Semmering and Wechsel Roads
A 197 km loop
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Why this ride
Scenery first, traffic last, with checkpoints that make sense on a bike. Out of Vienna and back again: 197 km, roughly 3 h 35 in the saddle. The highest point is about 1,000 m. Long stretches are under trees.
Roadbook
- Vienna
start
Vienna rewards the rider who parks the bike and walks. The Innere Stadt, the old centre, sits inside the line of the Ringstrasse, the great boulevard laid out in the nineteenth century where the medieval walls once stood, and it is lined with the opera house, the parliament, the university and a procession of grand museums. At the heart is Stephansdom, the cathedral with a roof of coloured tiles and a tall south tower that has been a landmark for centuries. The Hofburg, once the imperial palace, takes up a sizable chunk of the neighbourhood.
The city's culture is a culture of tables. Coffeehouses, with marble tabletops, newspapers on wooden holders and waiters in black, are recognised by UNESCO as part of the intangible heritage, and a single coffee can buy you an afternoon. Wiener schnitzel, thin and crisp and served with potato salad, is the standard meal, and Sachertorte, a dense chocolate cake with apricot jam, is the standard sweet, though locals disagree about where to eat the best one. The Naschmarkt has stalls of olives, spices and fresh produce, and the Prater, with its giant Ferris wheel from 1897, is a cheerful reminder that Vienna once led the world in amusements.
Riding out of Vienna is easier than riding in. The Höhenstrasse climbs through the Vienna Woods to the viewpoint at Kahlenberg, a good road for an evening run with views over the Danube and the city. East of town, the land flattens and opens into the Pannonian plain, where roads run straight through vineyards and fields, and where the shallow, reed-fringed Neusiedlersee waits in the heat, a steppe lake that feels like an entirely different country. Trams, taxis and cyclists make the centre a place for patience, and parking rules are strict, so ask at your hotel.
Fuel is easy at stations around the ring roads and on the main exits, though there are few in the centre. Summer can be hot and humid, winter is cold and grey, and the best months are May, June and September, when the evening light lingers. Be gentle with the cobbles, and mind the tram tracks in wet weather, because they are slick and can catch a wheel.
- Semmering
food
Semmering is where Lower Austria meets Styria on a saddle of a little under a thousand metres, and it has been a place of passage and of pleasure for a long time. The pass itself is not high by Alpine standards, but the name carries weight: the Semmering Railway, engineered by Carl von Ghega and opened in the 1850s, was the first true mountain railway in the world, and it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its viaducts and tunnels thread through the valleys below the road, and if you stop at one of the lookouts you may see a train crawling across a stone arch far below.
Once the railway arrived, Vienna came up for the air. The grand hotels that still stand on the slopes, some restored and some waiting, belong to the era when the capital's bourgeoisie took the train up for the summer season and for winter sport. There is something wistful about the place now, a resort that peaked long ago, wrapped in dark spruce forest with views out over the Rax and Schneeberg.
The modern expressway sweeps through tunnels below the pass, which is excellent news for anyone on two wheels, because it leaves the old road over the top relatively quiet. Coming up from Gloggnitz and Schottwien, the climb has a run of tight bends that are a lot of fun if the surface is dry, though they can be greasy in the shade on cool mornings and you will meet cyclists and the odd bus. Over the top, the road drops down the Styrian side towards Mürzzuschlag in gentler curves. The Wechsel and Bucklige Welt to the east offer an endless supply of smaller roads for the rest of the day.
As a food stop, Semmering is a village of a few hundred people, so options are modest but pleasant: a couple of guesthouses and cafés where a coffee and a slice of cake on a terrace feel exactly right. For fuel it is wiser to rely on Gloggnitz below on the eastern side or Mürzzuschlag on the western. Autumn is lovely here, with larches turning gold and clear views, but be prepared for fog in the hollows and occasional ice early or late in the season.
- Vienna finish