We have arrived in Sapporo! This means, our bike trip has more or less come to an end. Yes, we still have to move around Sapporo, but there are no real days on the bike anymore. What a strange feeling... After living such a long time towards this trip, and then the past 7,5 months filled with incredible experiences, we've come to our final destination... Really glad to go back home and really sad it's over at the same time...
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Our tent at the Kanayama campground. We've had many campsites like this, a lot of space and hardly any campers; very nice for us. Probably it's more busy during the high season later on in summer, it's clear there is sometimes a much bigger crowd
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| Lake Kanayama |
From our wonderful campsite at lake Kanayama we left in the morning with fine weather again. It was beautiful cycling again as well, first 10km along the lake through green nature and with great views over the lake and mountains. After 10km we came to the junction with R237, where we closed our Hokkaido loop completely. We had been here before, only now we rode in the opposite direction back towards Shimukappu - a climb, a tunnel, and a nice long descent away. When we were in Shimukappu a bit more than 2 weeks before, we had sheltered at the michi-no-eki (rest area) because of the rain, and thanks to that we knew there was a little bakery with delicious pastry... Perfect timing once we got there for a coffee break in the park with some of these delicacies!
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| Uphill on the R237 |
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| And more uphill on the road |
From Shimukappu we took the connection to the R274, which would take us all the way to Sapporo. We were heading for another campsite in the mountains, the Hobetsu campground, our last night in the tent, in the mountains. After some good up and downs, and 4 long tunnels we arrived at the campground. These tunnels were no fun; each more than 1km and up to 2,5km, narrow, dark, noisy tunnels with often quite a bit of traffic, no bicycle lane, ... Always happy to exit such tunnels; luckily they were all downhill so we went very fast through them, and we used our front and rear lights and even reflective vests in this case... We had done 74km, made good progress with only 1 stop and so we arrived at the campground already at 2pm. Time to have lunch - cup noodles for once, haven't done that much during our trip - and then just enjoy the rest of the afternoon in the beautiful environment. It felt more or less like our last "real" day, the day after this would be riding through more urban environment etc. We celebrated this with 2 sneaky afternoon beers (well, Ellen had chuhi, soju with carbonated flavoured water) which made us happy for the afternoon...
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| At Hobetsu campground |
The previous 2 days, it had started to rain as soon as we pitched the tent. Well, it was no different this time. I pitched the tent and sure enough, it started to drizzle. There was enough good shelter at the campsite so no problem, but incredible... And it just didn't stop, it drizzled and then rained for the entire afternoon, evening, night and morning!!! We still took a bath in the (cold) mountain river, but then stayed under the shelter and some time inside the tent. We made our last camp dinner - pasta, what else, but I also made a simple onion soup (nice with the cool weather and rain) and slept in the tent with the sound of the rain throughout the night. Our last of the 46 nights camping, a very wet one (well, nice and dry inside the tent luckily).
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| Taking shelter... |
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| Rain rain rain |
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| Trying to get things a little bit dry before leaving (not successful) |
It was still raining when we got up in the morning. Really, all that rain in Hokkaido, well over half of the days here we've had rain, and some other days with unpleasant weather - 13 or 14 out of 20 days I think. Even though it's really beautiful here, that's tempering the enthusiasm... But let's not complain. When we started to cycle, it was still raining, however soon (after 20-30') the rain stopped and it was almost dry most of the day; we even had some tailwind for a change! So our last ride, into Sapporo, was not too bad! We just followed the R274, not always the most pleasant cycling (mostly due to a lack of cycling lanes or shoulders, and quite a bit of heavy traffic, because other than that the scenery was fine), until Kitahiroshima. By then we had left the mountains and "wilderness" behind! In Kitahiroshima we joined the cycling trail to Sapporo, a beautiful walking and cycling trail away from the road. Very nice! We made very good progress and arrived at our Sapporo guesthouse (TenToTen) a bit after 3pm, with 92km on the counter. It was a bit strange to ride in a big city again, the last time had probably been Osaka, almost a month ago.
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| The new cyclist fashion collection, summer 2017 |
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| R274, a part with cycling lane... |
We walked into central Sapporo in the evening, looking for a restaurant recommended by the guesthouse staff, unfortunately it was closed. So we went to another place, for a very nice Japanese style curry. After that we felt we deserved a drink; after all, this was the end of almost 8 months on the bike. So we found a nice bar and had a glass of wine, and could not resist to order a little cheese platter. We'll have to do a more Japanese ending today or tomorrow, right...
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| Tent drying part 2, during the coffee break |
We had an incredible night, by far the best bed we've had in ages! Wow, you'd almost forget how good a bed can be!... Now we're sitting on the guesthouse's terrace, it's nice weather (for a change!) and the coffee is good! Later on today I'll have a call with Materialise, to discuss starting up again in 2 weeks. That's going to be interesting... Going back to work will also be interesting, looking forward to certain things but also a bit nervous about it. We'll see... Towards the evening we're moving to another location, a warm showers host about 1 hour cycling from where we are now. From there we'll have find one or the other way to get to the airport on Friday!
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| The Kitahiroshima - Sapporo bicycle path |
Special days, what a biased feelings!... But in any case, looking forward very much to go back HOME!