I did my annual bike packing tour, this time on the Danube from Vienna to Passau and those are the mistakes I made and the things I noticed:
- Nearly nobody is doing it upstream and the reason is probably the wind. I always got medium wind from the west slowing me down. On the dams I nearly came to a halt. On average I think this made a difference of around 5km/h. This needs to be kept in mind when planning such a tour. The Daily distance someone can do is significantly lower with that amount of wind. Maybe I just was unlucky with the weather.
- driving through vienna was pretty annoying and I hated it. I came to the city by train and had to find a way out to reach the Donauradweg. I probably helps to plan a route through the city beforehand to minimize stress. There are a lot of bikeways but nearly all of the ones I took were horribly. It always felt confusing and even dangerous.
- Planing a tour definitely helps to reduce uncertainties.
I was definitely under planning this tour and had to look for camp sites, hotels and also crossings a lot during the day. I thing this made me pretty slow. Physically I felt like I can do some more kilometers but the daytime was already gone and I had to find sleeping places. Wild camping was not really an option along the Danube.
by Ornery-Drop-6024