One word for today, tunnels! We played at the beach in the morning for a bit then set off along the main road (no alternatives for this stretch). A beautiful stretch of coastline, lush green forest interspersed with tiny fishing villages and many many tunnels. The longest two were 3 kilometres long each. It is quite an eerie feeling being so deep inside a tunnel like that; the noise is horrendous, the fumes not so pleasant. Thankfully, we came prepared with reflective jackets, auto-sensing lights and even a red back light that projects two beams out the back to make us seem wider than we are. I must say, the traffic kept a wide berth!

We stopped at Atsuta beach "pool" (where they have created a sheltered sea pool for swimming). Elsie played in the sand and a little in the water. Further along we tried to take a dirt road shown in Bike Map to avoid one of the longer tunnels but it became impassable after 100 metres.

After about 40km we arrived at Hamamasa and pitched our tent in the beautiful Kawashimo beach camp (a very spacious park with plenty of nice lawn to camp on). Elsie had nodded off so we set up pretty quickly then we all pedalled off to the Hamamasa Onsen for a soak. Wow that was nice after a couple of days without a shower. Elsie quickly cottoned on, I left her in the changing room to talk to Shane briefly and when I came back she was stripping off her clothes enthusiastically! The old ladies thought she was fascinating.

I left Shane and Elsie to play at the playground on the way home and came back to cook but got invited to our neighbours tent to cook using their facilities, a big charcoal grill BBQ. We cooked up our spaghetti and they gave us fish and beef! A bit awkward but we used the translate app to communicate and it was kind of fun, oh and we were given beer again. More wonderful Japanese hospitality.