A Taste of the Wachau Valley, Austria

Amidst an adventure of itself, I wanted to write a quick post about our recent ride in the Wachau Valley, Austria. Andrew and I recently embarked on a river cruise down the Danube with my family through AMA Waterways. I won’t spend much time talking about the cruise itself, other than saying it was well worth the money and a fabulous trip. It’s not our usual travel style, but it was definitely memorable in a good way.

What I do want to write about is one of our excursions while aboard. When you book with AMA river cruises all of the shore excursions are included. A& I were happy to see that that also included bicycle tours. We carved out two of our seven days on the Danube to take bike tours. Both bike tours that we did were in Austria, the first being a city tour through the capital, Vienna, and the other being a 12 mile stretch from Krems to Spitz in a gorgeous region known as the Wachau Valley. Our trip was in late February, which as you may know is PEAK off season. Fortunately the weather behaved leaving us with beautiful scenery all to ourselves.

Our guide, Iolo (pronounced YOLO), seemed to live his life by his name. He was originally from Wales and loved bikes. We got the impression that he had ridden bikes all over the world, although his bikepacking days were well in his past due to his old age (his words not mine). Iolo met us in Krems where we disembarked from our boat and led us along the Danube towards Spitz where we rejoined with the ship. Due to high currents and strong legs we actually beat the boat to Spitz!

The Danube River is 1770 miles long and runs from the Black Forest to the Black Sea. As it turns out, there is a famous bike route that follows it – The Donauradweg (aka the Danube Cycle Path). The route is clearly labeled with green signs as part of the EuroVelo route network, and there were occasional maps and working bike repair stands along the path.

I wanted to do a little post on our ride because it was inspiringly beautiful, and if I ever find the time, riding along all (or at least more) of the Danube has definitely made its way onto my ever growing list of places I’d like to ride.

Between Krems and Spitz we mostly rode past terraced vineyards. These wine growing regions have traditions dating back 1000s of years all the way back to the Middle Ages! The region is know for its Grüner Veltliner and Riesling white wines, as well as many others. Unfortunately many of the grapes were affected by Phylloxera causing farmers to branch out into other industries (such as apricot growing) but in recent years the wine making traditions have been coming back. Don’t worry, that evening we did enjoy a wine tasting from the region to celebrate our safe travels to Spitz.

Along with vineyards we had lovely views along the “Blue Danube”. I’m pretty sure it was part of everyone’s guide training to at least mention the fact that despite the popular waltz, the Danube is not in fact blue. Although in my opinion, if you let the light hit it just right it will reflect the skies color, which is a pretty good consolation.

While lovely, being only a 12 mile stretch there isn’t much more to describe. I will add that we went through several small towns with a lot of cool architecture all the way back from the medieval era. We even even had a chance to park the bikes and have Iolo lead us up an old fortification tower beside an ancient church, Wehrkirche St. Michael in Mossinghof, Austria. Being from America, and the Midwest/West coast at that, where our oldest building are maybe a couple hundred years old, it’s inspiring to see some of the medieval remnants that dot the European country side. The top of the church tower offered us wonderful views, and we were able to wave at our ship in the distance traveling upstream on the Danube.

Our taste of the Wachau Valley was a magical one, and I hope to one day see more of the region by bicycle and further experience the EuroVelo route system. Maybe it too will find a way onto your adventure list.