hetsu-miya write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hetsu-miya, late in the day. Next is The Imperial Steel Works.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Imperial Steel Works write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 328 km.
The Imperial Steel Works → Hetsu-miya is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hetsu-miya → Onga river Pumping Station is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Onga river Pumping Station → Shimbaru-Nuyama Mounded Tomb Group is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Shimbaru-Nuyama Mounded Tomb Group → back through Shimbaru-Nuyama Mounded Tomb Group is 1 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Shimbaru-Nuyama Mounded Tomb Group → back through Onga river Pumping Station is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Onga river Pumping Station → back through Hetsu-miya is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hetsu-miya → The Imperial Steel Works is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.