Shimanami Kaido

Leaving Kyushu from Beppu, I got up early to take the 5:35AM boat to Yawatahama on the island of Shikoku. In the map above it is the red line on the left side of the map.

This was interesting.....the second class ticket doesn't buy you a seat....but it buys you the chance to grab a place on the floor to lay down!

From Yawatahama, I took the train to Imabari.  At Imabari station, I rented a bike for the afternoon because I wanted to ride along the Shimanmi Kaido, which is a series of six bridges that cross five islands which link Shikoku to Honshu.

So there is a nice bike path along the six kilometers between Imabari and the southernmost bridge of the Shimanami Kaido, the Kurushima-Kaikyo.  So when I got to this sign, I took the right hand turn.

A small winding road led me up to a viewing area from which to look over the expanse of the Kurushima-Kaikyo Bridge network, which is the longest suspension bridge network in the world.  When they say network, they refer to the three separate suspension bridges which are linked to form one full "network" bridge.  Two of three bridges themselves are the 19th and 20th longest suspension bridges all on their own, but put together, the three suspension bridges form the longest network.

Now that right turn I took before to get to the viewing area did seem suspect to me and when I got to the viewing area, I no longer saw any signs with bicycles on them.  Stupidly, I forged on and ended up riding on the shoulder of what turned out to be the automobile portion of the bridge.  I figured out things were bad when I had cars were beeping at me.

So I turned back and decided to ride back down to the road where I made the turn.  But as I was cruising downhill, I approached a toll booth and a number of Japanese bridge police came and stopped me.  Not speaking Japanese they thought I had ridden across the entire bridge in the automobile lanes.  They called in other police and at one time there were 8 police and me.  They asked for my passport, which I had left back in a locker at the train station.  If I had been in China, I would have been worried, but in the end, we got it straightened out and the police let me on my way.  

I found my way back to the path that led to the bicycle lanes on the bridge.  Here's the approach.

The bamboo trees were in bloom.  This was the only day during my six days without Onions that the weather forecast had as being sunny.  So, I planned to make sure I rode on the bridge on this day to be able to see these clear views.

The path up to the bridge has to climb up 100 meters in elevation, so riders have to slowly gain the elevation with the circular ramps.

Here we are, finally, the First Kurushima-Kaikyo Bridge.

Then the Second Kurushima-Kaikyo Bridge. Both the first and the second are just over one kilometer in length.

The towers form these whirlpools in the water, which I bet when there is more wind are much more dramatic.

And at the northern end of the network, the Third Kurushima-Kaikyo Bridge.

The ramp to descend off the northern side of the bridge.

It turns out that not only is there a bicycle path on one side of the bridge, the opposite side of the bridge is dedicated to motorized bicycles.  This is the split in the ramp.

I biked most of the next island to try to get to the second bridge, but I ran out of time and turned back.  Before I rode back to Imabari, I sat here along the water and took the the sight of the six towers of the three bridges of the Kurushima-Kaikyo network.

After returning the bike, I took the train to Takamatsu.  This town is famous for its handmade udon noodles.  I found a restaurant that served them for dinner.

A few days later, I left Shikoku from Takamatsu and took the train to Okayama on Honshu.  The bridge that links the two points on the islands has train tracks built below the automobile deck!