Time to leave Onomichi today and head out on our bikes on the Shimanami Kaido cycling route. You may remember we did this last year in April, we loved it so much we decided we needed to do it again. We are riding in the opposite direction this time and doing it over 4 days so we can just chill and enjoy everything (lots of people do it in one day! It’s 70 km which is definitely doable but doesn’t sound like a lot of fun)

We had breakfast at Miharashitei before dragging our suitcase down the hill.

We took our suitcase to Yamato transport to forward it on to Kyoto where we are headed after the Shimanami Kaido. We’ll be living out of backpacks for the next couple of days. It was really busy at the luggage place. Word seems to have gotten out.

We went to pick up our bikes and it was sooooooo busy at the bike hire place. We stood in line for about 10 minutes before we realised we could jump the queue as we had pre booked our bikes. Good one. As we went to tell the attendant our name and pay for our bike hire , this VERY pushy lady behind us (not Japanese) was getting in there trying to find her name on the list etc so much so that the attendant thought her and her boyfriend were with us. I literally had to tell her to stop it and move away and wait her turn.

Bikes successfully acquired and helmets chosen, the first part of the trip involves catching a ferry to the first island. Again, it was super busy!

And then we landed on Mukaishima and we are off towards our first bridge. It was rather warm today – so it was quite tough going at points. Plus I am so unfit at the moment. It’s quite disheartening we people are just zooming past you – except then you realise they have electric bikes.

Riding up to the bridges is tough. There are long slow inclines that go on forever! These bridges are huge by the way! Huge!

After we had made it over the bridge it was essentially lunch time. Well we wanted to go to a cafe called Seabridge that we went to last time so it was now or never.

It’s such a cute cafe and you get to take your shoes off so it’s nice to relax your feet after riding.

Food was good – we also had ginger drinks, coffee and I had an icecream – although I was disappointed there was no dinosaur cookie in the ice cream this time!

We visited our old dinosaur friend on the hill before riding on.

Before the next bridge we stopped at a convenience store for a Pocari Sweat drink with much needed electrolytes.

On to the next bridge and on to the island we will be staying on for the next 2 nights. Ikuchijima.

After more riding we eventually made it to Suminoe Ryokan in Sentosa. We checked in and fell over for a while.

We then decided to ride up to Sunset Beach but it was a bit disappointing and instead we rode back the other way to a supermarket to buy some lunch items for tomorrow. The supermarket was excellent I wanted to buy everything.

We are having dinner both nights at Suminoe – and that only means one thing – lots and lots of food!!! Oishiii! Luckily we were starving after all the riding.

We have our own private room for dinner and breakfast.

We went for a walk after dinner to work off the food.