Flat / ~5 hours take your time. 🙂
This is my favourite walk, and I try to do it every year. As the name implies, it is primarily advertised as a cycling path; 5 hours is the time I take to walk it. The route is promoted by the city of Soja, Okayama, and there are pamphlets and posters available at the train station or nearby information office.
Here’s one such sign in Soja station, showing the sites and route. Very not to scale. The route is the thin orange line:
The first part of the walk is walking through Soja, so crosswalks and sidewalks until the edge of town, but that doesn’t take much time. Take the opportunity to stop at a convenience store to stock up on food and drinks.
Once out of the city, past the sports centre, you’re in picturesque rural Japanese farmland.
The first place I normally stop for a break is a small little historical site with an old granary. There are benches, and a public toilet (this isn’t a nice forested trail where you can sneak into the bush to relieve yourself. Make use of the toilets when you find them 😀 ).
I went during harvest last year, and I love watching the Egrets and Herons following the farm machinery, probably feasting on disturbs frogs or something.
There are a couple Kofun in the area, which are large burial mounds dating from the 5th or 6th century. From the ground, they look like regular hills/mountains. When I was there last autumn, there were archaeological teams working on the mounds.
One of the mounds just past Kokubun-ji temple is opened, and you can peak into a stone tunnel to see the sarcophagus. Speaking of Kokubun-ji: it’s pretty!
There’s a shop inside the temple grounds that servers drinks and snacks, which I always stop at. I usually have a chat with the nice lady that runs it… usually the same conversation each year, she doesn’t remember me. 😀
Also lots of free pamphlets / maps for the area available here as well.
There’s also a rest area and food vendor across the road in front of the temple. I believe they were serving burgers/fries type food. Public toilets.
From here it’s a bit of a walk to Kibitsu shrine. You’ll cross under a highway, and over a vehicle bridge at some point. The route is usually quite well marked. Kibitsu shrine is a pretty place to walk around, and a popular tourist stop. If they’re in bloom, there’s a beautiful staircase through hundreds of hydrangeas at the back of the shrine.
In past years I have continued on to Bitchu-Ichinomiya station, and another shrine, but this time it was getting late and I caught the train at JR Kibitsu station near the shrine.
Hopefully I’ll be back again this year. 🙂
If you have interest in cycling this path, there are bicycles available to rent near Soja station. I have never done this, but my cousin who speaks zero Japanese once rented a bike and did this on his own with no assistance. So it’s possible!
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