4 November 2023
Mystery hike to abandoned park
Today's hike was a surprise in many ways. It is not a well known hike. There is no trail on google maps, nothing on alltrails, but there are a couple of 360 degree picture dots on google that show a trail. I resorted to Yamap, the Japanese hiking app, which showed a plethora of trails. This turned out to be a very confusing experience.
I knew my start point was Yano station, and that I wanted to end up at Kure-Portopia, but somehow I ended up on the wrong trail, early on, and found myself further east than the main trail. I do not really know how. At one point I arrived at Egezan park, which has a road going up to it and a viewpoint popular with cyclists, but this is not where I wanted to be. It was hard work getting to just this point as the trails were all riddled with spider webs, indicating I was the only person using them.
So I plotted a course from the park to rejoin the trail I wanted, only to find that trail was blocked off with hazard signs. Oh well, plenty of other trails to choose from. I pushed on and saw only one other person on the trail, an old lady smoking a pipe on a rock, I should have asked her if I could take her photo, oh well.
There were still a lot of annoying spiders webs the whole way, and the descent was quite tricky.
So after maybe 3.5 hours I found myself at Yakeyama park (which is on google maps), from where I walked down the road past a whole heap of flood protection construction until I got to my desired destination of Kure-Portopia station... which had an abandoned, yet popular amusement park.
Here is Yano station, in the suburbs of the south east of Hiroshima.
I walked up through the back streets towards the hills in the distance, the sun was still shining at this point.
The first part of the trail was concrete, because there was a little shrine thing. Already cobwebs though. Cobwebs, spiders webs, spiderwebs? I think I am supposed to say cobwebs. Cobman, far from home.
View, with wires. Cloud coming.
The trail at this point was ok, but a lot of secretions from the anal area of spiders.
A summit of sorts. With no view. It has a nice new marker.
The path now became somewhat ferny for a while. No spiders.
Time for another polluted view shot.
Summit area number 2. Also no view.
Here's a view. Nice clouds.
I was definitely on a trail of some description, as there were occasional steps. Just not a lot of signage and no signs of recent use.
More view with a bit of inland sea on the left.
The is the view from Egezan park, cyclists were behind me. I could have run back down the road but I was not done yet.
Back to the trail for me, the first bit near the park was very well used. But then it was blocked off.
I found another trail, with some view spots.
This trail was not well used, no steps, just ropes.
I think this is where I ran into the old woman, possibly a witch, smoking a pipe.
Presumably she lives here, which was a bit further on.
Nearing the end now, the trail became well defined again.
I headed down there along the valley all the way to the sea.
I came out at this park, which had every activity ever invented happening in the park complex.
Including remote control car racing. Squint and you can see them.
After walking down the road for maybe 30 minutes, I arrived at Kure-Portopia abandoned amusement park. That is a pool. It is green.
There were surprisingly high number of people using the abandoned park. All that was left was bike hire and vending machines. No shops were open.
Behold, the inland sea.
For the final pic, the abandoned shopping street of the amusement park. You can sit in the old shops and have an indoor picnic. There was also some wedding photos being done in one of them. Today's hike was at times frustrating, at times technical, at times full of arachnid netting. But in the end, pretty good. I might be the only human to hike some of those trails this year.