When I looked out from the hotel window early in the morning, I just couldn’t believe what I had seen. Blue sky, bright sunny day and flock of seagulls. That’s completely different from what we had the day before!

Weather report stated that typhoon Noru had moved across Honshu, the main island of Japan, towards the Sea of Japan. What an excellent forecast work by JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency)!

To allow more time for the ride, we planned to take the 9am local bus to Innoshima/Setoda.

We did a quick checkout and the front-desk staff filled in the Sagawa Hand-free Cycling Service request form for us. Since Sagawa’s scheduled luggage pickup time was 10am, the front-desk staff asked us to pass our big suitcases to them and they would handle the rest of the collection works. Another heart warming customer service. 👍👍

With our small backpacks, we took the shuttle bus to the JR Onomichi Station. Had our breakfast and waited for the bus at Bus Stop number 7 (因島，瀨戶田).

The bus would first move onto the Onomichi bridge to Mukaishima via National Highway 317, Nishi Seto Expressway (ie. Shimanami Kaido Expressway) to Innoshima.

Stopped over at the Innoshima Bridge BS for passengers to change Highway bus to Imabari.

The bus service was extremely accurate and the highway bus shortly arrived within few minutes.

Shimanami Kaido Ride – Go Go Go

The first few things we did on arrival at JR Imabari Station were:

1. Placed our personal belongings and small bag of clothes in storage locker at the JR Station
2. Changed to our cycling jersey
3. Rent our bikes from the Rent-a-cycle Terminal next to the JR station

My wife and I got two Bridgestone CYLVA and Anchor flat-bar road bikes while my boy had a nearly new 24-inch Giant XTC Jr Mountain Bike. Same as the one he is using in Hong Kong. Great !

Our Day One Shimanami Kaido Cycling Route

Of my two cycling routes, the first day’s ride mainly consisted of flat roads in the city area and across the bridge. The most difficult parts would be those steep roads climbing up to the Kurushima Kaikyo Bridge.

We started from the JR Imabari Station and stopped at Sunrise Itoyama for our lunch.

Next we pedaled across the Kurushima Kaikyo Bridge. Getting down to the Oshima Exit and returned.

Finally we returned our bikes at the JR Imabari Station Rent-a-cycle Terminal.

3-D visualisation of the journey as generated with Relive.

Summary of the Day

By the time we arrived at the Imabari Kokusa Hotel in the evening, our luggage was already delivered. What an amazing delivery service!

It was quite busy for the day as we had an extremely tight schedule.

We had to rest earlier as the next day’s cycling journey would be much challenging.

Had a tasty dinner at the Hotel to complete the day.

It is really hard to describe what we had experienced along the Shimanami Kaido in simple words.

My short video for this wonderful journey may worth a thousand words.

Click the following links for my previous posts on the Shimanami Kaido Ride 2017:

• Shimanami Kaido – My Family Challenge
• Shimanami Kaido – When planned trip turned into an unplanned one