Gero trip #1 (Gifu Prefecture)

16-18 July 2024: A casually planned three-day ride to a popular hot spring resort. Surprises included: an unridable hiking trail; a flat tire repair challenge in a rainstorm on a mountain road after dark; a midnight map reading failure; and the kindness of strangers.

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Gero Onsen is one of several fresh destinations that I began to map out this year, and I decided to give this one a go before the life-threatening heat of summer arrived. As on previous tours, I would be camping.

Whether through sloth or depression I’m not sure, but I was pretty loosey in the planning. I covered the essentials (route maps, campground reservations, packing), but didn’t fret over details like elevations or precise routing to day-end waypoints. Meh. It’s a little over 100km from the house in Nisshin to the resort town of Gero in Gifu Prefecture, and I thought I’d split the outbound journey into two segments, camping one night midway, and then return in a single day. Since Gero is in the mountains, and the road home would therefore be mostly downhill. Pretty much. I assumed.

The Komoot navigation app (using OpenMap data, I think) set a pretty straight course to the ultimate goal. The map below shows what I intended as the first half of Day 1. For reasons to be confessed to below, this turned out to be a little less than the first one-third of the day’s journey. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

As the story unfolds below, please note that although these notes are accompanied by photos, I don’t pretend to be much of a photographer, and on this trip, as on previous ones, the number of photos declines sharply after the journey gets well underway. Once I begin feeling the need to budget energy to reach goal (at all), other things take priority—and in any case photos aren’t really optimal for these trips. In fact I’m thinking about taking a memo recorder on future excursions, as a less distracting and more effective way of capturing impressions along the way.

[Day 1 start: 22.3km, 270m up, 180m down]

• GPX data: Nisshin ↣ Central Expressway

And so it began, at maybe 8:00am, with me just a little short on sleep, decked out in riding gear, and maybe not taking things quite as seriously as I might have done, while the loaded bike waited patiently at its hitching post in front of the house.

On the first gradual rise out of the Nagoya basin, I passed a barbecue spot. As I’ve noted before, the basic concept of “camping” in Japan begins with barbecue pits, washing-up stands, and public toilets. Just as food is arguably more important than booze to the success of a typical izakaya, the civilized barbecue experience with all mod cons is more important than roughing it with a compass and trowel to the camping experience. Some venues, like this one in, I believe, Owari-Asahi (sponsored, apparently, by a supplier of yakiniku products), and also many community parks, take that to the next level, offering BBQ as a standalone feature, without provision for staying the night.

Pushing on to the city of Kasugai, a portion of the course ran along a drainage canal lined with stands of bamboo. I couldn’t help but notice that some of the bamboo had died, and that some shoots (trees? blades? I’m not sure of the nomenclature) had withered and were leaning into the watercourse. That struck me as unusual, but I don’t know whether it’s a sign of drought, or disease, or beetles, or just lagging grounds maintenance. (It’s still early in the ride at this point; later in the day and scene like this would not warrant a photo.)

Just a few meters from where the previous snap was taken, I passed what I guess was a very rural used car lot or possibly wrecking yard (?), and I took photos of a couple of the vehicles. A mini-truck with a sign propped up in the bed advertises the business, which is apparently owned by an immigrant from South Asia. Next to it was a derelict mini-van with the startling juxtaposition of a Japanese flag flying patriotically from its antenna and a Mickey Mouse sun screen peering upside down from the windshield. Pausing briefly to admire the sheer contrast of it all, I rode on.

The next milestone in memory was Kasugai Country Club, set on the south side of a ridge that would be the first serious climb of the day’s pedal push. Golf courses provide an opportunity for people to swap riding around in cars for walking around on lawn grass, but in Japan, at least, they’re not entirely good news for the cyclist. On the upside, their well-heeled membership assures that roads leading to them will be well maintained, with ample width, broad curves, and a reasonable gradient. On the downside, in mountainous regions they’re built into the most walkable (and therefore bikeable) portion of a hillside, leaving non-members to contend with rougher or more circuitous routes to get around them.

As it happened, Kasugai Country Club was an extreme example of the beast. A really quite pleasant ride rising gradually past grassy knolls on the right, and shielded from direct sun by a canopy of forestland on the left terminated abruptly at a makeshift footbridge fashioned from rebar, spanning a rivulet at the foot a narrow unsurfaced footpath rising sharply into the forest.

This was the first, and would be the worst, of several dismount-and-push experiences of the day.

The track was not in good shape. As the pictures show somewhat, heavy rains has washed away the topsoil, exposing the rocks that originally served as the foundation. Pushing the loaded bike over these was a chore, but with some effort I reached the first plateau, where I paused to take a snap of this sign, warning adventurous hikers of wild boar and wild boar traps in the forest beyond the path.

The way then steepened, and the track became a wash, a channel of small boulders flanked by clay banks still moist from recent rains. At that point I gave up on pushing the bike, paused to think things through, changed from SPD riding shoes to sneakers, walked the remainder of the course to explore the top of the ridge, then pulled the panniers off the bike, and hiked them up to the top in several trips, followed by the bike itself.

To compound the feeling of exasperation, the crest of the ridge proved to be the embankment of an expressway, with the footbridge spanning the throughfare under water at the near end. Into the bargain, a gate to discourage crossings by wild boar stood in the middle of the mud puddle. Fortunately it proved to be shallow, and after loading up the bike again, I managed to negotiate through the gate while mounted and close it from the other side, just as I was taught as a country kid raise 5,000 miles away across the Pacific. Some rules of the road are universal.

I took several snaps to commemorate the experience, but the heat of the day was beginning to show itself, and from this point on, camera curiosity pretty much gave way to survival instinct.

[Day 1 second segment: 21.2km, 210m up, 340m down]

• GPX data: Central Expressway ↣ Kawabe

There was more climb after the expressway bridge, although over a track in less horrific condition. That footpath proved to be a spur off of a trail signposted as the “Aichi Nature Trail” (愛知自然道). A level path led to the right from the junction, just below the crest of a ridge. I jumped a bit when passing the sign shown below, initially mistaking 山火事 (mountain forest fire) for 火山 (volcano), and that seemed worth a photo.

The view from the crest of the ridge proved to be of a massive array of solar panels installed in a mountain valley stripped of vegetation and carved into terraces. It’s large enough to be plainly visible in satellite photographs (as in the route map shown above).

The Aichi Nature Trail joined a wide concrete-paved boulevard for earthmoving equipment and heavy trucks servicing the earthworks in progress at the solar site beyond the ridge. One of several gravel works stood at the junction, and a few meter on, across the industrial roadbed to the north, there was a marquee sign for something called “Multi World,” with a logo of a skull and crossbones wrapped in the subtitle “Survival Game.” Exhausted from the hellish climb at this point, and uncertain whether completing the ride was even feasible, I was smitten with comic hysteria, and the scene earned itself a photograph.

The road leading away from the construction zone ran through forestland on the far side of the ridge, with a series of sharp switchbacks large enough to show up as a blip in the middle of the green zone at the bottom of the route map above. The road through the forest opened at the base of the hill onto a wide road bordering a built-up basin lying to the north. I had run out of water at this point, and stopped at a vending machine at the corner to dispose of empties and stock up on water for the road ahead, which lay ahead level, straight as a string, and without shade to blunt the force of the noonday sun.

After crossing the Kani river that runs through the center of the basin, the name of the small cafe below caught my eye. Thinking it might be open to word-play in the writeup of the adventure, I took a hasty snap before the light changed. There won’t be any wry word-play here, though, because the mother and daughter running this cafe were very kind when, on the return journey, disheveled and on the verge of heatstroke, I stopped in to cool off and have some food. More on that later, but this is a good spot, and if by chance you too find yourself passing through the city of Kani, you should check it out.

Just a few blocks further on from the Ruck Cafe on the way north, my legs began to cramp badly, and I pulled over in a patch of shade and sat at the curb until the worst of it subsided, sipping on water and sports drink. When it felt safe to reach my toes without cramping up all over again, I changed back into riding shoes again, repacked everything, and set off again.

Riding north through the more rural town of Kawabe, I passed an elderly man out for a walk. To tired to muster a proper greeting, I puffed out my cheeks as I approached as if to say, “Boy howdy, sure is hot today!” It landed, and he broke out in a memorable grin sans dentures. To strangers sharing a joke as they passed one another on a country road.

I was now drawing within a reasonable distance to Hichiso, which I remembered to be where I’d reserved a spot for the night. At the foot of a climb, I paused in a patch of shade to punch in the address of the campground for precise guidance to the campground. And that, dear reader, is where the more serious challenges of Day 1 began.

[Day 1 third segment: 43.7km, 970m up, 680m down]

When I punched in the address of the campground, the navigation app reported that over 40 kilometers remained—almost the full distance that I had covered in the first five hours of trekking, but with three mountain passes to cross. Disaster. Thinking over it now, I think what happened was that, during my lazy preparations, I had pegged “Hichiso” as a good place to break off midway to Gero; and then when choosing from a romanized list of campgrounds, I’d settled on “Hiuchi no Mori” without thinking it through and made a reservation there. But in the moment, it didn’t matter how it had happened: the challenge just seemed impossible. And the hurdle would be raised further.

Thinking at first that I might just have entered the wrong address copied from Google Maps, I double-checked and called the campground’s number. My heart sank as the woman at the desk confirmed that I had a reservation. I explained my predicament, and that I would arrive no earlier than 18:00 (which was actually wildly optimistic). She replied that the cut-off for check-ins was normally 15:00, which led to some rapid back-and-forth, with me proposing to just hole up somewhere else for the evening, and her speculating that the owner might have other ideas. We agreed that she’d call me back and that meanwhile I’d begin the push into the mountains.

About ten kilometers down the road, the owner of the property called back. He told me not to worry about the time, and to travel at my own pace. It took him at his word, and committed to somehow reach the Hichiso no Mori campground, whether by day or by night.

• GPX data: Kawabe ↣ Hiuchi no Mori Campground

The climbs that followed were a study in endurance and pacing. Freed of worry over arrival time, and weakened by what had already been a ride tougher than I’d bargained for, I focused on staving off collapse. On grades over six or seven percent, I was concerned about my heart rate, and worked out a pattern of twenty paces followed by a pause for fifteen full breaths to keep it under control. There were kilometers’ worth of climbs tackled at that pace. It was very slow going, but step by step I kept at it, motivated by a stubborn commitment to one day be seated at the computer here writing about the experience.

As I approached the top of the final steep grade, exhausted but ready to be triumphant, dusk set in and the weather changed, with flashes of lightning in thunder clouds brought in by high winds. Then just as I topped the ridge and at last began the final descent that had drawn me forward, darkness descended in earnest, thunder began cracking very close, the rain came down in buckets, the back tire went flat and I skidded into a ditch, swearing at the top of my lungs.

I had now been on the road and in motion for a good twelve hours, and my only meal, apart from water and sports drink, had been a single Snickers bar from a convenience store back in Kawabe. I was tapped out, but as the adrenaline from a brief temper tantrum took effect, I began to take stock. I rolled the bike to a small turnout at the edge of a drop. It was raining torrents, and although there was no traffic on the narrow mountain road, visibility was near zero with the rain, the only level spot was the turnout, and it wouldn’t be safe to pitch the tent there. I had to move on, even if it meant walking the remaining ten kilometers for more to reach civilization. I had a spare tube and tools to get the wheel off and make the repair. The weak link was the pump: it was meant for Presta valves while the shopping-bike tires on the bike use Dunlop valves. I had an adapter, but I remembered it leaking badly when I’d tried using it once.

You do what you can. I pulled the phone clip and light off the bike to avoid breakage, turned the bike over and broke out the tools. I had to dig through the bags to find where I’d stashed the tube, and water poured into each bag as I opened it and rummaged through the contents. Everything got soaked, and I was barely able to see, squinting through the shifting kaleidoscope of rain on my glasses. I set the bike light on the ground to work hands free, pulled the old tube off the wheel, and confirmed that the adapter leaked too badly to build any pressure.

As that work was in progress, ants and moths began gathering around the light lying on the ground, intefering a bit with work on the rain-drenched components within the light’s glare. Then there was a loud explosive chirp. And another. I ignored them, but they kept coming; and squinting through rain-strewn glasses I made out a pair of cicadas crawling toward the light. The poor guys had emerged from chrysalis in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. So it wasn’t just me having bad luck that evening.

While putting the new tube on the wheel and moving the Dunlop valve across from the old tube, I had one last-ditch idea to try before giving up and spending the entire evening walking down the cursed hill. I had a patch kit among the tools. I daubed some of the rubber cement around the throat of the Dunlop valve, threaded on the adaptor, and waited for a couple of minutes to let it set—not hoping for much, since it was impossible to dry anything off. At last fate grudgingly yielded, and the tire inflated enough to ride. On a pitch-black mountain road well past my bedtime, drenched to the bone in the middle of a rainstorm, gear soaked and in chaos, with kilometers of unfamiliar road lying ahead to a campground I’d never seen, I was ready to roll.

There is no memory of scenery on the way down the hill, of course, the only light and all of the attention was focused on the patch of road immediately ahead. But in due course, I reached a wider stretch of road, and paused to check navigation. This was another problem. The touchscreen interface of a smartphone is unresponsive when wet. It was raining, the ziplock bags that I had packed for this purpose were somewhere in one of four rain-soaked panniers and possibly waterlogged themselves, and I had nothing to dry the face of the phone with. I worked out that I could shield it with my upper body by leaning forward and peering back at the display, and determined that the address of the campground, which I’d gleaned from Google Maps and registered in the app before departing, was just two kilometers ahead. The road, which tracked a river I could hear to the right, was uphill, and wide enough that traffic might be expected. For safety, knackered as I was, I decided to walk the remaining distance.

When I arrived at the location shown in the app, I was at a bridge over a tributary to the river, leading to a sharp, well-marked bend to the left. The road at the bend and for a good hundred meters beyond was flanked on the right by a chain-link fence several meters high. I parked the bike and tramped over the bridge, up and down the road and back, searching in vain for some sign of a campground entrance. After another brief fit of swearing that called up the last available dose of adrenaline, I rode further up the road, found a large turnout, tramped about to find a portion of it that was well off the roaring river below, but with an overgrowth of weeds showing that vehicles using the turnout didn’t reach that patch, and pitched the tent right there, in the middle of the continuing rainstorm.

It was well past midnight by the time I lay down. I’d been on the road more or less continuously for over sixteen hours. But thanks to warm weather, 100% humidity, and a few bouts of leg cramps, I was probably only able to get two or three hours of sleep. But sleep I did, and it the morning the weather had cleared, I rose, stretched, and packed at leisure; and with better judgment in the light of day, I checked the location of the campground in Google Maps. I had overshot the turning several kilometers back, and was happy to roll back down the hill, find the access road, and push the bike uphill once again, but at last arriving at goal.

Finally on site, I made coffee and boiled up a breakfast of oatmeal. Then with trembling fingers I checked the distance to the Day 2 goal at Gero Onsen, and was (very) pleasantly surprised to find that it was only about a 20 kilometer ride with no serious climbs. So I made more breakfast (and more coffee!), and strolled around the grounds, finally opening up to the serenity of the forest. From the night’s long rain, water was bursting from every pore of the mountains, the sound of it a background theme to every scene.

It was a day off for the front desk, so I left the camping fee under a rock at the window, and around noon I pushed off to Gero Onsen.

[Day 2 Hiuchi to Gero: 21.7km, 320m up, 330m down]

No ride is without its little discoveries. The route from mountain campground to the hotel in Gero was indeed without major climbs, but most of it followed Route 41 along the Hida river, which is the main artery connecting the resort town of Gero with population centers to the south. High speed car and truck traffic combined with a lack of separated paths over most of the route makes for a tense riding experience in some places. There are several tunnels on the 41, and although they do all have separate passages for pedestrians and bicycles, I didn’t see most of these on the way up, and instead gauged my entries to avoid traffic, and rode through each in fear of life and limb; but it was otherwise a blessedly short and uneventful trip to the hotel.

• GPX data: Hiuchi no Mori Campground ↣ Gero Kanko Hotel

I had been looking forward to my camping stay at Gero Kanko Hotel, and it didn’t disappoint. Staff were very kind, and patiently listened to my tale of woe as we wheeled the bike around to the parking area. At check-in, I received an extension cord and a box of fasteners for use in pitching the tent on the rooftop deck. I unpacked my soggy gear and spread it out in an attempt to dry it a bit, and set up the tent. By then 15:00 had rolled around and the onsen baths were open, so I washed the road off of me and had a nice long leisurely hot soak.

Fancying a restaurant meal for a change, I rolled down to Gero and was surprised at the number of restaurants offering foreign cuisine. It was a little early (around 17:00), and I entered the first riverside bistro I came across, which was Sakura & Sakura Tapas Bar. The master on duty was a European (I’m afraid that I couldn’t place his accent, and thought it rude to ask). It was their happy hour, and I had a couple of beers with snacks, then dinner with sake, and rolled back toward the hotel at dusk. At the entry, I crossed paths with the staffer/maid who had shown me to bicycle parking, driving home at the end of her shift. I told her I’d been out to eat, and with a wink that I’d had some booze as 睡眠薬 (sleeping potion). She laughed, but it was not a lie: I was still keyed up from the wild ride that had brought me there.

In the evening, I woke up once past midnight for a trip to the WC, and as I got back in the tent, I pulled the phone off the charger to check the route home for the next day. The screen was black and it wouldn’t start. I hooked it back up to the charger and waited a few minutes, but got no charging icon, nothing; and after waiting for a time, the phone still wouldn’t start. Possibly the phone had given up the ghost from all the rain it had been exposed to. So I had a new problem. Without the phone, I had no navigation, and without navigation, I couldn’t make it home, at least not in a single day.

I went downstairs to the front desk and explained my problem to the night clerk: I needed to find a new SIM-free phone. He kindly dug out a map and walked over the route to a Docomo and to an AU shop, both about 10km up-river. That was at least a step forward, so I went back to bed after hooking the phone up to a charger, prepared to extend my stay at the hotel until I had recovered from the latest brush with disaster.

In the morning, the phone started up (!) and had nearly a full charge. What I figured out later, during the ride home, was that the cable I’d been using to connect the phone to an external battery on the bike, and which I’d also used for the first attempt at charging in the evening, was just going bad. By chance I’d used a different cable for the second charging attempt, and it worked fine. So that was another narrow escape, but also a reminder of how tech-dependent I am on these rides, at least until the routes work their way into my pedal-memory.

My sole picture from Gero is below, and obviously doesn’t do justice to the subject matter. For a better representation of the experience, do check out the Gero Kanko Hotel website. I really enjoyed the stay.

[Day 3 Gero return: 115km, 1,420m up, 1,780m down]

The route for the ride home cut out the mountain detour to the Hiuchi no Mori campground. It was not without serious climbs, but I was hopeful that, in addition to reducing their number, I might find a way of avoiding the steep wash above the Kasugai Country Club that had presented such a painful obstacle at the start of the tour. That was the rough plan anyway.

• GPX data: Gero Kanko Hotel ↣ Nisshin

There is a bridge over the Hida River at the south end of Gero resort town. The mist lying over the river at this point in its course seems to be a feature: I attempted to take a snap of it on the way in, which wasn’t captured for some reason. This photo was taken at the start of the return trip.

As noted above, I’d missed that there were separated walkways for all of the tunnels on Route 41. This photo illustrates why: I’d approached tunnels from the other side of the street on the way up, of course, and the entrances to the walkways were both sorely overgrown, and limited to the tunnel, with no significant separated right of way once clear of the tunnel. The walkways were easy to miss, but I was happy to take advantage of them on the return journey.

I have no photos of the several waypoints between the Hida River drainage and the Kawabe/Kani basin, but there were some memorable spots along the way.

• While still cruising down Route 41 along the Hida, I took a break at a small town (Hide Kanayama) to find a local bicycle shop and put a little extra air in the back tire. Picking out the nearest shop in Google Maps, I found a one-room shop (about 12-mat size) with a few kids’ and shopping bikes on display. The elderly owner came out and lent me a pump, and when I asked about places to buy something to eat, he said not much remained beyond a coffee shop that might be open near the station, and that the best bet, for water at least, was a vending machine at the train station. There’s a lot of that in the countryside—communities or clusters of housing that depend on long car journeys or coop deliveries for food and supplies. I’m always curious how that works for people living there.
• Parting ways from the river and Route 41, I passed through a tiny village that seemed on its way to hollowing out, with some empty houses and no signs of construction, repair, or remodelling. I stopped at a vending machine thinking to stock up on water, but it contained only beer. I stopped at another a few yards further on, and it contained only cigarettes. I’ll just leave it there.
• On the long downhill stretch of road leading away from Hida River, the navigation app began glitching. At first I thought “Oh no there goes the phone,” but with some fiddling I realized that it was just a low battery and a bad cable to the external battery, fixed by swapping in a spare.
• At a checkpoint further on, I was waved through by a flag woman where all car traffic was being diverted to a long detour. When after several bends I approached the roadworks—which had sliced away fully half of the roadway along a hill for reconstruction—workmen stopped heavy equipment to let me pass, with the nod and knowing smile of a fellow sufferer in the afternoon heat.
• Mounting the hill above the Kawabe/Kani basin after a long climb, I was overjoyed, and hollered out “Aichi-ken!” as I rolled down the slope toward an elevated expressway in the distance. Dear reader, I was nowhere near Aichi Prefecture. Kawabe and Kani are in Gifu Prefecture to the north. There was still plenty of ground left to cover.

The route rejoined the Hida between Kawabe and Kani. I hadn’t eaten, it was hot, and shops were still scarce, so when I passed the store shown below I hauled up to get something to eat. The Oda-maki declared on the signage promised something in the way of food (“maki” meaning “wrap”), but I was confused when the contents of the shop consisted entirely of bottled booze. The woman at the counter could probably tell that I was a slightly delirious cyclist in need of nourishment, and offered up the promised “Oda-maki,” a sweet made of sweet chunky bean paste wrapped in a buckwheat crepe. I bought two, and they were actually very good! Worth a visit again when I next pass this way.

The crepe pastry was welcome but not enough to keep me going; and by the time I reached Kani a little further down the road, the heat was really getting to me. When I passed the Ruck Cafe (see above!), I drew up and checked in with them. They were past the lunch hour, but still open for a la carte, so I sat down to rest, cool down, and chow down some more fuel. I think they offered curry, as the nearest they could offer to a lunchtime meal, but I ordered a piece of quiche, which was very good, and a piece of cheesecake, which was also good. I was in riding clothes that I’d been sweating into for two long hard days and a stormy evening, and a striking contrast with delicacies from the pastry cabinet, but the owners were kind and I was soon on my way again.

The familiar sight of the Ruck Cafe was reassuring, but it also meant that I was on track to hit the same awful segment between Kani and Kasugai that had so nearly broken me early on the first day out. As the first challenge, there were two parts to the climb leading to the ridge beside the big solar array. The first was a stretch running alongside the Tajimi Golf Club, which was of course in the way of these things extremely well maintained, with freshly paved tarmac, broad shoulders, and light but fast-moving traffic (mostly Mercedes and Lexus). This was not too bad, but mostly unshaded, and steep enough that I reverted to my twenty-steps-walk, fifteen-breaths-rest pattern for a good portion of it.

Probably in the grips of mild delirium, I had the idea as I crested a rise and came to a crossing over an expressway that I might have avoided the solar farm and the nasty descent past Kasugai Country Club altogether. That was why I stopped to snap this photo, thinking that that the footbridge visible far in the distance was the one with the puddle that I’d struggled to cross on the way out.

Narrator: “It was a different expressway, and that wasn’t the footbridge he thought it was.”

The nice road near the country club let on to a much steeper climb through forestland at the base of the destination ridge. I tackled this at a slow pace, pushing the bike with regular pauses to rest as before, but as the track penetrated the forest, the midges began to attack. The final part of the climb was truly awful. The grade was less steep, but it was hot and humid even in the shade, and the bugs were a serious annoyance, buzzing and biting around my face in the still air. Where the grade eased to where riding was an option, I was able to escape the bugs by moving forward at a brisk pace, but the heat made that hard to maintain. Angry at the pursuing insects, I pushed on harder than was good for me, and eventually arrived at the industrial park with the gravel works that marked the entry point to Aichi Nature Trail and the path leading to the wash above Kasugai Country Club.

I ultimately arrived at a fork in the trail, with the path to the footbridge, the wash, and Kasugai Country Club to the left, and a path heading westward in parallel to the expressway to the right. With the painful memory of that first day’s climb in mind, I tried the right-hand fork, which led ultimately to the sign below, which (as the position of the bike shows) I ignored, riding on to see what lay beyond.

I don’t have any pictures of what lay beyond that sign, but the recorded trace below shows what happened: I reached an overgrown access road running along the expressway, and crashed through the brush and vines until I reached a dead end at an impassable ravine. I was looking for an access tunnel running under the expressway, and I found one, but it was solidly blocked at both ends, with a sign stating that the opening was fenced off to prevent migration of infected wild boar. While I don’t doubt that, there were some donut marks in the mud from a dirt bike, and I came across two rusted hulks of light vehicles (軽自動車) that had either been disposed of or abandoned by joyriders at the end of the access road. So possibly the proprietors of the country club were concerned about wild things other than the boars.

Exploring the alternative route had been a bad call. Not only had it left me at a dead end with a rough slog to get back to where I’d started, I’d run out of water, and was getting a little dotty from dehydration.

I bit the bullet, though, and retraced my steps to the known-but-painful path leading to the bridge (where the puddle had blessedly dried up) and the wash. By this point I was pretty frustrated (with myself, with karma, with the world at large), and I rolled the bike down the grade with its full load, over the gravel, mud, and large rocks of the washed-out trail, hollering at every jolt to summon up adrenaline. Pretty close to the edge emotionally.

And when I reached the bottom and crossed the little makeshift bridge fashioned out of rebar to reach solid ground, I met a neatly appointed and masked couple at the top end of the proper road leading down past the country club. I was dishevelled, sweaty, unwashed, covered with scratches and mud, wearing a scarf as a turban, and must have cut quite a figure. A skinny version of John Rambo on a bicycle. They stood next to their car and stared, as I’m sure I would have done had I been in their place. I greeted them with a deranged smile and explained (probably incoherently) that I’d tried to find a better route, scratched myself up pretty good, and had a bumpy time down the hill. The husband nodded, smiled, and just said, 気をつけてください (“please take care”). I looked at his wife, and she just continued to stare, whether out of concern for my well-being or apprehension that there’s never a police officer when you need one, I wasn’t sure. I rode on.

There was still a good long trek to the house, but once I’d stopped at a vending machine to stock up on water and sports drinks (near the drainage where the Singh Trading car lot was located), it was a routine slog. I arrived home sometime around 21:00, I think, somewhat the worse for wear, but safe and sound and happy to shower and sleep in an air conditioned room for a change.