planning summer cycle tour and need some route advice

second part will be from the Dolomites to Venice for which i already have a route.

Plan is to start from Vienna and cross over the Austrian alps/foot hills a couple of times. not too bothered about big passes, we’ll be doing those in Italy on the second leg.

I’ve made a google earth file here of my proposed rough route.

any comments/places we should definitely go or avoid etc

ignore the sections on the autobahns, haven’t got round to changing to smaller roads yet

Link dosen’t work.
I spent some time between Linz & Swertburg near the Danube last summer.

link does work but you need to have google earth installed

just worked out how to post a .kmz file to google maps

try here

[EDIT] link in OP does seem to be off, it’s a hamster related problem i think

[EDIT2] now fixed, hamsters forgiven but they are too lazy to add http:// to urls

Just south of Bad Goisern is a village called Hallstatt which is the most pictureskewer place Ive ever been AND it has amazing ice caves- well worth a small detour. We camped by the lake just down the road in Obertraun Winkle.

thanks scruff

Ive spent a bit of time camping/train one year and bike/car aother time. Went to lots of places, it was always pretty and lots of stinky cheese and tastymeat to eat. Hitching is pretty easy if you want to dump the bikes and seemed very safe. Offroading mentality seems to involve fireroads up & down, LBS gave us offroad routes based on the size of our cassettes, seriously.

You could try Diz who used to post on these (well the old ones) forums. She set up http://www.overtheedgebiking.com/ in Austria

scruff, it’ll be 2 wheels all the way, fire roads will be fine but i guess you need to ask about them locally, otherwise we’ll stick to roads for surety’s sake

Hi, I live in Innsbruck so if I can be of further help please let me know!

The route looks good – but there are lots of fireroads through the Alps that are a lot nicer for biking on compared to the main roads. They’re not marked on Googlemaps but are on the OS-equivalents. The Kompass series has all the “biking” routes marked on, some of which cover long distances. Do you have a reason to go to Salzburg? Otherwise it might be nice to cycle up the Inn Valley then over the Brennar to Italy. In the Dolomites, the Messner mountain museums http://www.messner-mountain-museum.it/ are really worth a visit. And they are all so sporty around here no-one gives you a second glance if you go around a castle/museum in full-on cycling lycra.

How are you planning on doing it, road bikes or mtb? And camping or guesthouses? There are some lovely mountain huts all over the Alps that you can cycle to and stay in pretty cheaply…

Really good maps available from tourist embassy thing in ThatLondon.

thanks alpine girl

we’ll be on tourers so a little easy fireroad will be fine BUT we’ll be on relatively skinny tyres for the mountain passes in the Dolomites later in the tour, i’m not dragging 32mm CX tyres along 1200km of mostly mountainous roads!

no camping, purely guesthouse/hotel. no real reason to go to salzburg apart from trying not to just get stuck riding all the way up one valley as the valley bottoms can be a bit tedious.

to be honest i literally looked at google earth and just put aypoints in where it looked interesting from above!

scruff – ta just got some basic 1:300000 ones from smiths but they don’t have fireroads on.

Can I do a slight hijack?…

Alpine Girl – we are planning on doing a 2 week (driving) road trip using ferry to Rotterdam then Germany – Austria (Innsbruck ish)- Switzerland (Meiringen because kids love it round there) then home.

Do you know anyone in your area that would do a day or two of paid mtb guiding in the summer? We would only be passing through for a few days so it is always a problem to search out local singletrack rather than the signposted fireroad. Also – do you know roughly when the main Austrian and Swiss holiday weeks are in summer so we can try to avoid?

Thank you and end of hijack….

MrMW
Most of the marked (on maps) fireroad around here is pretty easy – hard packed and without too many stones – so you should be fine on touring tyres. And good call on the non-camping trip, it’s really not worth lugging a tent around here! cheap beds, cheap food & cheap beer make a nice holiday… If you want to see more mountains it might be worth considering cutting a bit further west from Salzburg through ZellamSee and over towards St Johann & Kitzbuhl, the mountains there are really pretty.

Mick,
I don’t know offhand any names to recommend but I did ride once this summer with a friend-of-a-friend that is a guide around here so I can try and get his name for you if you like? The singletrack around here is pretty hard to find so it would be worth it… I would offer to help out but am well on the way to becoming converted to a full-on long-distance xc rider out here and enjoying the fireroads on my new minimal suspension lightweight bike!
Not sure when the main holidays are but the schools are pretty much the same as the UK. It stays pretty much the same in terms of busyness the whole summer so I’m not sure if timing would make much difference.

sorry for the thread hijack 😳

Alpine girl do you know the Vorarlberg area well at all?

If so could you reccommend any routes in the Montafon valley? Something near St.Gallenkirch would be ideal, thanks.

Alpinegirl

Thanks for that – just want a few days stopover for some quality technical xc without having to spend weeks trying to find it. We generally ride ss / rigid / short travel hardtail anyway – however will be taking gears for this summer. Last year we stopped in Meiringen on way back from singlespeed euros and no gears meant I almost swallowed my own lungs and exploded legs. Damn your vertical sided glacial valleys! 😉

Probably be early – mid July when we are over (so no hurry). If you do find somebody then please drop us a mail at a_mrushton2714 at btinternet dot com

Cheers

Mick

Will drop you an email Mick… I also had severe issues with the uphills when I first came here – the guys I know here are all about riding up at least 1000m with no breaks allowed! It’s a bit easier now I’ve got a top with pockets and have learnt to put energy bars in a reachable location.

Cuckoo – sorry don’t know that area well at all. Again, the Kompass maps have mtb routes marked on, but tend to be longer day tours rather than shorter singletrack trails. If you see people out and about they tend to be pretty friendly if you ask.