We have enough time to take it easy on the way to Sapporo - we don't even really have to be in Sapporo itself. We're tempted to put in long days and go quickly towards Sapporo, and wrap the journey up, but that just wouldn't make sense. It would mean we either spend too much time in Sapporo, and cities are not are favourite pastime. Or we'd need to find another few days of cycling, which would not make sense. So we just take it easy and put in relatively short days of cycling, enjoying the moment. It's warm and sunny summer weather which is great as well!
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Rural cycling in Hokkaido
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So from Urahoro we had a real easy day towards Obihiro. It was nice cycling, easy, nearly flat, tailwind cycling through rural Hokkaido. Fields, pastures, forest and farms framed by mountains in the distance, with very light hills on the way to keep the ride interesting. It wasn't anything spectacular, but certainly very nice. To some degree, this scenery reminds us of Belgium - at least, the green hilly rural early summer kind of Belgium. We made a slight detour to visit Ikeda, the Hokkaido "wine capital". The Ikeda wine castle is very funny; if you've seen European or Australian wineries, it's really nothing, it's a very ugly concrete building, the cellar isn't much at all, and they're selling their wines (in the souvenir shop which is twice the size of the wine cellar) at 2-3 times the price you pay for good, imported wine (which, surprisingly, is really cheap here in Hokkaido). Just around the corner we also visited a dairy farm, and while there was no cheese tasting or anything like that we very much enjoyed their delicious ice cream! Vanilla and matcha, berries and sesame ice cream, yummy! So we tasted some wine first, had an ice cream next, and then finished with... lunch. We found a really nice udon noodle shop and had tasty cold udon noodles. There was a young French woman at the restaurant with 2 little children, she had lived in Ikeda for the past 3,5 years (her husband is teaching English). Living in a place like this (a small remote town), without knowing the language, without other foreigners, wow, that's also an interesting challenge (which they had clearly enjoyed).
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| A Belgian couple (we start to wear the same clothes now...) at a Japanese vineyard. In fact, most of the vines are inside greenhouses, this is just a small demo plot. |
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| Summer grain! |
From Ikeda it was another short ride into Obihiro where we had booked at Airbnb for the night. We were happy to arrive early after 64km easy riding (around 3.30pm), unfortunately the host was not around... Luckily a delivery service passed by and the guy called the host - and we got to know it would take another hour before he would arrive! We were first not happy with that, but we just went to a supermarket to buy a few things we needed, and came back with a cold beer to enjoy on the stairs, in the warm lazy afternoon. Somehow the hosts seemed not to have expected us; the room was not ready, there were still used cups and teabags, ... Anyway, we didn't care, the people - an old couple - were certainly friendly, the room was big and nice, and yes of course, the hot shower was fantastic.
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| Some parts of our ride went over unsealed roads |
We strolled through Obihiro centre in the early evening, it's quite a pleasant city. Looking for dinner we stumbled upon an alley full of small outdoor restaurants; completely something for us, so the choice was quickly made! It was izakaya style, and we had some great Japanese food with a couple of beers. 2 young men joined the table who spoke good English, which only made it all more fun! What a good time we had in Obihiro, in fact what a nice summer day this had been!
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| Clouds gathering above the mountains... |
From Obihiro we rode further through rural Hokkaido back towards the central mountains, even some parts on unsealed (but good) roads. It was supposed to be another easy day, and while the distance was not too much (62km), it had become quite a tough day! It was really quite hot (no complaints, we still like that!) and there were a lot of up and downs, long and steep, and a constant headwind. It made us pretty tired by the time we arrived. We had also misjudged our options for lunch; in fact, we did not come across a town to have lunch - mostly because we made much slower progress than anticipated. So at some point we just had to stop on the way and have an "emergency lunch"; we still had some bread and wraps left, enough for a light lunch (we knew there was a risk for not finding lunch in time). Less than an hour before arriving, we rode through Shintoku, did our grocery shopping for the night and day ahead, and had some delightful cold drinks... While we were in the town, we already noticed some heavy clouds above the mountains we were heading to. We continued our ride, climbed a few 100m to arrive at a nice (and free) campsite in Sahoro. This is the place where you find Bear Mountain, a kind of bear sanctuary. We had read a bit about it and decided not to visit, as it seemed to be just like a bear zoo. At the campsite we met up again with Khalid and Emily, a nice Scottish couple we had met around Kusharo lake a couple of days ago. It was nice to see them again and have a good chat. We had hoped to arrive early at the campsite and enjoy spending some lazy time in the nice summer afternoon a bit. When we arrived it was actually already late afternoon, and within minutes (literally) after pitching the tent, it started to rain! We were lucky to have a shelter in which we could sit and cook in the evening, as it rained for quite a while. No lazy afternoon, but rain instead... Ahhhh...... We haven't been very lucky with the Hokkaido weather, it seems it's telling us that it's time to go home! And oh yes, we're totally ready for it! It's still good fun, but we'll be very happy to go back home now!
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| Our tent in the rain... |
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| And my bicycle under the shelter... |
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| Packed and ready to go again in the (sunny!) morning |
Today we did make it a real short day. We only did 40km - first a long gradual uphill, then a nice descent - and finished our ride at lake Kanayama, still before lunch. It's a very beautiful and scenic spot at the lakeside, and it really felt like a great place to stay for the rest of the day (and make up for the missed lazy afternoon yesterday). There was some rain forecast for the afternoon and yes, within minutes after pitching our tent it started to rain (really!!!). But it should be a nice afternoon after that, and we'll just enjoy it anyway! 2 more days on the road, then wrapping up in Sapporo... oh my...
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| Cycling in the mountains always seems to be what we like best! |
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| Summer means: lots of wildflowers |
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| Taking shelter in the tent for today's rain... |
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| And uhm... another milestone. Within a few dozens of km from where we reached 10.000km, almost closing the Hokkaido loop, we reach this one. Does it mean we should continue until 20k now??? |