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 479 km round trip from Sakai - roughly 8 h 00 in the saddle. It goes by way of Kôyasan - Jison-in, Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K, Kumano Sanzan - Kumano Hongû Taisha and Kumano Sanzan - Fudarakusan-ji. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Sakai is a port city of well over seven hundred thousand people, and yet in the middle of its houses and factory roofs sit green islands with water around them. Zenemonyama is one of those islands: a burial mound from the age of the great keyhole-shaped tombs, built in the fifth century or thereabouts for someone powerful enough to move an entire hillside of earth by hand. You will not see much of the keyhole from the ground. The shape only makes sense from the air, which is rather the point, because it was made for an audience of gods and passing clouds.
Read the complete Zenemonyama Kofun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zenemonyama Kofun is where the day begins. Next is Kôyasan - Jison-in.
Before you ride up to Mount Koya, the great mountain monastery of Shingon Buddhism, stop at its doorstep. Jison-in sits in the Kii river valley at Kudoyama, below the mountain, and it was founded by Kukai, the monk also known as Kobo Daishi, in the early ninth century as the administrative office and supply base for the new monastery above. Its most loved story concerns his mother. Women were barred from Koyasan for over a thousand years, so she lived here, and tradition says Kukai walked down nine times a month to visit her. That, the locals will tell you, is where the name Kudoyama, nine-times mountain, comes from.
Read the complete Kôyasan - Jison-in write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kôyasan - Jison-in comes up about 48 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 99 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 Kumano Sanzan - Fudarakusan-ji.
Fudarakusan-ji is a small temple on the coast of the Kii Peninsula, in the town of Nachikatsuura, and its odd history is a sea journey. In the old days some monks believed Fudaraku, the paradise of the bodhisattva Kannon, lay far across the ocean to the south, and from this beach they set off in boats nailed shut, with a little food and water, to sail toward it and not come back. The practice is called Fudaraku Tokai, and the temple remembers the monks who made the voyage, which gives the sea in front of it a haunting quality.
Read the complete Kumano Sanzan - Fudarakusan-ji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kumano Sanzan - Fudarakusan-ji sits at 149 km, about halfway. Next is back through Kumano Sanzan - Kumano Hongû Taisha.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kumano Sanzan - Kumano Hongû Taisha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Kumano Sanzan - Kumano Hongû Taisha comes up about 284 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 379 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K. Next is back through Kôyasan - Jison-in.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kôyasan - Jison-in write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Kôyasan - Jison-in, late in the day. Next is Zenemonyama Kofun.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Zenemonyama Kofun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 479 km.
Zenemonyama Kofun → Kôyasan - Jison-in is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kôyasan - Jison-in → Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K is 51 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 → Kumano Sanzan - Fudarakusan-ji is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kumano Sanzan - Fudarakusan-ji → back through Kumano Sanzan - Kumano Hongû Taisha is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through 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 Kôyasan - Jison-in is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Kôyasan - Jison-in → Zenemonyama Kofun is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.