English follows this short Japanese version of the post...

京都から大阪へのサイクリングコースはほとんど良いですが、京都市内では嫌な部分も有ります。 泥、水、砂、凸凹。この範囲は楽しくないので、別のルートを作りました。 ルートは難しくないが、説明はちょっと複雑ですので、上の地図を見て下さい。 それとルートのGPXファイルを準備しました。 帰り道は行く道とちょっと違うし、来年の４月までの工事の為に迂回もあり、４つのダウンロードを作りました。

2017年3月31日まで		2017年4月1日から
京都から大阪へ		京都から大阪へ
大阪からの帰り道		大阪からの帰り道

In my first blog post about cycling to Osaka from Kyoto, one can see photos of the lovely bicycle route that spans much of the 40~50 kilometers (~30 miles). My other posts that include the trip also show scenes of the lovely, flat, smooth, bicycle path.

What I haven't shown much, besides the photo above that appeared last week, is a horrible ~4km (~2.5mi) section of the path that exits eastern Kyoto. It's full of teeth-rattling bone-jarring bumps, in addition to sections of mud, water, sand, and gravel. I deeply dislike riding it.

So, I sought to find a replacement “standard route” that avoided what made that route so nasty, without introducing anything worse, and I think I've found one.

I'll go full-on geektard for this post to help me get back into blogging after the recent break, but for those interested in just the route, here it is in the form of a downloadable GPX file:

• route leaving Kyoto
• route returning to Kyoto

For completeness I've shown the route from the common starting point of the Sanjo Street bridge, but my route doesn't differ from the “standard” route until about Kyujo Street.

Let's follow along....

Still part of the “standard route”, after about two kilometers, we'll need to cross over to the other side of the river. We'll come up to a long slope coming down on our left... we'll do a U-Turn and head back up that slope to street level, do another U-Turn and continue south along the sidewalk for a bit until we get to a bridge, cross the bridge, go down a slope and do one more U-Turn....

The route normally continues for three kilometers on this side of the river, but due to some construction not scheduled to be finished until March 31 next year, we have to take an ugly little detour...

The construction is done, so you can just continue straight here...

The Google Earth view of this path shows a quagmire of construction mud, but the path is not complete. It's not quite as smooth as the photo might make it appear, but it's plenty fine and one can go quite fast on it.

This little section of the route crosses a JR track. If you're in a rush and don't want to take the chance of getting stopped at the signal, you can cut down this path to a small street that goes under the tracks.

After having turned left just after the short tunnel, you have come up an exit from a main road. When you get to the main road, continue on the sidewalk (because you're against traffic) for a short 60m to the first right. That'll put you on a road that wraps around the ugly concrete plant...

A few moments later you'll need to go under the expressway through a small tunnel. Take care, as traffic comes flying out of the tunnel without regard to little safety-related things like maintaining one's lane...

After about half a kilometer, the nice road ends near a huge intersection that we need to get to the complete other side of using crosswalks. This'll get us facing west, waiting to cross National Route 1...

This is the one area that has a different route during the return. On the return, instead of retracing your steps back up this short branch road, cross under the main road and take the branch on the other side, joining the main road just in time to cross Route 1. Then you're back on the same route as before.

Another option at the end, instead of cutting down the little alley, is to continue south on Senbon for another 1.2km. For much of the way it parallels the cycling path...

If you read this far, it almost certainly took you longer to get here than it would to actually ride the path. It probably took me longer to write this post up than it took the city to pave the whole thing. It probably wasn't worth it, but this is how I get my geek on, I guess.

At least I know that for me, having a route like this available makes heading to Osaka much more appealing. I just can't stand the bone-jarring bumps of the standard route; the lack of mud and water on this route is just icing on the top.