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 98 km to Yoshino-chō; allow about 1 h 40 of riding. The stops in between: Kitora Mounded Tomb, Horyu-ji Area and back through Kitora Mounded Tomb. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
In early April the mountain at Yoshino turns pink from the bottom up, wave after wave of wild cherry blossom climbing the ridge, and for a few days the whole of central Nara Prefecture seems to hold its breath. The trees are mostly the white mountain cherry known as shiro-yamazakura, planted over many centuries as offerings to Zao Gongen, the fierce mountain deity of the Shugendo tradition, and by tradition thousands of them line the slopes in four zones, lower, middle, upper and inner, so that the bloom moves uphill over about three weeks. Yoshino-jinja and the Mikumari shrine belong to the mountain's older story, a place for water and the pleas of farmers, since the name Mikumari is linked with the dividing of water.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja is where the day begins. Next is Kitora Mounded Tomb.
Kitora is a small, round burial mound on a hillside in Asuka, the cradle of the Japanese state, south of Nara. From the outside, it looks like a grassy hump, unremarkable. Inside, when researchers inserted a fibre-optic camera in 1983, they found a stone chamber painted with some of the most extraordinary images in Japanese art: the four guardian animals of the cardinal directions, the black tortoise-snake of the north, the blue dragon of the east, the white tiger of the west and the red phoenix of the south, along with figures of the twelve zodiac animals with human bodies, and on the ceiling an astronomical chart showing the constellations, one of the oldest such star charts in the world. The tomb dates from the late seventh or early eighth century, and its occupant remains unknown. To preserve them, the paintings were removed from the walls and restored, and some are displayed at the Shijin no Yakata, a museum built next to the tomb.
Read the complete Kitora Mounded Tomb write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kitora Mounded Tomb comes up about 20 km into the recorded legs. Next is Horyu-ji Area.
The buildings at Hōryū-ji are around thirteen hundred years old, and some of them are among the oldest wooden structures anywhere in the world. Founded in the early seventh century by Prince Shōtoku, a regent remembered as a champion of Buddhism and a founding figure of the Japanese state, the temple was rebuilt after a fire later in the same century, and parts of that rebuilding still stand. In 1993 it became one of the first sites in Japan to be listed by UNESCO, as the Buddhist Monuments in the Hōryū-ji Area.
Read the complete Horyu-ji Area write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 48 km into the recorded legs you reach Horyu-ji Area. Next is back through Kitora Mounded Tomb.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kitora Mounded Tomb write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Kitora Mounded Tomb, late in the day. Next is Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja. That is the ride.
Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja → Kitora Mounded Tomb is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kitora Mounded Tomb → Horyu-ji Area is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hōryū-ji Area → back through Kitora Mounded Tomb is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Kitora Mounded Tomb → Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.