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.
A one-way ride of 515 km, Odawara to Atami - roughly 9 h 20 in the saddle. On the way it passes Hakone Turnpike, Lake Ashi view, Fuji Five Lakes window and Atami and coast. The climb of the day is Izu Skyline high road. It tops out at about 1,050 m. Back roads rather than main roads, where the map allows.
For 36 km this is Hakone Turnpike and Skyline, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it — expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 14 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go. Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did.
Odawara is a castle town at the foot of Hakone, and for most riders it is the place where the mountains begin. The castle, which belonged to the Hojo clan until Toyotomi Hideyoshi besieged it in 1590, has a reconstructed keep, built in 1960, with a museum inside. The old town around it is quiet, with a modest shopping street and some traditional shops. It sits on Sagami Bay, with the coast road leading east and west and the Hakone mountains rising behind.
Read the complete Odawara write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Odawara is where the day begins. Next is Hakone Turnpike rhythm.
Rhythm is the right word for the Hakone Turnpike, because the road does not so much challenge you as set a tempo. Near Hakone, with Yugawara down the hill and Odawara on the coast, it climbs through broad bends that follow the shape of the old volcano, and after a few kilometres you find a steady pace in which gear changes and lean angles settle into a pattern. It is a road for enjoying rather than attacking, with smooth tarmac, clear sightlines and a limit that police take seriously.
Read the complete Hakone Turnpike rhythm write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hakone Turnpike rhythm comes up about 35 km into the recorded legs. Next is Lake Ashi view.
Lake Ashi fills the caldera of the old Hakone volcano, at 720 metres, and it is one of the most visited places in Japan, partly because of the view. On a clear morning, particularly in winter, the cone of Mount Fuji rises above the water in perfect symmetry, and the red torii gate of Hakone Shrine stands in the lake in the foreground.
Read the complete Lake Ashi view stop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 49 km into the recorded legs you reach Lake Ashi view. Next is Fuji Five Lakes food window.
Fujikawaguchiko and Fujiyoshida stand a few kilometres either side of this stop, and between them the northern face of Mount Fuji dominates everything. The Fuji Five Lakes, strung along the foot of the volcano, are the usual base for people who want a view of the mountain, and the whole district has grown up around tourism, with inns, restaurants and shops catering to hikers, photographers and bus tours. It is a busy place in season, but the food is worth the crowds.
Read the complete Fuji Five Lakes food window write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Somewhere to get off the bike, about 168 km into the recorded legs. Next is Back to Odawara.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Odawara write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Back to Odawara. That is the ride. Next is Atami fuel and coast.
Atami is where Tokyo comes to forget about Tokyo. It is a hot-spring resort stacked up a steep hillside above Sagami Bay, with concrete hotels, narrow lanes, a small harbour and a long curve of beach, and it has the happy, slightly faded air of a seaside town that was fashionable in the 1960s. The city has fewer than forty-five thousand people, but it feels bigger, because everything is vertical and every street seems to have a view of the water.
Read the complete Atami fuel and coast gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The day opens at Atami fuel and coast. Next is Izu Skyline high road.
At the high end of the Izu Skyline, with Atami five kilometres away and the Tanna basin tucked in the valley to the west, the road runs along a grassy ridge where the wind is a constant companion. Gusts can be strong enough to push a bike sideways, particularly at the exposed corners, so keep a firm grip and reduce speed when the grass starts to bend. On the ridge the air is cool and clean, and even in July the temperature can be ten degrees below that on the coast.
Read the complete Izu Skyline high road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 385 km into the recorded legs you reach Izu Skyline high road. Next is Shuzenji onsen food.
Shuzenji sits in a narrow valley in the middle of the Izu peninsula, on the Katsura river, and it is the oldest hot spring resort on Izu. The onsen town grew around a temple, Shuzen-ji, founded according to tradition by the monk Kobo Daishi in the early ninth century, and it has an old-fashioned, quiet charm that the busier resorts on the coast have lost. Hot water comes from springs beneath the town, and an open-air bath in the middle of the river, called Tokko no Yu, is the symbol of the place.
Read the complete Shuzenji onsen food write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Somewhere to get off the bike, about 423 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ito ocean stop.
Itō sits on the eastern side of the Izu Peninsula, a city of about seventy thousand strung along a coast of black lava and quiet coves. It is a place of hot springs, fishing boats and gentle roads, and it has an unexpected piece of history. In the early 1600s the English sailor William Adams, who became a samurai advisor named Miura Anjin, supervised the building of Japan's first Western-style ships here, and a small monument by the river recalls it. It is a small but real moment: the beginning of Japan's contact with European shipbuilding.
Read the complete Ito ocean stop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ito ocean stop sits at 480 km, late in the day. Next is back to Atami fuel and.
Coming back to Atami at the end of a long day on the Izu roads has its own pleasures. The town appears first as lights climbing the hillside, hotels glowing up the slope like a stack of lit windows, and the harbour below dark and still. The road drops down a series of tight curves, and the temperature changes as you descend, usually a degree or two warmer at sea level, with a smell of salt and sulphur in the air that is the signature of a hot-spring town.
Read the complete Atami fuel and write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back to Atami fuel and closes the day.
Odawara fuel gate → Hakone Turnpike rhythm is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hakone Turnpike rhythm → Lake Ashi view is 14 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lake Ashi view → Fuji Five Lakes food window is 119 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fuji Five Lakes food window → Back to Odawara is 137 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Back to Odawara → Atami fuel and coast gate is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Atami fuel and coast gate → Izu Skyline high road is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Izu Skyline high road → Shuzenji onsen food is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Shuzenji onsen food → Ito ocean stop is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ito ocean stop → back to Atami fuel and is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.