Austria (all)

``The Great Heart Travelers'' promote the blood donation riding around the world. They made a Europe tour of 5400 km in 2004, and a tour in New Zealand in 2005. (Follow the archive link at the bottom of the page to go to the European tour.)

In this page you can find some links to my bicycle tour in Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein, from year 2000. From 2004 there are some photos available.

Eine anspruchsvolle Radtour in 5 Tagesetappen über insgesamt 491 km, Tagesetappen zwischen 61 und 151 Kilometer.

This is a photo illustrated chronology of a six day bicycle trip from Prague, Czech Republic to Vienna, Austria in September, 2004.

Follow the adventures of Kevin, Tom and Paul, three Canadians as they tour through scenic countryside through towns with place names they could not pronounce.

This tandem-bike tour led us from Prague in the Czech Republic via Tabor, Ceske Budejovice and Cesky Krumlov to the border at Horni Dvoriste. The trip continued along Austria's Tauern bike route (Tauernradweg) from Krimml, Austria, up through Bad Reichenhall, Germany, and ending at Salzburg, Austria. The trip report contains many useful links and resources to assist other tourists in their trip planning.

A week-long tandem bike tour on the Tauern bike route (Tauernradweg) from Krimml, Austria to Passau, Germany. Daily trip notes, useful trip-planning links, and a comprehensive resources page with information about touring in Austria and Germany, using the train systems, etc. Tour report published in Oct. 2005.

In 2001 vanuit Nederland vertrokken en nu okt 2005 meer dan 65.000 km en al meer dan 40 landen doorgefietst.

A photo diary of a 210 mile bicycle trip from Passau,Germany to Vienna,Austria in May 2005 with an initial stop in Regensburg, Germany.

[A satellite] image [taken] just after I got back home [...] shows that there were no clouds on all the central Europe, very good for my round trip! The days before the images was likely, so I found only sun, sun and sun ! Maybe too much. In Munich the temperature was 38 degree!!!

My big impression is that this is the first tour where I feel like the scenery/riding is better than what I got at home here in the San Francisco Bay Area. After returning to the Bay Area, I went out for a 50 mile ride near my house, a ride that compares favorably with New Zealand, Scotland, Southern France (in the Pyrenees). In comparison with Switzerland, though - the road surface is not as good, the mountains aren't as high, the drivers rude, and the grass is indeed greener in Switzerland (here in California the grass is brown in the summer), and I missed the cowbells ringing in the hills. To make up for that we don't get nearly so much rain, and our passes are open all winter. Our mountain descents are also more challenging, mostly because the road surface is POOR compared to Switzerland' big passes, and also because the road engineering isn't anywhere up to par with Switzerland's. Switzerland's. hairpins turns, for instance, are almost nearly level, while around here the steepest parts of a climb are on the hairpins. As you can imagine, this makes cornering, climbing, and braking much easier in Switzerland. As a matter of fact, if you can handle San Francisco Bay Area climbs and descents, you are ready for anything you will encounter in Switzerland.

We descended to Selva di Cadore (1336m) and headed east to Passo Staulanza (1773m) along the Torrente Fiorentina all the while heading straight for Monte Pelmo (3168m). The Staulanza is an easy pass and comes as a surprise because there is no apparent gap past Monte Pelmo. After a hairpin turn just before the mountain, the pass shows up unexpectedly.

Typical of the Dolomites, this route is a scenic wonder. We rode to Longarone (472m), notorious for the dam disaster at 22:42 on 09 October 1963 when the town was destroyed by a ``tidal wave'', that a landslide from Monte Toc (1921m) had forced over a dam and through a narrow gulch across from the town, to claim 1909 lives. Our hotel as, most in that area, had many before and after pictures on its walls.

[The following day] we started out under blue skies that gradually turned cloudy as the day passed. We crossed the valley and rode up the granite wall through tunnels as we headed to the gap of death for Longarone. Below, carved into the vertical wall, we saw the old road notched and tunneled into the gorge as we passed tunnel openings in our road. Then we saw the hollow arch of the dam, still intact, with only a bit of the rim cracked of on the far side. It is less than 50m across but at least three times that high, narrowing to almost nothing at its bottom.

After the last tunnel we emerged just above the dam that still has a bit of water between it and the mountain that slid into the former lake. A memorial chapel by Corbusier stands vigil over this disaster.

I cycled for 16 days and climbed 58624 m (which is 3664 m on average per day). It was 2381 km (which is 148.8 km on average per day). These figures are a bit lower than for the previous year, mainly because I visited more unpaved mountain roads (otherwise they would likely had been higher). It was between 10 (first day at the race it was much cooler in the morning) and 41° Celsius. The maximum speed was down the Kühtai pass at 91 km/h (new record for me). Steepest road I cycled was Ischgl-Viderjoch with several kilometres above 20%. Steepest road I did not cycle was down to Switzerland from Viderjoch, with ramps at 45% on average. I had thunderstorms, I had three punctures (one on asphalt and two on gravel), and a car incident in Schwaz, Austria (early on day 17 out of 21 planned days of cycling) where I got a fracture in the back and was hospitalized. (Fortunately, I fully recovered after 3-4 months.) I visited around 119 passes (106 new passes, with perhaps 100 officially recognized ones).

A really beautiful collection of photographs from his October 2002 tour along the Tauern Radweg from Krimml to Salzburg to Passau, and then the Danube from Passau to Vienna. Includes a written account of the trip.

An account of a two week cycle tour in May 2002 from Treviso (Italy) to Salzburg (Austria), via the Dolomites and the Austrian Alps.

This has to go down as one of those 'truly memorable' tours. The scenery was awesome, the company, perfect, the roads, quiet, the saunas, hot, the weather (yes, some of that was memorable!). It must have been good, I took over 250 photo's!

We were looking for a catchy name for the site, and 'Through Mel to Hell' was suggested, but that implies it was awful. It wasn't in any way (though the wet slog up the Fedaia Pass was, how can we put this, character forming). If anything, some of the weather, especially on the Grossglockner, made the trip even more memorable. I think 'Da Treviso al Paradiso' sums it up quite nicely, even if we did go through a little 'hell' to get there. At times, I think we really did feel like 'I Tre Moschettieri!'. All for one and one for all.

I rode along the Vermenagna River below the Tenda rail line, famous for being either in a tunnel or on a bridge most of the 80km from Borgo San Dalmazzo to Ventimiglia and Nice. The river and its tributaries had ripped out bridges and carried away parts of the road in recent floods. While the railway gained altitude in looping tunnels and bridges and vanished in the mountain for long stretches, I cruised up the 4% grade to Limone (990m), where the climb to the highway tunnel begins and the 8090m-long Tenda Railway Tunnel, completed in 1913, bores through the mountain to Vievola. [...]

Information about the Greenway between Prague and Vienna. We decided upon this route for our cycle tour of 2002. We took the plane to Prague. It turned out that the Greenway did not start in the city of Prague itself. We had to take the metro to the starting point of the route, outside the town. At the terminus of the metro it was not too easy to find our way, because we avoided the large roads and took roads with little traffic. Such roads are hardly marked on the maps. We ended up on a track through a forest, and we had no idea where we were. We saw quite many other cyclists doing excursions in the rural area near the town and I had to ask one for the road. I was quite relieved when I could understand the instructions which I received from the friendly cyclist. Cyclists understand each other in spite of different languages. Then, in Újezd we saw the first sign of our way towards Vienna - 425 km. Throughout the Czech Republic minor roads, which are good to cycle on and which lead to interesting sites, have been designated as cycle routes. Small, yellow signs have been put up, so if your map is not good enough, you will always be on the right way by following the signs. Various local cycle routes have been combined to form the Prague-Vienna Greenway.

When we had crossed the border to Austria, sign posts of another design pointed out the route towards Vienna. On our way back to Prague we followed the famous and highly frequented cycle way along the river Danube. From Linz on the Danube we headed north towards Prague and the airport, with stops at famous sites like Ceský Krumlov and Ceske Budejuvice.

The mountain bike is ready and the trailer has been packed with tent, sleeping bag and cooking gear. New cycling adventures are in the offing. The Dachstein area with the many surrounding lakes is one of the most beautiful in Austria. Into the bargain there should be very good opportunities for riding off-road. Tempting are also the large plains in the Dolomites further south. Unfortunately the weather puts a damper on the enthusiasm. It turns into the rainiest summer within living memory.

An account of a two week cycle tour in May 2002 from Treviso (Italy) to Salzburg (Austria), via the Dolomites and the Austrian Alps.

This has to go down as one of those 'truly memorable' tours. The scenery was awesome, the company, perfect, the roads, quiet, the saunas, hot, the weather (yes, some of that was memorable!). It must have been good, I took over 250 photo's!

We were looking for a catchy name for the site, and 'Through Mel to Hell' was suggested, but that implies it was awful. It wasn't in any way (though the wet slog up the Fedaia Pass was, how can we put this, character forming). If anything, some of the weather, especially on the Grossglockner, made the trip even more memorable. I think 'Da Treviso al Paradiso' sums it up quite nicely, even if we did go through a little 'hell' to get there. At times, I think we really did feel like 'I Tre Moschettieri!'. All for one and one for all.

A journey through Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria and Poland, by Karl Andersson. I am Karl Andersson from Sweden. This website is about the 2700 kilometers (1688 miles) that I biked from Stockholm to Kraków in the summer of 2002. You won't find the usual gear and packlist pages on this site. Instead, I've decided to share with you the diary I wrote every evening, slightly edited. A travelogue from the road. It's all there: The hellish days in former East Germany, the rain and wind that threatened to make me quit. Why would anyone do such a biketour, and that alone? My answer to this very frequent question among my couchpotato friends is: Why not? But OK, there's more to it...

13 tappe e 880 km lungo i fiumi di Austria Slovenia e Croazia.

Il giro è molto bello e non eccessivamente faticoso. Si trovano delle ottime cartine fino a Maribor (Da Dobbiaco è tutta ciclabile, la Drauweg), un po' meno in Slovenia e Croazia, dove ciclabili praticamente non ce ne sono, ma ci sono parecchie strade secondarie senza traffico. In Slovenia agli uffici turistici si possono trovare cartine della zona decenti (noi ci siamo accontentati di quelle, ma consigliamo caldamente di procurarvi una carta almeno al 200.000, possibilmente con le curve di livello?) e un paio di pubblicazioni interessanti, anche in Italiano, su ``Slovenia in bicicletta'' e ``Le strade secondarie sono più accattivanti di quelle principali''. Aiutano molto. Non fate troppo affidamento sui cartelli segnaletici delle presunte piste ciclabili (``kolesarska pot'', in sloveno) che a volte mancano. Sulla strada che abbiamo scelto noi abbiamo incontrato traffico solo in alcuni punti che non avevano alternative, andando a ficcarci in strade impossibili solo un paio di volte, evitabili.

From Carsten's Cycling Web. While it's still high summer I begin three weeks of mountain bike holidays together with a couple of friends. Ten days later we ride through a snow-covered scenery on our way across Bielerhöhe. Forced by the cold weather we change our plans to avoid the highest summits. Even the cattle have had enough and return from the green summer pastures to the warm cow houses. Nevertheless, we have some nice days off-road. One of the attractions is Val d'Uina with a just 1.5 m wide hiking track blasted into the rock wall over a of 600 m distance. As a prelude to the tour we participate in Ötztaler Radmarathon.

Ja, hebben jullie het al gezien, we zijn meer dan 4 jaar onderweg. Wat een tijd en toch.... we genieten er nog elke dag van. Nu zijn we in Jujuy, noord Argentinië. Via Chili gaan we binnenkort naar Bolivia, waar we een tijdlang niet zullen kunnen internetten. We zullen op grote hoogte gaan fietsen, hoogtes waar we nog niet eerder waren. Of dat prettig is.. jullie zullen het later lezen.

In fünf Tagesetappen (130 km -160 km) führt die Radfernfahrt des ADFC Bayern von München an die sonnige Adriaküste. Gemeinsam mit 200 anderen Radbegeisterten erfahren die TeilnehmerInnen die atemberaubende Landschaft der Alpenwelt und Norditaliens. In Cesenatico, dem Zielort, locken drei weitere Tagestouren durch die Hügellandschaft der Emilia Romagna. Höhepunkt der zehntägigen Radfernfahrt ist die Teilnahme an der weltberühmten Radtouristikfahrt Nove Colli.

[Titus is the bike] - 12195 km in 8 months through France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria, Italy and Greece - includes travelogue and many fine pictures

I've travelled quite a bit through the years, hiking on foot, by car, bus, plane... But cycling is just the right speed. Fast enough to actually get someplace, yet slow enough to smell the flowers as you go... Plus, it's the only mode of transportation where the engine actually improves with usage... Anyways, a friend lent me this book about a couple who spent a couple of years cycling around the world and I thought to myself that I wanted to do that ! So, off I went ! Well, I didn't quite make it... After 8 months on the road, I came back... Mostly due to homesickness, but I should have expected that, particularly on a solo trip...

Mid-morning after leaving Santillana [in Northern Spain], I take a break after a long cycle uphill and watch the progress of this little fellow... That's exactly how I felt... slow... but steady!

[...] We crossed the to the north side of the Lenta and climbed above the clouds into a brilliantly clear blue sky as we broke out of this box canyon through cliffs and bare rock tunnels, above the high waterfall into the Gorge de la Lenta. Here we entered a wintry scene with empty chair lifts running in anticipation of skiers from Val d'Isere on the other side of the pass. In one more zigzag, similar to the lower climb, brought us to the summit. Although we were in summer clothing, our leather gloves came in handy.

At the summit we took pictures sitting on the large concrete and stone Col del l'Iseran (2770m) sign, something I first did in 1960. We found a photographer, a guy from Colorado, who had slept in his car at the summit that he had reached in the heightof the snow storm late at night. Without chains, he thought the next day would be safer, and it was.

Photos, a diary and information about their holiday riding by bicycle up the Danube and other rivers from Vienna to Salzkammergut. [...] We cycled some 560km up the Danube, Inn and Salzach Rivers, riding from Vienna to the Salzkammagut area just outside Salzburg. It was a brilliant way to see some great parts of Austria and Bavaria. [...]

We took our own bikes and managed some 40 to 60km a day. The bikepaths over there are fantastic, well maintained and usually dedicated cycle paths (ie no cars). So it was relatively safe riding. Accommodation was generally easy to get...when we were tired we rode into the nearest town or village to get a bed for the night. We stayed in hotels, pensions, B&B's (``Zimmer Frei's'') and Youth Hostels. Staying in the Youth Hostels was fun...but imagine having breakfast with 200 kids!!

[This is] the web site for our 25-day cycling tour in Europe. We flew from Cleveland, Ohio, and Madison, Wisconsin, to Munich, Germany, taking our bikes and panniers. Our bike trip was a 600-mile (930 kilometers) loop from Bavaria to Switzerland, south to the Italian border, and returning to Munich by way of Austria. The following photo journal displays some of the highlights of our self-designed tour.

Our group of five friends biked about 40 miles per day and stayed in quaint, small hotels and youth hostels like this nearly 500-year old chalet in Brugg, Switzerland. [The cyclists were] Bonnie Vargo, Pam Galka, Ed James, Bob Parry and Russ Marx.

A short tabular tour description.

This table is a summary of the route I followed on my 81-day quest to cycle up all 71 surfaced mountain passes above 2,000 metres in the Alps. Coming soon: The ``Official Website'' of all surfaced mountain passes above 2,000 metres in the Alps and a pictorial travelogue of the trip.

My name is Louis Tousignant, a Canadian in his mid fifties, living in Nova Scotia on the Atlantic shore. Having cycled Copenhagen to Rome in 1998, and the U.K. in the mid 80's, it seemed a good idea to try Eastern Europe. As an eager amateur photographer, I particularly wanted to see Krakow, Prague and Budapest. Having had a grand time in Italy the year before, I also wanted to see Venice, a must... before one dies... Ergo this trip which I enjoyed tremendously.

This 52 day trip included 33 days of touring (3003 km for a 91 km/day average) and 19 days of travel and tourism. The load, minus water, was 20 kg, distributed in 4 saddle bags and one camera bag on the rear rack.

[This is our] online Austria photo album. We (Bob Parry, Ed James, Greg James and Bonnie Vargo) took this biking tour between August 11 to 26, 1999. We flew to Munich, Germany with our bikes packed in boxes, put the bikes together in the Munich airport and then took a series of five trains from Munich to Krimml, Austria for the beginning of our big adventure.

We traveled by bike from Krimml to Zell am See, to St Johann im Pongau, to Salzburg, train to Braunau, then biked to Passau (Germany), Aschbach, Linz, Mauthausen, train to Melk, then biked to Krems and Vienna. (Click map thumbnail to see trip map) Ed and Bonnie then continued for another week and biked into Hungary. We biked about 36 miles a day sightseeing as we went. We stayed in youth hostels and Pension's along the way. During the two week trip we biked about 365 miles, trained about 600 miles and flew about 10,000 miles.

We stopped at the gazebo with two flavors of rusty, bubbly mineral water, that give strength to those who dare climb this hill, before heading up the Gavia. It starts as a smooth wide two lane road with center stripe and a collage of warning signs that might make the wary traveler wonder what's going on. Land slides, falling rock, dangerous narrow road, and a chain requirement from September to July, are not the usual fare for mountain roads. After a short climb, past the first hairpin, reality strikes as the road goes from highway to driveway width and the 16% sign of poster fame sets the tone.

I was impressed with the aesthetics of ANAS, the highway department. They seem to have grasped the beauty of the Gavia and stopped the march of man against nature, right there where it meets the mountain. The road has lost nothing through paving. It is exactly the same narrow one lane Gavia that it always was. I have never seen a road so thoughtfully restored without a gratuitous widening job, but here it is. I hope it never changes. We continued through the thinning larch forest, up the east side of the canyon, finally rising above tree line. Here only thick bushy grass and wildflowers cover slopes where going off the road assures a long tumble to the Frigidolfo, far below.

A tour through Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria by Bill Venners, from Autumn Leaf Cafe - an anthology of ideas and adventures.

From September 7th through October 8th, 1998, I rode my bicycle through the towns, forests, fields, hills and mountains of Europe. I was accompanied by my friend Matt, with whom I'd taken two previous bike trips.

This web site is a travelogue of my European bike tour. [...]

Table of Contents - Annotated links to all the pages; The Travelogue - Stories, data, and pictures from the trip; The Numbers - A table of bicycle and push-up data; The Not-Anal-Retentive Packing List - What to take (and where to put it).

The 7-week adventure had consisted of a solo cycle tour, which started in Chamonix and finished in Lyon visiting the Alpine regions of Switzerland, Austria, Italy and France.

The well-written, well-illustrated report of a grand tour of the Alps. The 7-week adventure had consisted of a solo cycle tour, which started in Chamonix and finished in Lyon visiting the Alpine regions of Switzerland, Austria, Italy and France. This article covers my journey of almost 2200miles.

Having cycled and mountain biked around my native Peak District for many years, I decided the time had come to venture further afield and to try my hand at cycle touring. I had both backpacked and cycled on many occasions, but never had I combined the two together. Graduating from university gave me a sufficient opportunity, since I had a lengthy vacation to fill and the commencement of work later in the year would inhibit such a trip in the future. Preparations were made, panniers purchased and on the 1st August 1998, I found myself heading for Chamonix.

The[se pictures are] accompanied by descriptions which give a general idea of what it's like to bicycle in Austria along the Danube River, and into the voralps (the fore-alps). For anyone considering such a ride (the Danube River Trail makes for an easy self-supported tour), I hope these pictures inspire you to follow through with your plan. For those who have been there, I hope it brings back memories. Enjoy.

From Glenn and Sheila Ord's Home Page: On the Road to Nowhere - Nowhere is the Place. With an emphasis on budget travelling - Our experiences and advice for cycling in Europe. This guide is entirely based on our 7 ½ months (12,000 km) in 1998 across (and back) Europe: staying almost entirely in campgrounds (185 tent nights). This was supplemented by our time in Italy (April-May 1999).

We took the old road that hangs in a notch carved high above the Aar in the slot below. As we climbed above the upper Grimsel reservoir of the Haslital Power Company, the Finsteraarhorn (4275m), the source of the Unteraar and Oberaar rivers, came into view to the west.

After a light breakfast under a partial overcast, we headed up the wide concrete Gotthard highway that starts climbing in town. Here, above tree line, only scrub brush, grass, wildflowers, and alpenrosen, an azalea prevalent throughout the Alps, decorate the landscape. The alpenrose, among the many wildflowers, adds a lovely bouquet of pink and red with its dark green leaves, as do the striking deep blue gentians, pale blue forget-me-nots, and many varieties of daisies and dandelions.

From Carsten's Cycling Web, the Web site of Carsten Gregersen.

This tour has it all: Deep Austrian lakes, steep rocks in the Dolomites, impressive Swiss mountain scenery and the gentle slopes of the Jura Mountains. Last, but not least, there is Europe's highest mountain, Mont Blanc. I have only one day off-road in the Dolomites - otherwise I go along surfaced roads. Starting out as a group of ten we eventually split into smaller groups. I ride most of the tour by myself.