Too hot outside... so an onsen it was

Route: Hashimoto - half way up to Miyagase - Machida - home

Bicycle: 66 km

Train: 35 km

Average Speed: 14.5 km/h

Total Ascent: 748 m

Riding Time: 4:31 h

Weather: Sunny and too hot, 27 C

This weekend I tried a ride in the mountains  (original plan was to ride up to Miyagase dam and then maybe further up from there)... but we started quite late and it was already quite hot when we were still climbing up, so on a dragging climb we (I, to be precise) decided to turn back and take a different route again back to down the mountains, to lunch and a very relaxing onsen. Actually a very nice super sento in your typical built up ugly Tokyo suburbia... but this was a super sento with a twist: Very dark waters and one of the rotenburos at only 35 C, which was a perfectly coolish temperature to linger in the water for a long long time, getting out of it only occasionally to heat up again a little bit in the next pool over (which was probably at around 40 C). 

The region around Miyagase dam is probably the easiest place in the mountains accessible from my home. A short ride to Medaimae or Sasazuka station and then a direct train to Hashimoto and in less than an hour I am at the starting point and from Hashimoto up into the mountains it isn't too far either. 

After the long and relaxing soak in the onsen it had gotten a bit cooler and so it was possible to ride a bicycle again... and instead of just slowly riding to the next (and closeby) train station, I decided to ride back home. It didn't look too far on a map (about 30ish kilometers)... but it turned out that the landscape (you can't call it countryside because it is essentially all built up until Tokyo) around Machida is pretty lumpy. A lot of up and downs. Not the best ride I ever did... But hey, I made it back home.