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.
From Yoshino-chō it runs 487 km to Yoshino-chō; allow about 6 h 25 of riding. The stops in between: Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - I, Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K and back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - I. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Yoshino is the most famous cherry-blossom mountain in Japan, and it earns the fame. Tens of thousands of trees, planted over centuries as offerings by pilgrims, climb the ridge in four zones, so the bloom moves up the mountain through April like a slow pink tide. But Yoshino is older and stranger than a flower festival. It is the gateway to the Kii mountains, a vast tangle of steep forested ranges where mountain ascetics of the Shugendo tradition have walked for more than a thousand years, and the pilgrimage path of Omine runs along the high ridges to Kumano, passing places so sacred that women were long banned from entering. The Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range were inscribed by UNESCO in 2004.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshimizu-jinja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshimizu-jinja is where the day begins. Next is Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - I.
The Iseji is the eastern branch of the old pilgrimage roads to the three great Kumano shrines, running down the coast of the Kii Peninsula from the Grand Shrines of Ise to Kumano. For centuries, pilgrims followed it through forests and over passes, and stretches of its stone paving still survive in the hills, laid to keep the path usable in one of the rainiest parts of Japan. Owase, a little up the coast, regularly ranks among the wettest towns in the country, and the moss on the stones and the dripping cedar forests show it. The Iseji forms part of the UNESCO listing of the Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - I write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - I comes up about 103 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K.
Mount Kōya is one of Japan's great sacred places, a high basin in the mountains of northern Wakayama where the monk Kūkai founded a monastic centre for Shingon Buddhism in the early ninth century. Today it is a town of over a hundred temples, many of which take in overnight guests, set among towering cedars. South of the summit plateau, deep in the forested ridges, run the old pilgrim trails that link Kōya with the Kumano shrines, part of the network inscribed by UNESCO as the Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 244 km into the recorded legs you reach Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K. Next is back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - I.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - I write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - I, late in the day. Next is Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshimizu-jinja.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshimizu-jinja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshimizu-jinja. That is the ride.
Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshimizu-jinja → Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - I is 103 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - I → Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K is 141 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K → back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - I is 141 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - I → Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshimizu-jinja is 103 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.