Farewell to Kyushu

For Wednesday 19 October

We had superb weather today for our last ride on the island of Kyushu.

We had all day to get from Fukuoka to Kitakyushu, so we were able to take it easy along the way.  We stopped in at Miyajihama, a lovely sandy beach, for a leisurely morning tea break.  I went for a wander along the beach while John sat in the shade with his Kindle.

Kate being a beach bum again - Miyajihama

It's only a toilet block, but I thought it was rather nice!

Our scooters at Miyajihama

Our lunch stop was at a shopping centre where we had a good browse through the shops before buying lunch at the bakery.  There were a number of interesting items in the bakery including purple rolls!

Hmm!  Things that we DIDN'T have for lunch

We took a bit of a detour so we could see the bridge which connects Kyushu and Honshu.  At the point where the bridge crosses, the islands are very close together.  The reason we chose to go by ferry rather than riding is that if we took the bridge route, we would have had a long ride to Osaka, while the ferry will take us all the way as we sleep.

Bridge to Honshu (taken from a cemetery on a hill)

We had trouble finding our ferry terminal as it was really not clear on the website where our terminal was located.  We went to the wrong section of the port and had to ask directions which were delivered by a nice young lady who couldn’t speak any English, with a map which was less than helpful.  Fortunately, we had several hours to spare, so we weren’t too concerned and we finally found our terminal.

A nice ferry terminal we found during our search - however, not the right one

When it was finally time to board, we were amazed at the number of trucks which were lined up.  Interestingly, they drove on to the ferry, dropped off their trailers, turned around and drove out again.  So our ferry has a large number of containers on board, but not the trucks that brought them.  They will be picked up at the other end, saving the need for the truck drivers to make the journey.

We were waiting at the boarding area with a small group of motorcycles, including some very shiny Harleys, when the ferry staff gave us the go-ahead to board.  John chose to start his engine after all the others, so they didn’t hear his ‘rattle, rattle’ engine!  We’re relieved to now be on board, as once the scooter is in Osaka, if it breaks down, we can ring Mr Tanaka, the rental guy, and he will come and get it.

We had a nice dinner in the ferry’s restaurant and then sat in the comfortable lounge area to have our after-dinner ice cream – which, incidentally, seems to have become a bit of a habit.  We followed this with watching a TV show about obesity!  It’s a good thing we don’t have any shops in our vicinity at home, so we’ll be able to stop this ‘ice cream after dinner’ routine.