Enns claims to be the oldest town in Austria, and it has the paperwork to prove it. The town received its city rights in 1212, and long before that, the Romans built a legionary fortress here named Lauriacum, one of the major bases on the Danube frontier. A civilian settlement, the canabae, grew up outside its walls, and the church of St Laurenz stands on part of that ground, with a basilica that has Roman-era origins and layers of medieval rebuilding.
The place has a moving association with Saint Florian, a Roman official who, tradition says, was martyred at Lauriacum in AD 304, drowned in the Enns river with a stone tied to his neck for refusing to renounce his faith. He is now the patron saint of firefighters in Austria and across Central Europe, and the great abbey of St Florian, not far away, is named for him. The town centre has a broad main square, pastel-coloured houses and a freestanding city tower, built in the sixteenth century, with a clock face you can see from every corner.
The river Enns is the boundary between Upper and Lower Austria, and just upstream of the town it joins the Danube. The countryside here is flat and farmed, with rich fields and orchards, and the ride out toward Linz, about twenty kilometres to the northwest, passes along the Danube plain. The Danube cycle path is busy, so cyclists share the roads on summer weekends. Surfaces are good and traffic is moderate, though the main roads are busy at rush hour. A short distance away is Mauthausen, where another concentration camp memorial stands, a sombre reminder of the region's twentieth-century past.
Enns, with nearly ten thousand people, has fuel stations, bakeries, cafes and a handful of inns, and Ennsdorf, just across the river, is smaller. Try local cider, known as Most, a speciality of the region, and a slice of Linzer Torte once you reach Linz. In late spring the orchards are in blossom, and the evening light on the square is a good time for a coffee.