May 29, 2017
Kure to Waki via Hiroshima: The horrors of war
We woke up tired from a traffic noise disrupted sleep and cycled into Hiroshima in the direction of the Peace Park, stopping off at a 7-11 for a long breakfast break while we waited for the rush hour traffic to subside (it never did). Two guys of our age working at the 7-11 were keen to chat to us and we spent long time talking, some of which we could understand. The Japanese always seem surprised when we tell them we are from Minima Afurika and it is often a starting point for a conversation.
The Peace Park was, as expected, quite depressing. The well known A-Dome stands as it half survived the blast more than 70 years ago. The various monuments extol the virtues of the de-commissioning of all nuclear weapons. The museum shows the horrors caused by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. But of course war still goes on and innocent people continue to suffer.
We left the Peace Park in a rather down-beat mood and took a good hour or so to extricate ourselves from the clutches of Hiroshima traffic. For a few kilometers, the Route 2 looked a pretty good choice but it didn’t last long. It soon became a dense mass of high speed single-lane traffic dominated by heavy vehicles. There was no shoulder and the sidewalk was narrow of punctuated by sharp drop-offs. We tried to find side roads but all that could be fitted between the steep mountainside and the coast was the railway line and Route 2. In desperation, we pulled off into a Family Mart that had a seating area and I sat and worked for a couple of hours. Nothing changed much once we got back on the road and we bit the bullet and carried on down to Waki where we will be spending the night in a park – a much quieter one than last night’s (we hope).
We clocked a thousand kilometers for the trip today, just as we got to our campsite.
Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 1,000 km (621 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 0 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |