The stretch we did today – from Vienna to Melk is the most scenic so far along Eurovelo 6. We had an early start (trying to beat the heat) and it took about an hour to work our way out of the city proper (around 10km). We were going against the Monday morning traffic.

We saw the place where the Danube canal joins the Danube. Also lots of street art cycling along under bridges – ranging from crude graffiti to sophisticated graphics.

Once out of the big city, the entire route was along dedicated flat bike paths, making for easy riding. The trail was generally along the river bank, but periodically meandered through small villages.

There were hundreds of other cyclists. More than half are older then us and a lot look well to do. The Austrians have clearly put a lot of effort into the cycling infrastructure and it is paying off in attracting many tourists. Most seem to be German, but we also came across some British and American people.

There were many signs along the cycle route offering accommodation and some cafe’s geared to attracting cyclists – we stopped for an ice cream at this one and also re-filled our water bottles at a tap they provided.

Tulln was one of the most attractive towns we rode past, with bright gardens along the river bank. It used to be the site of a Roman fort.

We crossed the Danube from south to north bank at Altenworth, where there is a water turbine power station.

The ride from here to Krems is directly along the river bank. We had thought that Krems may be a good place to stay. It was still early, and some of the areas we traveled through were industrial, so we had lunch from a supermarket bakery and carried on.

Kris decided we should cross to the southern bank of the Danube at Krems, as would be more scenic (there were fewer cyclists on the northern side). We got directions on how to get across from a little man passing on an electric bike. He ended up riding ahead of us to show us how to get across the bridge. He was very helpful, evidently just cruising around on his new bicycle. He told us that the castle up on the hill is at least 900 years old.

The flat riverbanks began to give way to hills, dotted with vineyards and incredibly beautiful little towns every now and then. We considered stopping at one with a camping site and a castle on the opposite bank but decided to go on to find place with a better shop.

This is such a scenic stretch of the Danube that there were a number of flat bottomed tourist boats going up and down between Melk and Krems.

In the end we went all the way to Melk (a 125km ride, our longest day so far).

Melk is very lovely, with a huge monastery up on the hill overlooking the town (it evidently has a library with 85,000 books).

The old town has a lively pedestrian area with cafes. The town is clearly doing well from cycle tourists – there was a bit of a rush of cyclists to get reasonably priced accommodation (two pushy women that arrived with their husbands at the tourist center after us, managed to get to the pension before us, luckily there were enough beds). Our room has a view of the monastery (if you lean out of the window and look through the hotel sign!).

 

The layout of the pension has obviously evolved over time. We had a bathroom on the other side of the pension corridor and the pension was obviously old as the outer walls were half a meter thick.

The pension has a large cellar (maybe an old wine cellar) with about 20 bikes parked in it.

We had our supper from the nearby supermarket – the quality of the food in Austria is excellent – we had freshly baked bread, cheese and ready made salads. Later on we had a beer sitting outside a cafe (it was still 26 degrees Celsius at around 8pm). We could identify the people walking past who had also done a long bike ride through their mincing walk and browned forearms.