Ridden in August, 2002
This page last updated on: November 30, 2004
Directions to Bicycle from Salzburg, to Munich, Innsbruck or the Bodensee (Lake Constance) - Austria, Germany, Switzerland
You will cycle mainly on bike paths and minor roads, primarily along the German Alpine Road, in Bavaria.
Bike Rating: Very Good
|
Nature of the Ride: These mainly easy to moderate rides mainly follows the famous (and ill-defined) "German Alpine Road", along the edge of the Austrian and German Alps. The Alps and pre-Alps provide a handsome backdrop to your journey, while you actually ride on flat, slightly sloped, or rolling valley terrain. Beautiful lakes, broad, rushing rivers and mountain resorts punctuate your visit. Incredible castles, created by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, leave lasting impressions of a bygone era. Below: Salzburg***.
Germanic Culture enfolds you: schnitzels, strudels, dark bread and great beer at meals, and sturdy well-built houses and hotels, typically decorated inside with white walls and timber trimmings, and occasionally painted on the exterior or bedecked in window boxes full of flowers. Low-backed chairs and benches of light wood, covered with pink-salmon or light green cushions, and of spaciously separated wooden tables, illuminated by overhead, dangling, lighting fixtures forms the interior decor of restaurants.. You bike mainly on bicycle paths, that, particularly in Austria or near the Austrian border in Germany, may suddenly end —to the author it seems almost without rhyme or reason—so also on roads or highways that may have moderate to heavy summer holiday traffic. So you need to feel comfortable riding in traffic, even though you will ride in it rarely. Below: Road and guest houses above Berchtsgaden**,
Germany
|
If
you have already seen parts of Europe by bicycle, you probably will
not want to make these routes a bicycling only experience: In the
author's opinion, the landscape along the roads and bicycle paths
is sufficiently interesting and varied for only a few days of riding.
Rather, for a great vacation, combine your cycling with boat trips
on delightful and famous lakes, with hikes into the mountains, with
town sightseeing on foot, with tours of the fairy-tale castles,
and with a concert or two in Salzburg.
The
normally-smoth pavement of the cycle paths may come to an end (also
without apparent reason), becoming a gravel-surfaced or pebble-surfaced
path. You will need a sturdy bicycle with at least 28 mm tires.
You will find your cycling speed is reduced by one-half on the gravel.
The
most famous one, Neuschwanstein**, is the castle, perched on a spire
above a valley, that you have seen featured on countless jigsaw
puzzles. The photos are all taken from a mountainside where you
are unlikely to go (unless you make a special 2 hour hike), so the
views that you actually see are less striking, but still well worth
seeing. The inside is well worth visiting, but there can be a wait
of an hour or more later in the day, so do arrive early. If you
stay in the area, at Schwangau or Füssen, this should be no
problem. When you visit, take the 15 minute walk behind the castle
around to a bridge, from which you can take an excellent photograph.
Neuschwanstein is reached in the second week of the itinerary given
here.
The
same lake has another island, the Fraueninsel, that's worth a visit
while you are at it, and depending on where you take your boat,
may cost nothing more..
A
second suggested ending point, Innsbruck***, Austria, is a very
charming small city of great authenticity, nestled in a mountain
valley. If you are ambitious, and have the time before you, you
can continue your tour by bicycling over the Brennerpass, 33 kilometers
away, into northern Italy—near or into the Dolomite*** mountains,
or on to Lake Guarda*** and Verona***.
|
Organizing the Trip Yourself:To print itinerary, select the text below, and choose print selection.Please follow this link for an explanation of the author's traffic ratings.Starting Point: Salzburg, Austria, accessible by train via Munich or Italy, or via air. Ending Points: Prien a Chiemsee, Munich, Bad Tölz, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Füssen, Immenstadt i.Allgäu, or Lindau—all in Germany; or in Innsbruck, Austria. Distance and time (without side trips): 102 kilometers to 396 kilometers; one to two weeks . Rentals: Bring your own bicycle or consider renting in Munich and carrying your bike to the starting point on the train. The following company claims to rent 24 speed aluminum frame bikes suitable for a bike tour: Radius Tours and Bikes, e-mail radiusmunich@t-online.de.site: http://www.radius-munich.com. Accommodation and Restaurants: Prices of hotels for 2 range from modest in Guest Houses and Pensions (about €35 per day, with a supplement of € 3 or €4 if the stay is only one night), to €100 in fancy resort hotels or city business hotels. Campground high-season prices range from €4.50 to €7.00 per adult. For campgrounds in Austria, see this site: http://www.campsite.at/En. For campgrounds in Bavaria, start with the commercial site: http://www.camping-germany.eu.com, but you may find a better choice by contacting the tourist offices listed below. Your cost to eat in a pleasantly decorated restaurant serving typical regional cuisine, including a glass of wine or beer, will range from €12 to €16 per person. Fancier restaurants will cost more. Breakfast is normally included in the price of the hotel. Service charges are also included, but you may wish to give a small extra tip for excellent service. In many resort towns hotel space is very tight in August, and you may find no availability, or be forced into a higher price category or to less desirable hotels. In Bavaria and this part of Austria, local tourist offices typically know what space is available in their town. You may want to drop in to the local tourist office before looking for a last minute hotel. It can be wise to call ahead to the local tourist offices in towns where you may spend the night, and then call hotels one or two days in advance. The following is a partial list of local tourist offices (in German "Touristinformation", or "Verkehsamt" (When calling from out of a country, dial 001 from the USA or 00 in Europe + the country code (43 for Austria, 39 for Germany), and the phone number—without the initial 0):
In Munich, the tourist office at the main railroad station provides a mullti-page booklet for €1 containing a list of several hundred hotels. To make train reservations by telephone within Germany, the phone number is 0180-5996633. Maps and Guidebooks: By all means obtain the relevant ADFC (German Bicycle Touring Club) maps, available in the USA online at www.omnimap.com, or in bookstores in Germany or in nearby Austria. For the part of the trip that includes Salzburg, Berchtesgaden, and the Chiemsee, you need map #27, "Chiemsee/Inn/Salzkammergut". For the Inn River valley, Bad Tolz, Innsbruck, Fussen and Munich, you need map #26, "Oberbayern/ München". For the trip from Fussen to Lindau on the Bodensee, you need map #25, "Bodensee/Schwäbische Alb". The ADFC maps are at a scale of 1:150 (1 cm = 1.5 km). They show the best roads for biking and most of the bike paths. They indicate moderate and steep slopes. In short, they are essential. They do, however, have some problems: first and foremost, distances are rarely given, leaving it to you to estimate how far you will bike. Some of your estimates are likely to be off the mark. Secondly, they do not show the names of all of the bike routes, which can make it much harder to follow the correct route, since you won't know which signs to follow. You might want to obtain the German language guide booklet "Inn Radweg 2" from http://www.Esterbauer.com if you are riding to Innsbruck along the Inn River (and also information on the Chiemsee). This has 1:50,000 maps and information on the towns traversed. (In the other direction it provides information on the Inn River bike path as far as Passau, the confluence with the Danube and the Danube bike path, described elsewhere on this site.) You may also wish to carry a general tourist guidebook for Bavaria. Bike Routes: Despite its name, the Bodensee - Königssee Radweg (bike route) does not run all the way from the Bodensee to the Konigsee. ("See", pronounced "zay", of course, means "lake" in German. The Bodensee is known as Lake Constance in English. The route runs only from the Bodenzee to the southwestern edge of the Chiemsee (pronounced as though spelt "kiemzay"). Some bike routes in eastern Bavaria, which are signposted, do not appear on editions of the ADFC bicycling maps! Tip: Very few, if any, tourists in Bavaria (or elsewhere) get started before 9:00 AM; the first sightseeing busses arrive around 10:00 AM; and the mad-rush starts about 11:00 AM. Tip: General information on cycling in Germany and commercial tours, for those who are fluent in the German language, is available from: http://www.adfc.de. Itineraries: All routes: From Salzburg, Austria to Prien a Chiemsee, Germany via Berchtesgaden: 102 kilometers. Train connection in Prien, or continue. 2 nights (or more) in Salzburg; 2 nights (or more) in Berechtesgaden; 2 nights on the Chiemsee at one or a combination of Chieming, Seebruck or Prien. In Salzburg, one tourist office is at the train station, another at Mozart Platz (place) one block from the river below the fort and near the cathedral. The tourist office distributes a free regional bicycle map. There are two good routes out of Salzburg towards Berchtesgaden: The shortest one is to cross west from the old city through the pedestrian-biking tunnel in the hillside just north of the Festspielhaus (Festival Playhouse). You emerge to a bike lane by the sidewalk; the road turns slightly right (do not turn sharply right). Continue to the second (?) stoplight, and turn left on Moonstrasse (bike lane). Follow this straight for several kilometers until you eventually cross the autobahn superhighway. Take the next left and follow into Grödigl. Now, bearing right, follow signs to St. Leonhard. You will intersect highway B160, where you turn right. With a very short exception, a sidewalk bike way or a wide shoulder "bikelane" goes all the way to Berchtesgaden, about 27 kilometers from Salburg. The other route follows a bike path along the west bank of the Salzach river south from Salzburg. Just after crossing over the autoroute(before a little stream) turn right on a road near the stream. Cross highway B159 and continue to St. Leonhard. Turn left on B160, and continue as above to Berchtesgaden. The Berchtesgaden Tourist Office provides an excellent map of the area, and is very helpful in finding lodgings. There are two possible general routes from Berchtesgaden to the Chiemsee: The first, via highway 305 and 306 direct to Siegsdorf is more hilly, and runs through narrow mountain valleys. It bypasses several interesting areas, and is not shown as being good for cycling by the ADFC map. The second route follows highway B20. If you are starting from the center of Berchtesgaden, you can just continue on Mazimilian Strasse, which later joins B20. When the bicycle lanes end along the highway, you sometimes have the choice of taking detours on side roads or riding on the main highway. At one point the bike lane angles off to the right behind a small lake. At the first Y you bear right (the left branch goes to the house) and ride on gravel and dirt roads through the forest; although slower, this was very pleasant. When you emerge from the woods, on a paved bicycle path alongside the road, as you ride down hill you will come to a Y in the path. The left branch is for Bad Reichenhall, the right one for Gmain (and Marzoll?). Even though it is slightly longer, the left branch into Bad Richenhall passes through the scenic town, while the right branch leads to a maze of unmarked roads where you can not help but get badly lost. You curve to the Northeast, along a lake and the Saalach river. You cross this on a bridge, following something called the Saalinen-Radweg, there are signs with "Salz" as their major label as far is Traunstein. If you should become lost along the river, ask cyclists for directions to Pidding. From Pidding, ride to Anger, to near Teisendorf, and then via Wolf and Lauter to Traunstein. Some of the riding is on gravel paths, and some in over rolling hills, but unless time is a key element, you will find these byways much more rewarding than the highway. From Traunstein, all the main bike routes all follow the south shore of the Chiemsee. To be sure, this is substantially the shortest way, and it is entirely on bicycle paths, but the author rode, and suggests you ride, the northern shore, for three reasons: You don't ride beside the Autobahn expressway; you pass through several charming towns; and you have wonderful views of the lake framed by the Alps in the background. If you do decide to ride the northern shore, proceed west from Traunstein on minor roads to Chieming, or if time is short, via Nussdorf to Seebruck. You can choose, then, to follow either the lakeside gravel bike path, or the adjacent road bearing light to moderate traffic. Continuation from Prien am Chiemsee
Continuation from Bad Tölz
Continuation from Eschenlohe
Continuation from Füssen
|