Originally Posted by
hhk25
If I'm in Kyoto the night before, is it possible to get to Onomichi, do the bike route and then be back in Kyoto the same day? Or, do most people overnight it in Onomichi or Imabari?
It's possible, sure. There'd be some serious train time. Using
Hyperdia, looks like about three hours of train time to get you back to Kyoto from Imabari. So it's an hour and a half-ish on the trains in the morning to get from Kyoto to Onomichi, sort out bikes and everything, 70km ride across the islands (with no side trips or exploring), ride into Imabari, return bikes/pack them up for the train, get to the train station, then three hours back to Kyoto. If you leave Kyoto early in the morning it's doable. There used to be a hostel in Onomichi that I stayed in when I did this trip years ago. It was ¥2500 a night for a dorm bed IIRC. If you stayed there it would make the whole thing more manageable.