Once again it was difficult to leave the dryness and space of a cabin, especially with rain forecast but we took off anyway (not before making a few more friends - a couple from Hong Kong and an ornithologist and her husband from Kyushu).

We snuck off down a walking trail hoping it was as flat and wide the whole way through as it was at the start... it was! And beautiful too. Shane especially got a buzz from taking this gem of a shortcut. The path joined up with a back road which took us through the hills and back to the main road and we cruised through to the camp near the main town before lunch.

No cabins here but they do have decks with anchors to pitch the tent on. It took us a while but we figured out a way to peg the tent out. While we were doing that the sun came out and we had a lovely lunch in the sun (as did the crows, stealing Elsie's bread).

After a quick play on the playground, we biked up the road to go for a hike across the island. We hadn't planned on going too far, I was going to walk back with Elsie while Shane went for a longer run, but it was so beautiful and we made progress quickly, we decided to carry on all the way to the other side (3km). It was steep going down the other side and felt very mountainous despite not being very high at all. There was a great variety of mountain flowers and interesting bugs.

It was neat to get to the beach on the other side where we found a few fishing shacks and some stunning sea cliffs. Heading back the rain finally arrived but we made good time and decided to cycle the 5km into town to go to the onsen. Found somewhere for dinner and stocked up on breakfast supplies at the SeicoMart.

Got back to the tent to get Elsie off to bed and things were a bit wet (a few holes in the groundsheet probably the culprit but maybe a bit of run-off on this deck-not sure). Have tried to waterproof ourselves as best we can. Fingers crossed for a relatively dry night (at least on the inside of the tent).