Bicycle touring Austria: from the Dolomites to Bavaria

Ferda and I planned this tour as far as the Dolomites. Then we started looking at tickets back to Antalya — from Venice, from Milan, from Innsbruck. Turns out Munich was a lot closer than we realized, and the tickets were the best deal with frequent non-stop flights to Antalya. I still had about three weeks left in my Schengen permission so we had time to enjoy the ride.

We started with a long downhill from Colfosco.

IMG_20220721_112715 by bryandkeith on flickr
Colfosco

We descended into a busy highway corridor and took over an hour that evening to find a place to camp. This castle:

Chiusa di Rio Pusteria -- at this point we were looking for a place to camp, but this castle was all locked up.  Also it was probably too close to a big highway for a comfortable sleep. by bryandkeith on flickr
Chiusa di Rio Pusteria

was locked up but anyway was probably too close to the highway to be a comfortable place to spend the night.

IMG_20220721_174306 by bryandkeith on flickr
IMG_20220721_183529 by bryandkeith on flickr

The next day we seemed to spend the whole day climbing Brenner Pass. It wasn’t steep or difficult, but it certainly took longer than we expected.

IMG_20220722_105118 by bryandkeith on flickr
Mezzaselva
IMG_20220722_140938 by bryandkeith on flickr
IMG_20220722_142919 by bryandkeith on flickr
Vipiteno

Again it took a while to find a place for our tent. We ended up cresting the pass and camping at this open place (a parking lot?) near Brennersee.

IMG_20220722_185645 by bryandkeith on flickr

It was warm when we arrived, but check out Ferda the next morning:

IMG_20220723_085409 by bryandkeith on flickr

July in Austria!

Traffic wasn’t a problem going up Brenner Pass on the Italian side, but yikes it was a narrow, nasty road with heavy traffic on the Austrian side. Thankfully we were going downhill. Reminded me of Wurzen Pass. There were better options after about 10km or so, but it wouldn’t be nice to go up that section.

IMG_20220723_103133 by bryandkeith on flickr
IMG_20220723_113713 by bryandkeith on flickr
IMG_20220723_124859 by bryandkeith on flickr
Mühltal

Innsbruck is a fairly big city in a nice setting, but we didn’t stick around. It might be that the city is more known for access to the surrounding mountains. I didn’t find anything interesting in the city in my quick internet search.

Here are a couple photos of the large valley where Innsbruck sits.

IMG_20220724_101338 by bryandkeith on flickr
IMG_20220724_102109 by bryandkeith on flickr

We left the main valley at Telfs (where we enjoyed talking with an Alevi woman from İzmir who has lived eight years in Austria) and started up another pretty side valley.

IMG_20220724_153414 by bryandkeith on flickr

It was easy to find a great campsite with a river to cool off in and wash up in. Weren’t we cold in the morning just the day before?!

IMG_20220724_170450 by bryandkeith on flickr
IMG_20220724_190855 by bryandkeith on flickr
Obermieming

A small (unnamed?) pass set us up for Fern Pass which was so steep that we were pushing at times, a good ending (I guess?) for our last pass in the Alps.

IMG_20220725_093102 by bryandkeith on flickr
Weisland
IMG_20220725_115715 by bryandkeith on flickr
Schloss Fernstein

We coasted down to a camp next a canal at the edge of agriculture fields in Ehrwald.

IMG_20220725_170926 by bryandkeith on flickr
Biberwier

The next day we used the rain as an excuse to eat lunch out, our only restaurant meal in Austria.

IMG_20220726_131539 by bryandkeith on flickr
Klause

Dinner that night was in Germany.

This entry was posted in Austria, Bicycle touring, Italy and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Bicycle touring Austria: from the Dolomites to Bavaria

  1. Mike Painter says:

    Looks like fun!

  2. Curt Bradner says:

    Shit, Austria, now that’s a scary place! You are far more brave than I!

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