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 450 km round trip from Yoshino-chō - roughly 6 h 53 in the saddle. The stops in between: Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi, Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K, Kumano Sanzan - Kumano Hongû Taisha and back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. 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 Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi.
The Ômine Okugakemichi is not a road at all, at least not one you can ride. It is a mountain trail that runs for about a hundred kilometres along the spine of the Ômine range in the Kii peninsula, linking Yoshino in the north with Kumano in the south, over peaks, ridges and rock faces. For more than a thousand years, yamabushi, the mountain ascetics of the Shugendo tradition, have walked it as a spiritual practice, combining Buddhist, Shinto and older mountain beliefs, with rituals at sacred rocks, waterfalls and cliffs along the way. It is part of the UNESCO-listed Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range, inscribed in 2004.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi comes up about 60 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 129 km into the recorded legs you reach Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K. Next is Kumano Sanzan - Kumano Hongû Taisha.
Deep in the mountains of the Kii Peninsula, where forested ridges fold one behind another like the scenery in a woodblock print, stands the head shrine of the Kumano faith. Kumano Hongū Taisha is one of the three grand shrines of Kumano, and for over a thousand years emperors, aristocrats and ordinary pilgrims have walked here along the network of mountain trails known as the Kumano Kodō, now part of the Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Kumano Sanzan - Kumano Hongû Taisha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kumano Sanzan - Kumano Hongû Taisha, about halfway. Next is back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K sits at 134 km, about halfway. Next is back through Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi comes up about 388 km into the recorded legs. 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.
Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja closes the day.
Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja → Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi is 60 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi → Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K → Kumano Sanzan - Kumano Hongû Taisha is 95 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kumano Sanzan - Kumano Hongû Taisha → back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K is 95 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K → back through Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi → Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.