The Danube has been a border for a long time, and Pöchlarn is one of the places where you can feel it. The Romans knew it as Arelape, one of the forts on the river frontier of the province of Noricum, and the Horseshoe Tower, the Hufeisenturm, is what is left of the western side of that fort. A horseshoe-shaped tower is just what it sounds like: a defensive bastion with a curved outline that lets the garrison cover the wall in more directions. It is a modest ruin, not a Colosseum, and its charm is that you find it between houses rather than in a field of tickets.
The town itself, Pöchlarn, sits on the south bank of the Danube in Lower Austria, just upstream of Melk, with roughly 3,500 people. The Nibelungenlied, the medieval German epic, mentions Bechelaren, which is understood to be Pöchlarn, as the home of Rüdiger, a margrave and a model of loyalty in the poem. Locals have never been shy about this. There is also a link to the painter Oskar Kokoschka, who was born here in 1886, and the town keeps a small museum to him.
The riding is the real draw. Roads follow the river on both banks, flat or gently rolling, with the odd bend where the valley squeezes. It is relaxed riding rather than technical, and it suits the long light of a summer evening, when the water goes silver and the vineyards and orchards on the slopes pick up colour. Traffic is steady on the main roads, quieter once you go onto the minor ones, and cyclists on the Danube Cycle Path share a lot of the corridor, so slow down near the crossings.
Practical matters are easy. Pöchlarn has the basics for a town of its size, and for a larger choice of fuel and supermarkets you can run to Melk, a short distance downriver, which has its famous abbey on a rock above the town. Amstetten, about 27 km away, is the nearest bigger town in the data. A coffee by the river, a slice of the local apricot cake in season, and a look at the tower make a pleasant hour. If you are riding the Roman frontier theme, this is a good place to slow down and think about how many years soldiers were posted along this very bank, watching the far side.