Started our journey home today, catching the train from Wakkanai to Asahikawa. It was sad to leave Soya Fureai park, a great campground, luxurious cabins, free showers, amazing playgrounds and lovely staff. We took off quite early because there were 50km/h headwinds forecast so we thought it could take a while to do the 10km to the train station. It wasn't too bad in the end. We stopped off for an early lunch at a chain restaurant (very efficient and good value) and tried to find somewhere to fix Shane's iPhone which is no longer charging properly (no luck there).

At the train station we bought our tickets with an hour to spare to disassemble the bikes and pack them down into bags. Another cyclist helped out when we realised our Allen key was too short to undo the bolt on Shane's carrier, still we were ready with about 10 minutes to spare. We had quite a lot of baggage to get on the train so I climbed aboard with Elsie and Shane went back and forth for all the luggage. The same when we got into Asahikawa at 4.50pm and we discovered we were two floors up and had to get down and out of the building.

The train ride was beautiful just miles and miles of lush green forest interspersed with small towns. Plus I was happy as the air con worked well, it was comfortable and not overcrowded. Also, Elsie was very good for most of the 4 hour trip (not so much when we arrived at the station and she kept on running away-really must invest in a leash). Arriving was the most stressful part so we started putting the bike trailer together to load gear into until a train station staff member came along and told us we couldn't as we have to leave straight away. She had picked the wrong moment to say something and got an earful back. Eventually she gave up and walked off but by then we were all tired, grumpy, drenched in sweat (it's a lot warmer here, like 30 degrees) and still with two bikes to assemble. I had to race off to the 100yen shop to get the right size Allen key. Finally we had two bikes and a bike trailer ready to go. We wolfed down a crappy meal from the 7eleven and cruised off into the sunset along the riverbank to camp.

The good news about the camp is it's free. The bad news it has the worst mosquitos we have encountered so far. There also seem to be a lot of foxes around.