It’s Tuesday and it didn’t rain …

A lovely breakfast … the youth hostel prides itself on home grown produce. Lovely home baked bread, vegetable fritata, asparagus salad, vegetable soup and home made jams … lovely but not John’s cup of tea for breakfast. The manager does the cleaning and cooking while her elder sister helps out; her day job is working in the farms up the road in the hot houses.

We set off to do our last serious mountain climb, a very quiet road no traffic within 5km a farmer on a tractor stopped us and had an in depth, animated conversation with us. We gathered that we couldn’t go further so turned back on the main road headed to Sapporo.

Thoughts of his conversation:

‘I don’t want you stealing my melons’

‘That way is infested with bears chasing cyclists’

‘It is a dead end’

[Looking back it was a dead end … Komoot what are you thinking??]

Feeling subdued, we follow a main road, small climbs along the river sharing with trucks, then great downhill descents with great views of farming area. We are now on flat land with headwinds, it appears to be a truck route.

We reach our accommodation and get a prepared meal at the supermarket. In the meantime a Chinese family come in with food to cook and ask if we would like to join them …