Why this ride
A 176 km round trip from Fukuechō - roughly 17 h 55 in the saddle. It goes by way of Villages on Kashiragashima Island and back through Villages on Kashiragashima Island.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Villages on Hisaka Island and Remains of Villages on Nozaki Island
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 176 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 17 h 55
- Journey
- Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
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.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Villages on Hisaka Island
Hisaka is a small island just across a narrow strait from Fukue, in the Goto archipelago far out in the East China Sea west of Nagasaki, and it has a quiet, particular history. Christianity arrived in Japan in the sixteenth century, was banned by the shogunate in the early seventeenth, and ruthlessly suppressed. Yet in the countryside around Nagasaki, communities went on practising in secret for more than two hundred years, mixing Catholic prayers with Buddhist and Shinto forms in order to avoid detection. They are known as the Hidden Christians, or Kakure Kirishitan. In the late eighteenth century, the lord of the Goto islands asked for farmers from the mainland to settle his empty land, and many of those who came were secret Christians, glad to move to a remote place where they might be left alone.
Read the complete Villages on Hisaka Island write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Villages on Hisaka Island is where the day begins. Next is Villages on Kashiragashima Island.
2. 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.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Villages on Kashiragashima Island comes up about 88 km into the recorded legs. Next is Remains of Villages on Nozaki Island.
3. back through Villages on Kashiragashima Island
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villages on Kashiragashima Island write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
back through Villages on Kashiragashima Island, late in the day. Next is Villages on Hisaka Island.
4. Villages on Hisaka Island
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villages on Hisaka Island write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Back at Villages on Hisaka Island. That is the ride.
Leg by leg
Villages on Hisaka Island to Villages on Kashiragashima Island
Villages on Hisaka Island → Villages on Kashiragashima Island is 88 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villages on Kashiragashima Island to back through Villages on Kashiragashima Island
Villages on Kashiragashima Island → back through Villages on Kashiragashima Island is 1 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villages on Kashiragashima Island to Villages on Hisaka Island
back through Villages on Kashiragashima Island → Villages on Hisaka Island is 88 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.