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 Sasebo it runs 646 km to Sasebo; allow about 11 h 45 of riding. The stops in between: Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado, Egami Village on Naru Island and back through Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado. An island ride, so the sea is never far.
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 36 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
For more than two centuries after Christianity was banned in Japan in the early seventeenth century, small communities of believers kept their faith in secret, disguising prayers as Buddhist chants and images of the Virgin Mary as Buddhist figures. Kuroshima, a small island off the coast of Sasebo in Nagasaki Prefecture, was one of the places where these hidden Christians lived and farmed, and when the ban was lifted in the 1870s they emerged openly. Their villages are part of the UNESCO listing of Hidden Christian sites in the Nagasaki region, listed in 2018.
Read the complete Villages on Kuroshima Island write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villages on Kuroshima Island is where the day begins. 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.
Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado comes up about 83 km into the recorded legs. Next is Remains of Villages on Nozaki Island.
Egami is a small Catholic church on Naru Island in the Goto archipelago, off western Kyushu, and its story is one of the most remarkable in the history of Japanese Christianity. After missionaries arrived in the sixteenth century, the shogunate banned the faith and for about two and a half centuries persecuted believers. Some communities went underground, hiding their rosaries and their prayers in the guise of Buddhist or Shinto customs, and became known as the Hidden Christians. In the Goto islands, families who had fled from Nagasaki in the late eighteenth century cleared poor land and kept their faith quietly, and when the ban was lifted in the 1870s they came into the open.
Read the complete Egami Village on Naru Island write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Egami Village on Naru Island, about halfway. Next is back through Remains of Villages on Nozaki Island.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
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.
back through Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado comes up about 563 km into the recorded legs. Next is Villages on Kuroshima Island.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villages on Kuroshima Island write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villages on Kuroshima Island closes the day.
Villages on Kuroshima Island → Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado is 83 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado → Egami Village on Naru Island is 240 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Egami Village on Naru Island → back through Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado is 240 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Kasuga Village and Sacred Places in Hirado → Villages on Kuroshima Island is 83 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.