The Shimanami Kaido is an expressway that connects Onomichi in Hiroshima prefecture, to the Shikoku city of Imabari. A series of roads that cross several islands, along with the bridges that connect them. It also incorporates a well marked and similarly well thought out cycle path that avoids the main thoroughfares and so covers more of the islands.
When sticking to the designated route, the cycle course is somewhere in the region of 70km, but with a couple of days to complete it, my friend and I did over double that, along with a fair bit of walking in between. An approach that allowed us to see even more of the islands, and in doing so, get something of a sense of life there. Or perhaps more accurately, a sense of how life once was, as unsurprisingly, the population in the area isn’t what it used to be.
The photos below then are what we saw on day 1. A really enjoyable exploration that provided much more to look at inland, rather than out to sea, whereas the resultant photos from the second and final day are more a mixture of the two.