I love riding mountains for the views, but when it gets too cold up there in the winter, Miura peninsula is a good place to visit (and so is Boso peninsula in Chiba).
On the second Sunday in December I did my "century of the month" (160+ km) for December. I chose to follow the course of my upcoming January brevet, which will start and finish in Machida for a 203 km loop whose Kanagawa portion largely follows the Miura coastline. The total for the Sunday came to 218 km according to Strava, which makes it my 6th longest ride this year.
The forecast for Tokyo was 3-9°C, but I experienced anything from 1-16°C. I expected wind, but didn't have to fight any. I also expected clouds but not rain and got hail instead! Still, the clouds and hail made for some very atmospheric views, especially around sunset in the Zushi-Kamakura area.
When I took the picture of the bridge in the rain, I was actually approached by a policeman. Apparently, I had unwittingly taken pictures of the Hayama Imperial Villa (葉山御用邸, Hayama Goyōtei) that has a permanent police guard since having been the target of an arson attack by radicals in the 1970s.
I left home at sunrise, around 06:50 and cycled down to Futakotamagawa, where I joined the brevet course about 23 km from its start. I followed the road on the right bank of the river down to Kawasaki, making good progress as it doesn't have a lot of traffic lights. The early morning sun was in my eyes and also of the car and truck drivers behind me, which had me worried a bit, but nothing scary happened. About 3 km after turning onto Rt15 I reached PC1, the first convenience store checkpoint of the brevet.
I had a cup of coffee and headed on to Yokohama. The roads weren't too busy on the Sunday morning. I snapped some pictures around Minato Mirai:
Quite a few cycling clubs were heading south from around Yama****a Koen. The day started off cold but sunny.
As it got warmer I took off one layer and changed into lighter gloves. Until you get past Yokosuka it's not that pretty and there are many cars and traffic lights. I came across this industrial site with rusting old cranes outside:
You get a lot of views of Boso peninsula on the other side of Tokyo bay, as well as commercial shipping in Tokyo bay, including huge container ships and oil tankers.
PC2 was a Familymart in Miuramisaki, a small fishing town about 120 km from the brevet start.
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