Vienna · Wachau and Mariazell Roads

A 294 km loop from Krems Wachau

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Why this ride

Danube beauty with a mountain finish. A 294 km loop that starts and ends near Krems an der Donau, about 5 h 39 of riding. It goes by way of Melk Abbey and Mariazell mountain town. Semmering Pass is the high point. It tops out at about 1,050 m. It is a high-mountain day.

Roadbook

1. Krems Wachau gate sight

   Krems sits at the eastern gate of the Wachau, the stretch of the Danube between Melk and Krems that has been protected as a UNESCO World Heritage landscape. The river here runs between steep terraced slopes, where vines and apricot orchards cling to stone walls built by hand over centuries, and medieval villages cluster at the water's edge. Krems itself, with the adjoining old town of Stein, is the biggest place on the stretch, a town of about fifteen thousand with a pretty centre of painted gabled houses, arched gateways and cobbled lanes, and a long tradition of wine and apricot schnapps.

   The Wachau is famous for its white wines, especially Grüner Veltliner and Riesling, and for the Wachauer Marille, the apricot, which blossoms in April and is harvested in July. Every cellar and tavern sells apricot jam, dumplings, liqueur and brandy. Across the Danube stands Göttweig Abbey, a vast Benedictine monastery on a hill, whose baroque staircase and terraces look over the whole valley. Upstream is Dürnstein, with its blue and white abbey tower, where Richard the Lionheart was held prisoner in the castle above the village in the twelfth century after quarrelling with the Duke of Austria on his way home from the Crusades.

   For riders, the road along the north bank of the river and the one along the south bank offer gentle, scenic riding rather than anything technical. The tarmac is smooth, the bends are wide, and the views of vineyards, castle ruins and the river are the point. In summer and autumn weekends the road is busy with cyclists, tourist coaches and other riders, so ride slowly and patiently, and consider a weekday. A small ferry crosses the river at Spitz, a handy way to switch banks. In April, the apricot blossom is a reason to come early in spring.

   Krems has several fuel stations and supermarkets, so it is easy to prepare for a day on the road. Stop at a Heuriger, a wine tavern marked by a branch over the door, for a plate of cold meats, cheese and a glass of local wine, but only if you are not riding on.

2. Melk Abbey photo

   Melk Abbey sits on a rock above the Danube like a ship that has run aground in gold. The Baroque monastery, built in the early eighteenth century to designs by Jakob Prandtauer, dominates the town and the river from its crag, with a long, ochre-yellow facade, two spires on the church and a roofline of terraces and pavilions. Benedictine monks have lived on the site since the eleventh century, and the monastery has been a school, a library and a scriptorium for most of that time. Its library holds tens of thousands of volumes, including medieval manuscripts, and the ceiling is covered in painted allegories.

   The abbey also has a place in literature. In Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose, the narrator is Adso of Melk, a young Benedictine novice who recalls the events of a monastery murder in old age, and the title of the book has made Melk better known to readers who have never visited. In real life, the town is quiet and old-fashioned, with a main street of painted houses, a few cafes and a handful of guest houses, and the abbey above it, floodlit at night.

   Melk is the western gateway to the Wachau, the finest stretch of the Danube valley, where the river runs between steep hills covered with terraced vineyards and apricot orchards, past ruined castles and medieval villages. The valley is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in spring, when the apricots blossom, it is white and pink. The wines, especially the dry, peppery Grüner Veltliner and the Riesling, are famous, and the apricot, the Marille, appears in jam, schnapps, dumplings and cakes. The road along the river is a fine ride, with gentle bends, views across the water and a surface that is mostly smooth, though in summer and on weekends it fills with cyclists, coaches and cars, and a bike can spend a lot of time in a queue.

   Melk has fuel and a good choice of restaurants, with a population of about four thousand, and the larger towns of St Pölten and Krems are within reach. Parking near the abbey is limited, so allow time and take the walk uphill. The best times are May, September and early October, when the weather is mild and the vines are green or turning gold. Early morning light on the facade is wonderful, with the river often covered in mist.

3. Mariazell mountain town food

   Mariazell has been a place of pilgrimage for more than eight hundred years, and you notice it from a long way off, when the green spire of the basilica appears above the forest. According to tradition, a monk named Magnus brought a wooden statue of the Virgin here in 1157, and the town grew up around the chapel built to hold it. Over the centuries the shrine became the most important in the Habsburg lands, visited by emperors and by pilgrims on foot from Vienna, Hungary, Bohemia and as far as the Balkans. The basilica today is a Baroque church built around the older Gothic one, and the little statue stands in a silver chapel at the heart of it.

   The town is set in a bowl of mountains in Styria, on the edge of the Alps, with spruce forest and limestone peaks around it. Nearby, the Erlaufsee, a small, clear lake, and the high plateau of the Hochschwab massif offer walking in summer, and in winter, the town has a modest ski area. The local speciality is honey gingerbread, made by bakers who have been at it since the days of the pilgrims, and the streets around the basilica are lined with shops selling candles, carved wood and sweet things.

   The roads leading to Mariazell are what a motorcyclist hopes for. From the north, the route climbs through the Lower Austrian hills over passes such as the Annaberg, with a long series of bends through forest and meadow, a good surface and views of the pre-Alps. It is a popular route with Viennese riders and with day trippers, so on fine weekends it is busy, with plenty of motorcycles. Tight bends alternate with open stretches, and the road is well signed, with speed cameras and police checks. Expect mist, rain and cold in the high sections, even in summer, and ice in the early and late season.

   Mariazell has fuel and a good range of restaurants, serving traditional Austrian and Styrian food, such as Schnitzel, dumplings and strudel, and the town has a wide range of guest houses. In summer and at the major pilgrimage dates, the place is crowded, so book accommodation ahead. Kindberg, thirty-two kilometres to the south-east, is the next larger town, and St Pölten is the main city to the north. The best months are May, June and September, when the air is clear and the roads are drier.

4. Semmering Pass pass

   Semmering is where Lower Austria hands over to Styria, and it does so at a saddle of roughly 985 metres in the last eastern bulge of the Alps. The Rax and Schneeberg massifs stand to the northwest, the Hirschenkogel rises right above the village, and the whole place has the faintly faded air of somewhere that was once the most fashionable thing in the empire.

   That fashion came with the railway. Carl von Ghega drove the Semmering line through here in the early 1850s, the first true mountain railway in Europe, with viaducts stacked in two tiers and fourteen tunnels clinging to the slopes. It now carries UNESCO status. Vienna's wealthy followed the track and built villas, grand hotels and sanatoria among the beech and spruce, and you can still read that era in the woodwork and the tall verandas along the lanes. Long before the railway, the old road over the pass was the way south to Graz and the Adriatic, and in the early twentieth century the climb served as a famous hill-climb course for racing cars.

   On a bike the old pass road is the point of the exercise. From Schottwien on the Lower Austrian side it climbs in a run of tight hairpins through woodland, with the viaducts of the railway visible across the valley as you go. The surface is generally decent, the bends are properly tight rather than merely suggestive, and the gradient never stops being interesting. Beyond the top it drops more gently toward Spital am Semmering and Mürzzuschlag. The modern expressway burrows under all of this, which is exactly why the old road is quiet on a weekday and why the lorries are somewhere else.

   Practical matters are simple. Semmering village itself is small, with a few cafés and hotels but no reliable fuel, so tank up before the climb or in Mürzzuschlag, the nearest real town about twelve kilometres away on the Styrian side. Early autumn is lovely, with mist in the valleys and cool, clear air at the top, but even in May a shaded hairpin can be damp, and in winter snow turns the pass into a problem for two wheels. Stop at the top for a coffee and look at those old hotels. Some are lovingly restored, some are still waiting for somebody with a great deal of money.

5. Back to Krems Wachau gate finish

   Back at Krems Wachau. That is the ride.

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