Slow Tour Comes to Japan: Day 1

Posted on by kymdt

Hiroshima

We arrived in Japan from London at Tokyo International Airport (HND) walked briskly through immigration and customs to the arrivals hall where we met our friend, Takero. We promptly pulled out our pre-prepared cycling luggage – two Brompton Bags and two small panniers and our bikes ready for our flight Hiroshima.

In Haneda we took advantage of the luggage delivery service – which meant our big bike bags and our other suitcases would magically arrive at our hotel 4 days later and appear in our room! Awesome!

Perhaps what is more amazing is that the Japan Airlines transported our bikes without any protective bags to Hiroshima without incident. They carefully placed our bikes in the boxes shown above and added some protective bubble wrap. Here are our bikes in Hiroshima. It is a caring service.

Hiroshima is:

  • the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan
  • is located on the broad, flat delta of the Ota River, which has 7 channel outlets dividing the city into six islands which project into Hiroshima Bay
  • an industrial city of wide boulevards and criss-crossing rivers along the coast of the Seto Inland Sea
  • a bright, modern city with a sad history: in 1945 it was the location of the world’s first nuclear bombing  

The Route

Hiroshima is a convenient location for getting to the Tobishima Kaido and Shimanami Kaido. These two blue-line cycling routes are the the objective of our journey.

After at an awesome Okonomiyaki lunch – Hiroshima style, I did however plot a loop ride that took us past many of the interesting spots in Hiroshima.

Lunch

Hiroshima is a mostly flat city. So included what seems to be the only hill. Up there is where the art gallery is! Some photos from the ride are below.

Hiroshima Peace memorial

We came across some fellow travellers from Lithuania, they’ve been doing an epic ride over a couple of months in Japan that had bikes that matched ours.

Hiroshima Castle
Memorial Cathedral for World Peace

Preparation for the big day ahead

Getting ready for the big ride the next day meant plenty of carb loading! Remember no gyoza, no life!

The weather has been perfect….

Posted on by helenhmk

… for cycling in Japan and catching up with friends. We spent three days cycling the Tobishima Kaido and the Shimanami Kadio, which is in the inland Sea of Japan near Hiroshima with our friend Takero. The views like the picture above were stunning… and the roads were great (sorry England, but here they are maintained). We had a great time and value the time spent. Namma bieru mitsu onegaishimasu (hiragana does not work in the blog so you get bad Japanese)!

We were also fortunate to catch up with some of our Brompton friends at the hi-monthly Brompton in Palace meeting. It was great to see all the bikes, enjoy fast food udon, and visit a park which you can cycle around and see many things – including bonsai, traditional garden and open spaces. It was a great day and we value being able to attend! Thank you Mayumi! For more information search for Brompton in Palace on Facebook.

We also spent time with our non cycling friends Gaku, Ryoko and Shota seeing their Tokyo and getting to visit our favourite shops in new locations. Gaku planned a great day involving seeing an exhibition at Tenozu Island of Channel called Mademoiselle Privé – about fashion and her inspiration, and a great lunch – It’s always interesting seeing Tokyo from the perspective of people who live here.

Kym and I really appreciate the time spent with us – we look forward to seeing you all again soon.

Bonus Day 3 Slow Tour: London

Posted on by kymdt

The object of this day in the town home to Boris Bikes and Boris himself was to sample a range of quietways, cycleways and cycle super highways while seeing the sights of London.

While we started with one plan we ended with another, in my opinion, far better one.

The ride started in Paddington and ended in Greenwich. Greenwich is:

  • an area of South East London
  • home to the Merdian Line, Cutty Sark, the Old Royal Naval College, the National Maritime Museum, and Greenwich Market.
  • the home of time, Greenwich is where eastern and western hemispheres meet.
  • famous for its naval and military connections and its green spaces.
  • on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The route we took was around 30kms in one direction. We took the London Riverbus back to Westminster.

Chelsea Breakfast

The first part of the ride followed a quiet way through Hyde Park to Chelsea for breakfast at A Wanted Man.

Very yummy breakfast.

Battersea Park

We continued on the quiet way across the Thames and visited Battersea Park. This is a big park that includes and number of different uses and has a nice promenade next to the Thames. There are some paths for cyclists and other pedestrian only areas.

Westminster and the Super Cycle Highway

We crossed over the river on to one of the super cycle highways, which made for easy, safe and fast cycling. Good integrated lights. We crossed back again over the Vauxhall bridge to experience the South side again on the quiet ways again. They are not bad using less busy roads and some infrastructure -but they are slower and harder to follow.

Transport for London are planning to change the names from quiet ways and super cycle highways to just plain old cycle ways. But it misses the point that the name actually communicates useful information. What is even worse is that there must have been cycle route called the London cycle network, that are still signed but not maintained or promoted. London cycle routes are a bit confusing.

London Tower

We continued on the super cycle highway until London Tower. At London Tower we learnt about the London river bus. This when we change our mind and decided to cycle to Greenwich.

We took the road across Tower Bridge to connect up with another quiet way to Greenwich. There is no cycle route over the Bridge but the traffic moves so slowly that a bike is the fastest way across.

Greenwich

The quiet way took us through areas definitely not on the tourist map. It is also the only time it rained. It must have been fate that it started to rain only as we came across a very nice coffee shop that did nice cheese toasties.

Well, I told you about Greenwich earlier in this post. Here are some photos from Greenwich and the ferry back.

Resources

  • I could not find any useful GPX files for this ride. Transport for London website does have cycling maps, which I used to get some ideas for this ride. But, the experience is quite frustrating.
  • Our Strava activity could be converted to a GPX file, by you would need to fix up some of our mistakes.

Slow tour bonus day 2: Oxford

Posted on by kymdt

Oxford is quite a small size and in the center it is very crowded. We couldn’t find much good in information suggesting a bicycle route either as GPX file or pamphlet. So we made one up instead.

The Bodleian Library is:

  • is the main research library of the University of Oxford
  • one of the oldest libraries in Europe
  • the second-largest library in Britain after the British Library
  • particularly rich in Oriental manuscripts and collections of English literature, local history, and early printing
  • one of the most impressive anywhere.

Our route took as past some of the key parts of Oxford but also a little further a field. It is in three parts.

Our bike tour included visiting the Bodleian Library, the Botanic Gardens and a bread shop. Here some of the photos from along the route. Helen provided a good blog post on the bread shop – https://bromptoneering.blog/2019/11/07/great-stop-in-oxford-hamblin-bread/

Normally I’d provide a list of resources for the bike trip. But, I couldn’t find anything two useful. You can use our routes from Strava to get some ideas.

Great stop in Oxford – Hamblin bread

Posted on by helenhmk

Cycling on holiday enables you to find interesting places which are not necessarily in the guide books. Our approach to bromptoneering is exactly that find a route and cycle it… if there is a major tourist attraction, we might stop to take a photo, if I’m lucky. But this approach also enables us to stop the moment we see something interesting. In Oxford it was the below sign which stopped us in our tracks.

It had all the right elements to attract Kym – “bakes here daily”, and good font. Kym managed to snaffle the last apple and custard buns (yeah us!) and they had filtered coffee (rare to find).

We later learnt the bread was made from stone ground flour milled locally. They make their own jams, as well as sourcing items they use from local producers. The taste was fabulous. We enjoyed the buns and had a great chat with the owner Hugo who was passionate about using local sources and their products. He suggested we return the next day for breakfast.. to try their bread as we would not regret it.

The next day… yes we returned..! Ah the smell of a bakery is fabulous in a morning.

We enjoyed a shared breakfast and a cardamon bun, and a cinnamon bun – delightful! We even bought a jar of their jam (let’s hope it makes it home). If we lived here we would be regulars.

If you find yourself in Oxford (thurs-sun) do your stomach a favour hop on bus (if you don’t have a bike) and go there… you will be happy!

Washing machine incident…

Posted on by helenhmk

When in Birmingham we stayed in a place with a great view. While it was small it also had a washing machine! Woohoo – always an added bonus on holiday. On our last night we decided to use it. They are simple machines after all. Once it had completed the cycle and drained etc… we opened it and water came spilling onto the floor in front. Okay maybe it hadn’t drained… despite indicating it had. Sigh. At this point tee put it on the drain setting twice more – eventually it drained.

The machine was one of those fancy washer-dryers. Set it to dry the clothes… and guess what – yep it didn’t do a great job as they were still damp so hung these up in the room. While this was going we had put the towels on the wet carpet to remove water. You can imagine how wet the towels were after this exercise. We decided to attempt to dry these in the dryer- which also didn’t work well. We resulted to putting these on the towel rail – which was pretty hot, but didn’t really dry them either.

One we had attempted to remove as much water as possible from the carpet, Kym used his work knowledge to the problem and we put the fan in the room focused on the carpet to attempt to dry it out (hair drier was not going to cut it.).

The next morning the clothes were put through the dryers again, as were the towels. The carpet was still damp in places, so the fan was put on again – until we checked out. Did it help – yes, it was still a bit damp but not as bad.

All I want to know …who puts carpet under and in front of a washing machine?

Bonus day 1: Slow tour visits Birmingham

Posted on by kymdt

The slow tour has let Yorkshire for London. It could take us two and half hours on Hull Trains our, in true slow tour fashion it could take for days via Birmingham and Oxford.

In Birmingham we made up a leisurely bike route of around 20 kilometers. It was better than any GPX file I could find. It included, in slow tour style, an accidental visit to Cadbury World. Bournville is:

  • ward within the council constituency of Selly Oak
  • a model village on the south side of Birmingham
  • site of the original ‘Factory in a Garden’
  • best known for its connections with the Cadbury family and chocolate
  • one of the nicest places to live in Britain.

The ride was made up of two parts. To Cadbury World and from Cadbury World.

To Cadbury World

We started near New Street Station. That was quite confusing to work out which way we should go given all the buses and taxis around the area. But it didn’t take long before we found the entry to the canal.

The Birmingham towpaths seem to be in pretty good shape. At times the path becomes quite narrow because of the bordering hedges or the right and low bridges.

Cadbury World

Fortunately, we arrived too late to get entry to Cadbury World this day. After buying some chocolate, we retreated to Bournville the model village built around the factory. As you ready earlier in this post, Bournville is one of the nicest places in England to live.

We visited a nice cafe and Selly Manor.

Returning to Birmingham

On the way back we rode though some suburbs and Birmingham University to Edgbaston and through Cannon Hill Park.

Resources

  • There is no clean GPX file for this rude. You might get some ideas from our Strava accounts. Part 1 was to Bournville and Part 2 was the return.
  • Cycling In Birmingham has good information to help you put your own route together.