I tested Robert’s patience first thing with a whistle-stop tour of Shimabara Castle before breakfast. I had sourced him a hot, black coffee from the castle cafe on the way back from one of my many treks to the loo, so he wasn’t entirely running on empty, however following the tour, he announced, in a non-negotiable sort of a tone, that he was done with castles. I had thought we might squeeze 1 more in, as Kumamoto castle is meant to be impressive, but as the blue skies have gone and it’s raining, I thought better of it and we headed for the ferry with assurances on my part, that there are no more castles to come.
We tried several onsen on the way to the ferry, all of which were shutto, so we decided to press on grubby and shower/soak at the other end, as we are back in Beppu for a night in a hotel. The ferry crossing was uneventful, apart from the view it gave us of the active volcano, Mount Unzen, which sits behind Shimabara, which after a 200 year slumber awoke for a spell between 1990 -1995 and erupted in 1991 killing 43 journalists and scientists and requiring the evacuation of much of the town. The proximity of the volcano to the town only really became apparent as we left and saw it from the sea.
The weather was grotty and so rather than hang about in the rain, we thought it best to break the back of our journey back to Oita for the quarter finals at the weekend. We decided to check-in to our hotel and soak in their rotenburo garden. A rotenburo is a open-air hot spring bath and the one at the hotel had 5 separate pools of different temperatures and qualities e.g. seaweed bath etc. It is a mixed bath, so swimsuits are the order of the day and it meant we could bath together. It was still raining when we arrived, but that makes little difference if you are going to be immersing yourself in warm water, so we checked in and jumped in. It is genuinely one of life’s greatest pleasures for a girl like me with a low thrill level. It’s right up there with a good book, a decent cup of tea/coffee and a cold glass of wine at the end of the week/day.
The hotel is great, but is a little way out of the town centre, so we jumped in the camper and headed into central Beppu for dinner. The only stressful bits of our trip so far have involved Google Maps and its ability to select steep, narrow, winding streets as the quickest route to our requested destination, fine in a small car, not so good in the camper. I will spare you the detail, suffice to say, by the time we had parked the camper we were just about still speaking, but were both in need of a stiff drink. Beppu is such an onsen orientated town even the beer has the onsen logo on it.
The journey back was a completely different route involving two wide, straight roads and a gradual climb – so how does that work?
