Today's plan was to go to the Kiso valley and do a short 7.7km hike between Magome and Tsumago down the old Kiso road, part of the Nakasendo route to the capital in the Edo period. These towns are two of eleven post towns on the Kiso stretch of the route and now have been restored and preserved as virtual museums of Japan's feudal past. Today was another day I'd really been looking forward to and I'm glad to say that this day totally lived up to my expectations.
To get to Magome, our starting point, we had to get a train and then a bus. By the time we got there it was nearly midday (we had to wait an hour for a bus) but we had coffee and snack to keep us going so we forfeited lunch to get going on our walk.
All the way there on the train it had been getting sunnier and sunnier and by the time we got to Magome it was well and truly a warm day which was perfect. Magome was indeed a pretty little town/village with brown wooden houses scattered along a steep paved street and all the old features maintained and preserved. The sunny backdrop set it off beautfully.
But the prettiest part was the view of the hills all around I think.
As soon as we climbed out of the village the panoramic views were immense, this doesn't do it justice.
And all the spring flowers were out, not just cherry blossom. It felt like home with all the daffodils about.
Our 7.7km journey took us past peaceful little houses,
through many a forest,
and of course past an obligatory shrine (we are so ungrateful these days).
Excitingly we also spotted a snake.
But the most beautiful sights were the two waterfalls we passed.
Then just as we were sightly starting to tire we started to approach Tsumago. Tsumago is even prettier than Magome and hard to believe that until the 1960s it was practically a ghost town. But the villagers campaigned and saved the town and managed to get it protected status so that it can remain as beautiful as it was in it's hay day (no pun intended) hundreds of years ago.
Once we arrived in Tsumago we had a walk around the little cobbled streets and in the shops with hand made wooden spoons and chopsticks and bowls. Then as it was sunny and we'd had no lunch we celebrated the completion of our walk with an ice cream.
As there was only four trains a day back to Matsumoto and very few buses to the station we didn't have much choice but to make our way back after our ice cream. So we decided to wait to eat back in Matsomoto as we'd seen a nice noodle place near our hotel.
But we were happy to do so as it had been such a perfect day. The weather was just brilliant, the scenery gorgeous and spring like and peaceful and the towns at either end were ideal starting and finishing points. I'm so glad we had such a great outdoorsy day before we head into the craziness of Tokyo.
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