Bikepacking Europe’s Longest River*
An adventure along the Danube
The Danube is actually the second longest river in Europe, behind the Volga.
But geography isn’t Jimmy’s strongest point (see day 9!).
1,414km. 5,355m. 71h 54m. 16 days.
Top tips for riding the Danube
Route planning and navigation.
Buy/borrow ‘The Danube Cycleway Volume 1: From the source in the Black Forest to Budapest’ by Mike Wells. It describes the first 1,300km of the Danube Cycle Route through Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. A route broken down into 29 stages and mostly following the EuroVelo 6 (EV6). This was a super useful resource that enabled us to plan routes, find campsites/hotels as well as fun facts about the places you pass through. This book makes it easy to plan on the go and enjoy the adventure in the moment. The book also gives you access to GPX files, which can easily be loaded on to your navigation device. We travelled with a Garmin Etrex 30x and this combination worked perfectly!Bikes.
We saw so many different bikes along the route, you could probably do the ride on just about anything – we went with our adventure road bikes, relaxed endurance frames with chunkier tyres for the differing terrain and extra comfort – Germany loves to throw some rough gravel sections!
Canyon - Endurace - 35mm schwable all road.
Pinnacle - Arkose 3 - 28mm Conti 4 seasons. (why ride anything else?)Kit.
Pack light, ride fast (ish). I’ll leave you to work out whether you need two or three pairs of bib shorts and how many outfits you need for off the bike but travel detergent and a diligent washing/rinse plan will keep you somewhat fresh. We bought the MSR Freelite 2 Ultralight tent, which packed away so small that no one could believe we were carrying one! Our bikepacking bags are Apidura and Alpkit, who both have some pretty great offerings dependent on your price point. We cooked on trusty coke can stoves and mess tins which haven’t let us down yet! Bring insect repellent, this mixed with sun cream is terrible for your skin, but a must!The labelling of the route changes in different regions and countries, keep a look out for the Danube Cycle Route symbol and EV6 signs, it’s reassuring to know you’re heading the in right direction!
Keep an eye out for water fountains, especially in Germany, there is one in most towns and some are a real work of art! Ideal for on the go refilling water bottles and keeping hydrated.
For later down the river, particularly Austria onwards, there are a couple of options to take ferries across the river. Most ferry tickets can be bought on the boat for a few euros (except for the ferry over to Visegrad). Like most of the route, make sure you’re carrying enough cash!
Saturday, 29 June 2019 - The longest river in Europe
Donaueschingen – Riedlingen
We packed up the car on the day I submitted my thesis for my Master’s degree and drove towards Donaueschingen. We were ready for two weeks of adventure, away from screens and our only worries, what we would eat that day and where would we sleep. It was just what we needed.
We started our adventure in the middle of the European heatwave of 2019, so slathered in sun cream and carrying litres of water, we headed off into the unknown – with the only plans being the bus we booked from Budapest to Zurich in two weeks time.
Full on the spirit of a new adventure, we crushed through 130km, with only the mishap of diverting for a children’s fun run and Jimmy’s first puncture of the trip.
After stocking up on dinner supplies, we stayed outside Riedlingen in a campsite just off the cycle route (Campingplatz Vöhringer Hof). It was a small, quiet campsite with everything you need. It only accepted cash, it’s pretty lowkey. We cooked our weight in pasta on coke can stoves and hid from the mosquitos in our tent.
Sunday, 30 June 2019 - Will ride bikes for cold beer
Riedlingen - Riedheim
Day two, we took the Danube cycle path to Ehingen for giant German pastries, before taking the ‘diversion’ to Blauberen to see the Blue Lagoon! Whilst the Blue Lagoon was pretty cool, the real defining moment from this day was the falafel wrap we ate for lunch, true to their word, it was 100% vegatarisch, 100% lecker!
Back on the main Danube route, we rode through the bustling city of Ulm towards our campsite for the evening (Schwarzfelder Hof). Possibly one of our favourite nights along the route, the swim in the lake, curry wurst for dinner and pretty good beer. Another, top tip, bring cash otherwise the beer runs out pretty quickly!
Monday, 1 July 2019 - Come on young people
Riedheim – Ingolstadt
Day three and three key memories: first, the slowest moving Subway sandwich in the world, whilst appreciating the lunch time rush, when you’ve been counting down the kilometres for lunch, it did get a bit desperate! Secondly, we passed a group of older French cyclists who gave us a lot of encouragement as we overtook them hill-climbing (quite unheard of for me!) and hence today’s Strava tile, “Allez les jeunes”. Lastly, it was the day we tried to beat the rain, slowed down a little by another puncture for Jimmy and what seemed like the most indirect route through a country estate.
In order to save our tent from getting soaked, we opted for the comfort of a real mattress in the Bike Lodge at AZUR Camping Am Auwaldsee. This campsite was helpfully just around the corner from a supermarket and a huge Decathlon for some more innertubes, so whilst we got soaked on the way to supplies, we ate well that day! It’s nice breaking up the camping with something a little fancier.
Tuesday, 2 July 2019 - Bike touring would be easy if we weren't carrying so much gear
Ingolstadt – Wörth an de Donau
Day four, we took the ferry from the Weltenburg Abbey through the Danube Gorge to Kelheim, the steep cliffs make it impossible to cycle alongside the river, but there is a road diversion if you don’t fancy the ferry!
A lesson learnt the hard way, REWE offers better lunch options than Edeka. Especially when you’re hungry and tired!
We stayed in a Bavarian guest house just off the cycle path in Wörth an de Donau (Gasthof Butz). A quaint German town, lederhosen, beer and apple pie, definitely worth a stop!
Wednesday, 3 July 2019 - Just a couple of lame-os
Wörth an de Donau – Passau
Day five and our last day in Germany – we stopped for lunch in Deggendorf, there’s a great kiosk restaurant right in the centre.
We road towards Passau along the solar system way! Keep an eye out for all the planets!
We camped alongside the River Ilz in Passau (Camping Passau), mid-summer it was pretty busy with other cyclists, canoers and school groups, it was at least a cheap night. Keep an eye out for a beaver in the river and some very over-friendly ducks!
Thursday, 4 July 2019 - The river is alive with the sound of music
Passau – Mauthausen/Au an der Donau
Day six, we crossed the border into Austria and picked up a number of day-tourers, cruise-cyclists and matching pannier bags as we entered some of the busiest sections of the entire route.
There’s a good paved cycle route on both sides of the river through Austria. We followed our guide book and made the most of the ferries and slightly different viewpoints.
Hit some pretty huge speeds this day following a group of men from the Czech Republic. They were evidently speedy cyclists and were seemingly too polite and/or drunk to notice they were also pulling us and our heavy bikes along.
We stayed at a great campsite (Camping Au an der Donau) which offers camping pods but also a nice spot near a lake for tents, good facilities and power. Would skip a dip in the lake, but the pizza in the bar was pretty good!
Friday, 5 July 2019 - A fine selection of Austrian wine
Au an der Donau – Krems
One week on the road! I’d never spent so many consecutive days on the bike before, but the routine was setting in and the aches and sores of Germany were slowly healing (with a lot of chamois cream!).
Day 2 in Austria was much of the same as the day before, perfectly tarmacked bike paths that tracked the busy Danube. We were speeding through Austria and our trip much faster than anticipated.
After lunch in Melk we cycled through the Wachau wine region, a UNESCO world heritage site and one of Austria’s most famous and distinctive winemaking regions - apparently, but I guess they would say that(!). Either way the vineyards were a nice change of scenery.
We stayed in Krems for the night, but I wish we didn’t and I’m only telling you so you don’t make the same mistake as us! The only campsite in the city is mostly a motorhome parking with a small patch of grass, it’s crowded, busy and just didn’t have a great vibe – try any of the hotels in the Wachau area, that would be amazing!
Saturday, 6 July 2019 - The best guacamole outside of Mexico
Krems – Vienna
Day eight and we had been looking forward to reaching Vienna, as the first major city we’d been through in a while, but also because Jimmy’s cousin Jack lives in Vienna. We were looking forward to a friendly face and Jack’s famous guacamole!
Knowing we weren’t that far away (I’m not sure when 90km became not that far), we pushed through and rather desperately ate lunch when we reached Vienna - we liked Veggiezz.
We took a local tour of Vienna, checked out Swing Kitchen for dinner and some beers on the banks of the River Danube. This possibly isn’t what everyone comes to Vienna for – I hear the opera is pretty good – but it was just what we needed and as tired as we were, about all we could manage!
Sunday, 7 July 2019 - Stopping in Bucharest, capital of Slovenia
Vienna – Bratislava
Day nine, we hopped from one capital to another and despite Jimmy’s questionable geography crossed into our third country of the trip – Slovakia (not Slovenia or Bucharest or anywhere else that sounds a little like Bratislava or Slovakia). We also crossed a total of 1,000km on the road, a pretty long way from the start of our journey and an encouraging realisation when I’d remembered how little we had prepared for this trip!
There was a technically closed, but very well-used section of the cycle path which if you can find your way onto it, is definitely worth it. Bonus points if you don’t have to take the very bumpy and dusty mud trail along the river first! (I think we got close to falling out on this section, I did not enjoy it!).
We crossed into Slovakia and our map suddenly disappeared, turns out the preloaded Garmin maps on the Etrex only covered western Europe. Thankfully after diligently following a line on a blank screen into Bratislava and then Google mapping to our hostel, Jimmy loaded OpenStreet Maps of Slovakia and Hungary to cover the remaining countries on our trip! I know we would have been fine without it, but I was secretly relieved Jimmy was able to botch a hack between his phone, some memory cards and another process that I was not involved in but keeping my fingers crossed for.
[I’ll write a post on hacking an Etrex on the road - J]
Monday, 8 July 2019 - Is it Lunch time? Because I am Hungary
Bratislava - Gyor
Day ten, country number four. We crossed the Hungarian border on an unsuspecting road to the sound of quite a vicious dog barking away in the background. By this point in the trip, we knew we were going to make our bus ride back to Zurich with a day or so to spare. Unsure of the quality of the roads and cycle paths in Hungary, we opted to drop our daily mileage and make the most of afternoons in towns we would probably never visit again.
The first town we came across was Mosonmagyaróvár, which, fun fact is well-known for its dentistry, thanks to a combination of bizarrely good transport links and low-cost treatment (in comparison to Austria). Resulting in the town claiming the highest number of dentists per capita in the entire world. What a claim to fame! Whilst we didn’t make the most of this, it also has a supermarket directly on the EV6 which sold some great pastries, win-win.
We stayed in a quiet campsite in an entrepreneurial family’s back garden on the edge of Gyor, make sure you bring cash, they took our Euros but Forint would be better. It might not look like much, but it was such a lovely place to camp, apart from a couple of angry sounding dogs in the garden next door, but they were quiet overnight. Bizarrely, this campsite was a home away from home because most of the tourists were Dutch, including a couple on a touring tandem! At that point we realised that whilst we like each other a fair amount, two weeks on the same bike would have been a step too far. Six to seven hours a day staring at Jimmy’s back is not what I tour for.
Tuesday, 9 July 2019 - 11 days in, the basics become difficult...
Gyor – Esztergom/Sturovo
Day eleven, at this point the basics started to get difficult. Not really, but Jimmy stacked it off his bike (see photo evidence), pretty much whilst standing still, we were just getting ready to head off again after a snack break and I turned around and he was on the floor, comedy gold. For someone as clumsy on the bike as Jimmy is, this was probably the best fall we could have hoped for!
I was quite nervous for this day, I’d heard mixed things prior to our trip about busy Hungarian roads and terrible road surfacing, building up a negative picture in my mind about how hard it was going to be. As it turns out, Hungarian drivers (including the HGV drivers) were actually fairly respectful of us out on the road, we were following the EV6 at that point, so they knew to expect us, but when has that ever stopped a driver honking in the UK! There was one patch of cycle path that was definitely a dirt track and in wet weather would have been a nightmare, but on the back of the great European heatwave of 2019, we were totally fine. A classic day exemplifying how the EV6 goes from one extreme to another!
We camped at Vadas Thermal Resort back over the Slovakian border. It sounds pretty fancy, it’s actually a kids water park on a thermal spring with family camping. We probably weren’t their intended customers, but we certainly made the most of the free access to the thermal pools, obviously for recovery purposes, but also couldn’t refuse the water slides… when in Rome!
Wednesday, 10 July 2019 - Please can you take me to Budapest?
Esztergom – Budapest
Our final day along the Danube (day twelve), we crossed back to the Hungarian (south) side of the river and cycled towards the ferry crossing to Szob. Things were pretty quiet, we weren’t sure if the ferry was actually running, but I think we just arrived too early. We had a snack and were slowly joined by more cyclists and cars and then noticed the boat was heading towards us, phew! I learnt that it was a tug boat and that meant we were basically getting on a floating barge that was somehow attached to this boat and being pushed across a deep river…with a marginal (read irrational) fear of boats, I might have tried to find another way around if I’d known! Nevertheless, we made it!
We cycled around the big meandering river bend and into our next ferry stop, we found more supplies in a local supermarket and joined the giant queue of people, bikes, cars and terrifyingly, lorries hoping to hop to the other side of the river. Note, remember to buy your tickets in the kiosk before you join the queue otherwise you won’t make it on to the crossing.
We lunched in Szentendre, a cute town just outside of Budapest, full of artisanal crafts and lots of tourists. If you can find a seat in a restaurant in the main square, good effort!
On our final leg into Budapest we picked up a slightly lost Canadian woman who quite desperately asked to follow us into the city. We cycled in through Margit-sziget, a completely traffic free island on the river, just make sure you find the cycle track and not the running track…oops!
Budapest…12 days…1,316km…4 countries and a real adventure.
Friday, 12 July 2019 - On the bike recovery ride
Best Bike Tours Budapest
After a full rest day and apparently not satisfied with 12 days of cycling, we opted for some on the bike recovery with Best Bike Tours Budapest. We love to check out new cities by bike when we’re travelling and so Budapest was no exception. This company and our guide were so much fun, although we had opted for a group ride it was just the two of us, so we got a personal tour of Budapest – complete with a million photo opportunities and handy tips on where to eat and what else to see. I’d totally recommend!
Sunday, 14 July 2019 - Quite an eventful morning
Zurich – Donaueschingen
On day fifteen, we took an overnight Flixbus from Budapest to Zurich with too few snacks and too many stops. We got basically no sleep and were really hungry. Not our best move given we were planning on cycling back to our car, but it probably is the most cost efficient way of getting two people, two bikes and two weeks’ worth of kit back home.
Arriving in Zurich at around 6am on day sixteen, we did what most desperately hungry bikepackers would do, we found the nearest McDonald’s to refuel, change and mentally prepare for our adventure. Turns out there had been an altercation prior to us arriving, so our relaxed breakfast plans were slightly disrupted by the police, an ambulance and a lot of drunk people on their way home, probably having had worse nights than us!
When we planned this section I imagined, we’d be cycling downhill most of the way, Switzerland is basically the Alps right? Turns out, Zurich lies in the bottom of a deep valley so climbing out of it, on no sleep, rubbish food and the mayhem of our morning, it was not totally enjoyable.
After finally finding a groove and importantly some better snacks, morale was somewhat higher, although always dampened by it being the last day on the road.
We hopped the Swiss/German border a couple of times before climbing Switzerland’s last present to us on this brief visit. Strava delightfully told me afterwards that this was my biggest climb to date, and thankfully from this point, it was pretty much downhill all the way to Donaueschingen where our adventure ends.
