奥多摩・Okutama

December 29th

We had an extra hiking member join us with our son back for the New Year holiday, so I had to keep up with two guys with long legs! Thankfully it was an easy trail and our super-observant son managed to save us not just once, but twice, from following the wrong path. There are plenty of signposts but not always in the most obvious places.

The first leg of the walk is along the road and it was perishingly cold; we were all thinking, oops, this was a really bad choice, but we soon turned off onto a much nicer trail with lovely views of the crystal clear river. It was an interesting trail with sections along the river, parts through the trees and past old abandoned buildings, across bridges and up and down a lot of stairs. Quite unlike our usual mountain climbing but very enjoyable nonetheless.

The area has a lot of different trails to follow and looks like it would be a nice area to visit when the weather start to heat up a bit. We bought manjyu in a little shop on the way home too which were delicious.