Heat, steepness, overgrowth, large animal noises…yeah, our first real experience of going “up” was…interesting. It was tiring, but also shorter than expected. But the views made it well worth it, before we sped down back to the coast.
After a relatively long and uneventful – yet gorgeous – few hours, we eventually reached a long cycle path that followed the route of an old railway.
It was beautiful, peaceful, and—most importantly—flat.
And then we reached the mountain.
It was steep.
Very steep.
Until this point, we’d spent most of our cycling lives in places that were, for all practical purposes, flat. Living in Nanchang and previously in Korea, we’d never really done any serious mountain cycling. We’d tackled the occasional hill, obviously, but nothing remotely like what was now sitting in front of us.
Suddenly we were looking at roughly 1,000 metres of climbing in a single ride.
On loaded bikes.
With around 25 kilograms of gear strapped to each one.
And on mountain bikes.
Yeah. It was a little daunting.
The climb seemed to go on forever. After a couple of hours—or at least what felt like a couple of hours—of grinding upwards, screaming legs and increasingly sweaty bodies, we finally made it to the top.
And we were absolutely ecstatic.
More than that, we were genuinely proud of ourselves. We’d just done something neither of us had ever attempted before, and we’d done it carrying everything we needed to live for the next six weeks.
And then Hokkaido gave us one hell of a reward.
We started descending towards Lake Toya.
As we came down, the lake gradually spread out in front of us, with the mountains surrounding it and the water stretching into the distance. After the effort of the climb, the view was spectacular.
We rode around eight kilometres along the lakeshore before finally reaching our campsite and setting up camp.
The campsite itself was something of a surprise.
It was our first experience of what we might call a proper mass campground—a huge site capable of accommodating several hundred people, with cabins, free camping areas, powered auto-sites and pretty much every type of camping accommodation you could imagine.
To be honest, we’d been a little nervous about it.
This wasn’t really what we’d pictured when we’d imagined ourselves cycling around Hokkaido and camping in the countryside. The idea of a huge campground packed with hundreds of other people wasn’t exactly appealing.
But it turned out to be absolutely beautiful.
We’d been allocated a spot right in the corner of the campground, almost completely away from everyone else. And despite the enormous capacity of the site, it was practically empty. We had all the facilities we could possibly need, but were still far enough away from everyone else to feel completely isolated.
It was basically the best of both worlds: proper facilities when we wanted them, and solitude when we didn’t.
And there was another very welcome reward waiting for us.
A shower.
The first two campsites we’d stayed at hadn’t had showers, so we’d resorted to what can only politely be described as a “wet one” wash inside the tent. It had done the job, technically, but after that climb we were very, very ready for something more substantial.
We both showered, scrubbed away the accumulated sweat and grime, and finally felt human again.
The plan for the following day was to explore Lake Toya.
Unfortunately, the weather gods had other ideas.
The previous day had been gorgeous—hot, sunny and perfect for cycling. Apparently, we’d enjoyed ourselves too much, because overnight the weather changed completely.
It absolutely shit it down.
All night.
And then all day.
We still attempted to cycle around the lake, making it as far as the town, roughly eight kilometres from the campsite. But after eating some, shall we say, very questionable food, which left both of us feeling decidedly unwell, we looked at the driving rain and realised that we weren’t going to see much of Lake Toya anyway.
So we gave up.
Sometimes the correct cycling decision is simply not cycling.
We headed back to the campsite and spent the rest of the day relaxing. Once the rain finally eased off, we managed to build a fire, and suddenly the miserable day didn’t seem quite so bad.
We spent the afternoon and evening sitting around the fire, toasting marshmallows and generally enjoying the fact that we had absolutely nowhere we needed to be.
It turned out to be a pretty good day after all.
The following morning, however, we’d be heading towards Kutchan.
Which meant more hills.
Very steep hills.
But the route would follow Lake Toya for much of the way, meaning we’d finally get to see more of the lake we’d missed the previous day.
One climb down.
The next one to go.
2 Travelling Kiwis 
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