Great sleep on the sheltered trampoline and off to an early start on a cloudy day.

Goodbye to another park camping spot.

A slight climb to the first of a few beautifully preserved villages on the Nakasendo trail. In the name of heritage, they’d made the effort to rid these villages of the otherwise ubiquitous utility cables. So nice not to have wires in every photo – of which I took far too many. Being so early we had plenty of space to have a good potter around the main streets and some temples.

Onions hanging to dry

Footpath getting a bit tight for bikes, but great deserted tunnel for echoes.

Not minding the early signs of autumn yet, with the cloud a lot of the day was under 20°C – drizzle was a small price to pay.

Lunch in Agematsu was a good way to get out of the rain for a bit. We happened across a restaurant run by the cutest elderly couple, assisted by their son. They were very interested in our trip, we explained as best we could.

From this restaurant, we started to include “elderly couple” in our searches online for restaurants – such places always seem to serve food made with utmost care.

I’m unsure what I’m trying to explain, with my very limited Japanese, but Rachel has captured the moment well.

Down the valley for thirty kilometres we continued, the towns spacing out a bit more for slightly faster progress.

Hydro plant.

Mischievous macaques on an abandoned building – the first we’d seen.

A brick building!

Along with the waterwheels we’d seen earlier, we happened upon a man making more in his garage. Interesting to stop and look for a bit – no structural nails and his working model was intricate.

Rain cleared by now and brightening up.

After this town, Tsumago, the Nakasendo climbed 400 m over a hill away from the river. Bit too steep for us, so we took the road to the same point.

Just as well we did, as the where the trail emerged back to the road, at the top, it was rather busy with walkers.

Down into Gifu, as we attempted to get through the metropolitan line, the following day, that’s almost continuous from Nagoya along the south coast.

One more lovely town on the Nakasendo for the day. Would have been nice to stay up here, but we couldn’t find anywhere suitable to do so.

So we lost five hundred metres rapidly and had a short ride to a business hotel onsen in Nakatsugawa to end an unusually climby day (for this trip). Excellent day of sights it was too; unfortunately Rachel was starting to show signs of having caught the illness that had plagued me in Tokyo.

After three trains from Yokohama (two packed commuters, one express on which we were relieved to get seats), we bee-lined for our favourite bike shop in a grain store to be reunited with our bikes. Very pleased to finally have replacement, faster rolling, tyres – my Mezcals were lightly used before Mongolia, with the plan to replace them in Japan – but finding 29″ tyres is very difficult as the few mountain bikes are mostly 27.5″. Also a new chain and the mechanic dealt to the click from my eccentric bottom bracket that had been persistently slightly irritating.

Bonus – these tyres were unwanted by the purchaser of a new bike, so only forty dollars equivalent each. So much faster – don’t tell Rachel.

A little life left in the rear one, more on the front – they may have survived the final month, but I was keen to have slicker tyres too. Rachel had her Mezcals swapped between wheels.

After continuing to enjoy the bike shop’s stock and chatting with the mechanic (he even looked up other bike shops on our route that might have a replacement SRAM chain for Rachel – again, don’t tour Japan with fancy SRAM bits), we eventually pulled ourselves away to repack our bikes at the hostel we’d left most of our luggage, have lunch and resupply.

Found some of my favourite Japanese candy.

Two o’clock by the time we were leaving the city, heading for the hills again. Wahoo!

Bodes well.

Various bike routes and quiet roads across the plains, climbing gently for twenty kilometres.

Bit late to forage for salad ingredients.

Into a much narrower valley, we joined the historic Nakasendo route – an old route connecting Kyoto (former capital) with Edo (now Tokyo, current capital), dotted with beautiful old postal towns. The route is now with popular long-distance walkers, which we’d occasionally see over the next few days.

A rare sighting of an old kei truck.

Not often we saw roofs held down with rocks, only a few in our three months.

Another plus of being back in the hills.

The sleepy main streets of these small towns were delightful to potter up.

Kiso-Hirosawa is famous for its lacquerware. Late in the afternoon we found but one shop still open. The size of it was impressive enough, let alone the beautiful items displaying the craftsmanship – seven generations of expertise over two hundred years showing through. Travelling by bike helped save my money, some nice chopsticks the limit of what extra I could carry.

A locally-owned store gave different, and fewer, options for dinner ingredients – but enough to concoct something when we got to our park for the night. This one had a large covered wooden floor, as well as nearby playground and toilet block. After dinner, I slept on one of trampolines for the night – surprisingly comfortable.