November 9, 2025
Day 68 — Uwajima to Matsuyama
Marilee here.
Well, we’d had several days of glorious weather so we were overdue for some rain. And we got it today. Boy, did we get it.
We woke up to rain, which really does very little to motivate one to leave the shelter of one’s tiny but dry hotel room and get out there on the wet roads. If we’d had a breakfast buffet to linger at we might have spent much of the morning getting refills of coffee and toast, but sadly the Terminal Hotel didn’t offer breakfast. Tom dashed out to get coffees, yoghurt and bananas from the corner conbini, and returned thoroughly soaked. We ate while half-heartedly packing up and trying to check on the state of the weather from our window (which had a great view of the side of the neighboring building, but not much else). The rain seemed to ease up around 8:30, so we decided to make a break for it.
The cleaning staff were all arriving on their bikes as we were packing up, and I noted that everyone seemed to have better rain gear than us — matching pants and jackets! Ponchos! Rubber boots! Clearly, it rains a lot here.
There was an upscale hotel across the street from us, and the afternoon before we’d watched a supported cycling tour group wheel up to it. This morning the bikes were all loaded up on vans and the cycle tourists were in street clothes, getting in. No rainy day cycling for them, I guess. However, some of them cheered as we pedaled by, which was heartening.
Our road took us out of town and up into the hills pretty quickly, which was great, as we had a big mileage day ahead and didn’t have time to waste. We’d already agreed that today we’d mostly stick to the highway — we had a hotel booked for that night in Matsuyama and a day off planned for the next day, and given the weather we were just focused on getting to our destination as fast as possible. So there aren’t many pictures from the day to share, although we did manage a couple of moody shots of coastal fishing villages and misty mountain castles.
And this shot of what we assumed from afar was an extravagant love hotel built to look like a Disney-esque castle, but which turned out, closer up, to be an actual church.
The rain, which was light as we left town, really started pelting down once we started climbing into the hills. We were thoroughly drenched within less than an hour, but it was a fairly warm day so we weren’t suffering. And the highway offered us occasional shelter, in the form of tunnels. Near the top of a mountain pass mid-morning we biked through a series of eight short tunnels, emerging from one just long enough to swing around a curve and into the next. No sidewalks or shoulders, these were kamikaze tunnels where cyclists turn on all their lights, don their reflective gear and hope for the best as they pedal like mad while sharing the road with the traffic. Fortunately it was a Sunday so there was minimal truck traffic and even car traffic was pretty light.
We also passed through two longer tunnels in the afternoon, each nearly 2km long. By the time we reached the end of each tunnel, the weather had changed — from not-very-hard rain to very-hard, and then back again. And so it went through the day, getting intermittently soaked, then enjoying a reprieve, then soaked again.
Entering Matsuyama we happened to pass a bike shop where Tom thought to ask about brake pads, something he’s been on the lookout for recently, as the mountains are taking a toll on our brakes. Disc brakes aren’t as common in Japan as they are in Canada apparently, and they’ve been hard to source, but this time he struck it lucky and we’ll have have fresh pads for the Kyushu hills in our future.
The hotel in Matsuyama is quite nice, and we settled in to a cozy evening indoors after hot showers. And the bikes are really getting pampered, as at the Nest Hotel in Matsuyama they are invited right into the lobby and allowed to perch on a bike stand overnight. No more being consigned to the back of a parking lot or a storage room for them!
Today's ride: 95 km (59 miles)
Total: 3,526 km (2,190 miles)
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