Bicycle: 77 km
Train: 160 km
Average Speed: 17.1 km/h
Total Ascent: 305 m
Riding Time: 4:28 h
Weather: Sunny but not to warm, strong headwind on the way out… nice tailwind coming back, 17C
My company is organising every year a cycling event in Europe and this year I signed up for the first time. I found out through the Japan company newsletter that a colleague from Osaka office also signed up… so we decided to spend a day together cycling when I was going to be in Kansai. Although she lives here, she has just started cycling, so didn’t know any good routes. So I proposed a few routes around the area I knew… and she selected the one from Maibara to Yogoko and back. (A ride I had done on a rental road bike a few months ago). It was also her first time rinko-ing (i.e. putting the bicycle into a bag and on the train).
We met at Maibara station, reassembled our bikes and then set out to the lake against a quite fierce wind. But not as bad as wind in the Netherlands.
Surprisingly it was her first time at Lake Biwa although she lives in Kobe. We cycled along the shore mostly on the cycle path which officially is labelled “slow cyclists”, but protects from the cars and lorries.
Specially the landscape around Yogo lake was really nice, with wild wisteria blooming on the banks of a small river.
At the lake we had lunch in an old fashioned restaurant and then returned with the wind in our backs in slightly downhill. Riding back for long stretches we literally didn’t pedal at all… and for some other parts we pedalled a little bit… but really without any real effort. Specially the part reaching nearly 30 km/h on a very gentle downhill (so gentle that it was kind of invisible) was a lot of fun.
On the way back we passed through the countryside instead of along the shore, essentially repeating the ride I had done in early December last year. Passed through Nagahama historical centre …
… and back to the station at Maibara. With my new rinko bag from Montbell I am now very quick rinko-ing, so had some time to speak with the staff at the cycle rental station and got good advise for a Biwa-ichi (i.e. a total round of Biwa Lake by bicycle). I had seen that the weather on the next day was going to be good and, crucially no wind. So I thought that this would be the ideal day to attempt a Biwa-ichi. But it is 184 km… which is a bit too much for me. My longest ride so far was a 160 km (I.e. 100 mile) ride a few years back in the Netherlands helped with a nice tailwind along. So 184 km with a bit of hills (more than in the Netherlands) and without a constant tailwind sounded too hard. But I got the good advise, to only do the bigger part of the lake from Biwa-O-hashi onwards, i.e. Katata to Katata. Also because the part between Katata and Otsu is quite heavy with traffic (as I experienced when cycling from Gifu Hashima to Kyoto earlier in the year) and thus neither fast nor enjoyable to ride.
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