The Himedomachi Cycling Club

A persistent tapping sound woke me up at five. It sounded like someone slapping dough. I covered my ears with the duvet and tried to go back to sleep. I gave this up and opened the blind and scowled outside looking for the culprit. It was the rain landing on the metal roof over the front door.

I did my old man yoga, ate the breakfast I’d brought the day before and, for the first time ever, managed to clip my saddle bag to the bike like the man in the infomercial I had watched. I was on the road by seven. I had 100kms to cycle and a mountain to climb and the owner of the hotel where I was going to stay seemed like the didn’t like late comers.

I took a fast moving dual carriageway out the Eniwa and towards Chitose. The traffic was medium heavy, cars, trucks, the odd articulated lorry, but the drivers considerate. In fact, all Japanese drivers have been extremely considerate a consequence maybe of having to cycle to school in the morning.

A deer ran across the two oncoming lanes and into our lanes, its head bobbing in panic. It made it to the pavement about 30 metres in front of me then tried to run back. Instead it hit the side of an incoming car, smashing the driver side window and mirror, bounced off and lay twitching on the ground. I cycled on my teeth barred in horror.

I took a right onto the 16, where the road emptied and the forest began. I began to see why cyclists eulogise Hokkaido. Shallow brooks ran past mossy trees and the woods were alive with birds.

A tourist cycle path runs alongside the toad, veering into the woods and then returning. It must be lovely in summer but I didn’t use it. The road I was on was smooth blacktop and the traffic was light. I also knew that I’d get skittish if I saw a bear warning sign. In fact, bear warning signs were staked to the verge of the road I was on, so many in one section that they looked like For Sale signs during a real estate boom. The same bear, or multiple bears? Who could tell?

To use my bear spray first I would have to slide off the plastic safety catch then depress the lever. I decided to remove the safety for the journey to make it quicker to use. As I did so a small amount of the spray discharged in the bag, coating the tips of my fingers dark brown. I wiped it on my trousers and kept going.

I arrived at Lake Shikotsu 20 kilometres later. It was still drizzling and, across the water, Eniwa Mountain was wreathed in clouds. It was a wild and forbidding presence that flickered in and out of view through the tangle of trees I looked through.

I knew there were three tunnels coming. The first had a pavement, the second was very short, the third was about two kilometres long, ascended a 19% rise and didn’t have a pavement.

I stopped in front of the first tunnel, where some workmen were loafing off in a van, to eat and drink and take a photo.

It looked forbidding but was a great starter tunnel. I could see the end and had it to myself most of the way. Some lorries came through and it gave me the chance to acclimatise to the noise which otherwise would have been pretty alarming.

The road climbed to the Bifue snow clearance station. I stopped again to have one of my emergency energy gels. It tasted surprisingly peppery for lemon flavour, then I realised I’d inadvertently spiced it with bear spray.

The road climbed through the forest and in either side of me I could see the distant hills. The road would go quiet, then a lorry or an army truck would come chugging up behind me trailing a streamer of cars, then go quiet again. I stopped on a bridge to take the above photograph and the lorries made it thud and bounce as they hit it.

A workman stood at a layby at the top of the climb wearing blue overalls and a helmet. He blew a whistle and unfurled a flag with kanji written on it. I knew the kanji separately but not the word.

I pulled into the layby to get my breath back.

“You can keep going. There are roadworks in the tunnel.”

I could see the queue ahead and joined it when I’d recovered. Another man was holding up a red flag and talking on the radio. A stream of cars came the other way and then he waved the cars on our side through, although he asked me to stop.

When everyone had passed he waved me on. A yellow road maintenance car pulled out behind me and turned its yellow flashing lights on and I was escorted in. Halfway down a workmen holding a red light saber pointed me into the other lane and a few minutes later I was through. All that worrying for nothing. It wasn’t even steep.

It was all descent after that and I raced down at 40. I came to a michi no eki where soldiers were packed together into the smoking cabin. I used the loo, being very careful to wash off the remaining spray before I touched anything delicate.

I stopped at the Secomart in Honcho to buy lunch. A man was coming in as I left. He looked tough in his wellies and boiler suit and dirty cap, the kind of guy who would effortlessly survive up here, I thought.

I held the door open for him as I stepped outside, but he asked me a question instead.

“Where are you from?”

He only had three front teeth and they were brown. Tufts of hair sprouted in patches from his cheeks

“England,” I said.

“Oh, England. You’re my first Englishman. I’ve spoken to an American and a Canadian, but you’re the first person I’ve spoken to from England.”

He made it sound like collecting stamps.

“There’s an Australian up the road, too.”

I found him hard to understand and a well dressed passed us and looked at me as if to say, what are you talking to him for?

Fortunately, neither of us could think of much to say and the conversation was mercifully short.

I had pushed myself hard to get here and was content to sit in the sun and eat an egg sandwich.

I eventually made it to Lake Toya, where Booth went cruising in the mist. The banks of Lake Toya curve softly into the water and are lined with camellia trees. The northern edge is flanked by wooded hills, and the snow covered peak of Mount Yotei rises behind them. The town centre is given over to brutish onsen hotels and men in white shirts guard the entrances to welcome the guests and keep out the unwelcome.

I arrived at my hotel, shouted “Gomen kudasai!” down its echoing corridors, visited the front office, rang the doorbell three times at the owner’s house. He only appeared when an old guy turned up in a van and shuffled into the coin laundry.

He showed me around – again I’m the only guest – and later gave me a lift to the supermarket in town and back. He said he used to be in Japan’s air force and had travelled all around the country. I asked him how long he had had the hotel, which is a bit of a dump by anyone’s standards.

“Well, I used to run a business over there,” he said, gesturing to Mount Usu. “But then it erupted and destroyed my business and everything around it, the road, everything. There was an earthquake too, not a normal earthquake, but one where we were thrown up and down. It measured 6.5 and afterwards my house listed at an angle.

“Then this hotel came up for sale and I noticed there were loads of volcanologists visiting so I bought it. Now we get people from all over the world who rent the rooms for ten days while they go skiing.”

I asked him about his kids and he said he had two grandchildren, twins, who he hadn’t seen yet as they were born underweight and had only just left the hospital.

He seemed like a man who would always land on his feet. I appreciated his friendliness, although not so much his timekeeping.

This hotel is in the woods and, for a city boy like me, seems very isolated, even though there is a town at the bottom of the hill. Having waited outside for thirty minutes, I have also seen hikers and normal looking people materialise out the woods.

Today was by turns exhilarating, terrifying, awe-inspiring, wild and very hard work. Unlike northern Hokkaido, in this side of them mountain it’s spring, the fields are lush, the camellia are out and, like every place I’ve stayed in so far, the heater is effusive.

view from my window.