Innsbruck to Vienna (mid September)

So i dont really know if this belongs here but i wanted to share some impressions of my first ever bike trip from Innsbruck to Vienna. I hope you guys enjoy the pictures as much as i enjoyed the nature on my trip 🙂

I really had no experience on how to pack a bike, so if you see something in my setup that you'd do different, feel free to tell me!

My route was plan sounded pretty easy: I had 5 days to reach Vienna and I wanted to see as much beautiful austrian landscape as possible.

I started in Innsbruck following the Inn until Wörgl, then got into climbing to St. Johann and from there through Lofer to my first destination Bad Reichenhall.

Rookie mistake number one: i never had tested if the setup actually works, so after 10km i had to stop and put my tent on the top of the frame (originally I put it on the fork).

I liked the section at the Inn very much and I rode there numerous times before. Despite the constant noise from the Autobahn, the Inn Valley is really beatiful. After that i found it hard to navigate, because i didn't do enough research and it turned out (surprise, surprise) that google maps is not the best way to navigate a bike trip, haha. So rookie mistake number 2 was not to put any thought into mayve using komoot or smth similar. I switched to that after i reached St. Johann.

The part from St. Johann to Reichenhall was pretty much Bundesstraße (federal highway?) the whole time. I was really scared of the trucks. I wouldn't recommend doing this with a road bike, hahaha.

The second day i rode from Reichenhall to Salzburg, the i reach the Mondsee and the Attersee. The nature was stunning and i loved the Attersee, which is also the lake you can see on the picture that includes my setup 🙂 From there i went on a little climb over to Traunsee and slept on a camping site at Traunsee, which was really expensive and right next to a street.

Nevertheless the Traunsee is also really beatiful and especially in the morning when i had breakfast next to the lake, it was a wonderful feeling. Overall i would say this was the best day of my tour naturewise! 🙂

The third day I started in Altmünster am Traunsee and went trough endless hills in Lower Austria to Amstetten and from there to Melk an der Donau. This journey was brutal and really showed me that I did not put enough effort into planing, because my route was way to long and I (altough i wouldn't say im not fit) reached a point were it was really hard for me to ride on my bike. Rookie mistake no. 1000: not packing a cream for my butt.

But in the country side i saw alot of cute cats, the sun was shining and I listened to some good music, so it was not to bad after all 😀

In Melk i was at a really nice camping site and I loved sitting by the river, watching the sunset.

By the start of day no. 4 I was in good spirits but due to a lack of training you could say I was physically broken. It hurt to sit on the bike for the first couple of kilometers but the sight of driving on the Donau and letting the sun shine on me made it alot better 🙂

I started in Melk going through Mellau, then Krems and had a stop in Tulln an der Donau where I had a really delicious pizza! From there I could have reached Vienna quite easily, but i you read this far the you know I'm a little goofball who does stupid things, so I decided to visit family in the Wienerwald.

So from Tulln on i went on a climb to a little village in Wienerwald which almost took me out, haha. Rookie mistake No. 9999: maybe don't plan a climb if you're already exhausted. But as always i found something good after the climb. My saviour was an ice cream machine and at the end I was exhausted but really happy.

On day 5 i just had roll down for about 20km into the city, so this was really chill 🙂

In total i did about 540 kilometers with 3600 meters of climbing. I was definitly not well enough prepared for this but I think I will learn from it. For my next trip I will plan more time for my journey and shorter distances for sure.

Thank you for reading all this nonsense, I hope you have a nice day! 🙂