Melk to Krems Private Wachau E-Bike Tour
The Route
Tour Details
Duration: approximately 8 – 10 hours
Cycling distance: approximately 44 km
Ascent: 404 m
Descent: 441 m
Highest point: 499 m
Lowest point: 196 m
The elevation profile of the tour shows a small hill near Schönbühel and a 300-meter ascent to the Aggstein castle ruins. This is why you are on the road with e-mountain bikes.
Itinerary
Before we set off from Melk on our e-mountain bikes, we look up to Melk Abbey. We then cycle along the right bank of the Danube from Melk into the Wachau. At the entrance to the Wachau valley, we pass through Schönbühel at the foot of a hilltop. The route then continues through the floodplain of the Danube to Aggsbach-Dorf. Aggsbach-Dorf is followed by Aggstein, where we cycle up to the ruins of Aggstein Castle.
From Aggstein we cycle north along the Danube to St. Johann im Mauerthale, where the Wachau wine-growing region begins. After Oberarnsdorf we board the ferry that takes us to the northern bank of the Danube to Spitz. From Spitz we cycle to St. Michael and from there through Thal Wachau to Weißenkirchen.
In Weißenkirchen we take the ferry again to the other side of the Danube to St. Lorenz. We continue through the orchards and vineyards of the Rossatzer shore disc to Rossatzbach, where we take the ferry to Dürnstein. From Dürnstein we cycle through the plain of Loiben towards Rothenhof and via Förthof and Stein we reach Krems on the Danube.
The private Bike Tour in Wachau Valley from Melk to Krems for 2 travelers is € 1.945,00, for 4 travelers it is € 2.437,00 and for 6 travelers it is € 3.115,00.
Hotel pick up and drop-off (locations in the Wachau Valley)
Transportation by car to Melk and to the pick-up point at the end of the tour
E-mountain bike rental
Guided cycle tour on the Danube Cycle Path from Melk to Krems on the Danube by 2 local guides
Entrance to the castle ruins of Aggstein
Ferry crossing of the Danube from Arnsdorf to Spitz on the Danube, from Weißenkirchen in the Wachau to St. Lorenz and from Rossatzbach to Dürnstein
Wine tasting at the Maritime Museum in Spitz on the Danube
Cold lunch with vineyard snack with Wachau wine at winery Mang in Weißenkirchen in the Wachau
Dinner with a glass of Wachau wine at the end of the tour in the Gozzo Castle, in the historic center of Krems
- Booking is done by phone +43 680 301 7720, whatsapp or email office@radler-rast.com.
- Bookings are confirmed after a 200 € deposit has been transferred to our PayPal business account using the link PayPal.Me/radlerrast.
The balance is due at the end of the tour and can be paid in cash or by card. - This tour is a private tour for 2, 4 or 6 travelers respectively.
- 2 people per booking is required.
- Minimum age is 16 years.
- Exact pick up times will be agreed when booking.
- Most travelers can participate.
- Biking the Wachau Valley requires good weather. If it’s canceled due to poor weather, you’ll be offered a different date.
Booking request
Step by Step Description of the Tour
The Wachau is a breakthrough valley of the Danube through the Bohemian Massif, which begins at Schönbühel and stretches as far as Krems an der Donau. The special thing about the Wachau is the cultivation of wine on the steep terraces along the banks and the cultivation of apricots, which are mainly processed into jam.
Also special in the Wachau are the medieval castles of Aggstein, Hinterhaus and Dürnstein. The ruins of Aggstein Castle are situated around 300 meters above the Danube on a rocky promontory that falls away steeply on three sides. From the 12th to the beginning of the 15th century, Aggstein Castle was owned by the Kuenringer family. The Kuenringers were an Austrian ministerial family, unfree servants of the Babenbergs from the 12th to the 16th century.
The Wachau wine-growing region begins in St. Johann im Mauerthale. The church of St. Johann im Mauerthale is an elongated, essentially Romanesque building with a Gothic north choir, which was first mentioned in 1240 in a donation from Archbishop Eberhard of Salzburg to St. Peter’s Abbey in Salzburg. Large parts of Roman building fabric have been preserved in the church of St. Johann.
After Oberarnsdorf, we take the roller ferry to Spitz on the Danube, an important wine-growing village in the Wachau dating back to the 9th century. From the ferry, we can already see the rows of vines on the Tausendeimerberg and the Spitz parish church, a late Gothic hall church with a high gabled roof and protruding west tower.
In former times, the Wachau stretched from Spitz on the Danube to Weißenkirchen in the Wachau and the valley floor from St. Michael to Weißenkirchen was called Thal Wachau. In St. Michael we visit the church of St. Michael where Charlemagne around 800 had a shrine to St. Michael built instead of a Celtic sacrificial site.
From St. Michael’s we continue through the Kirchweg vineyard. The name of the Kirchweg vineyard goes back to the fact that for a long time the path through this vineyard was the closest route to St. Michael’s. St. Michael’s became the mother parish of the Wachau after Charlemagne, King of the Frankish Empire, donated after 800 the area to the High Diocese of Passau.
The Kirchweg vineyards are characterised by loess and are mainly planted with Green Veltliner. In the Wachau Valley, mainly white wine is grown. Green Veltliner is the main grape variety which is an autochthonous Austrian grape variety that produces a fresh-tasting, fruity wine.
The Danube cycle path leads partly along the old Wachau road through small picturesque medieval villages, such as Wösendorf, where along the main road running from the church square down to the Danube you will find stately two-storey eaves-mounted vintner houses, some with projecting upper storeys on brackets.
On the Danube cycle path through the valley of the Wachau from Wösendorf further in the direction of Weißenkirchen, we pass the Prandtauer Hof in Joching, a baroque, two-storey, four-winged complex built in 1696 by Jakob Prandtauer with a three-part portal with a round-arched gate in the middle. The building was originally erected in 1308 as the reading room of the Augustinian canons’ monastery of St. Pölten. The chapel on the upper floor of the north wing dates from 1444 and is characterised by a ridge turret on the outside.
After the Prandtauerhof, the country road is leading into Weißenkirchen, where there is a Gothic fortified tower from the 15th century, which is a former fortification tower of the Kuenringer feudal court. It is a massive, 3-storey tower with some partially bricked-up windows and beam holes on the 2nd floor.
As early as the beginning of the 9th century, there were possessions of the Freising monastery in Weißenkirchen and around 830 a donation to the Bavarian monastery of Niederaltaich. Around 1150, the villages of St. Michael, Joching and Wösendorf were merged to form the large municipality of Wachau, also known as Thal Wachau, with Weißenkirchen as the main town.
From Weißenkirchen in the Wachau, we take the ferry to the opposite bank to St. Lorenz. Here we have a beautiful view of the Dunkelsteiner forest, the mountain range along the southern bank of the Danube in the Wachau. The Dunkelsteiner forest is the continuation of the Bohemian Massif across the Danube.
St. Lorenz
The small church of St. Lorenz opposite Weißenkirchen in the Wachau, situated on the rocks of the Dunkelsteinerwald forest and the Danube, is one of the oldest places of worship in the Wachau. It was built on the south side of a Roman fortress from the 4th century AD as a place of worship for boatmen, the north wall of which was incorporated into the church.
Wachau nose
The Wachau Nose looks as if a giant has been buried lying down and only its nose is sticking out of the ground, with nostrils large enough to enter. When the Danube rises and flows through the nose, the nostrils then fill up with Letten, a gray deposit from the Danube that smells of fish. The Wachau Nose is a project by the artists of Gelitin, which was supported by Kunst im öffentlichen Raum NÖ.
Rührsdorf
As we cycle along the Danube cycle path on the south bank, we pass through Rührsdorf. Rührsdorf is a riverside and street village parallel to the Danube with a narrow, multi-angled thoroughfare, which was located directly on the Danube before the Danube was regulated in 1862-69. The village is scattered with single-family vineyard houses with varying ridge and eaves heights.
Rossatzbach is an alley village on the Danube. From Rossatzbach we cross the Danube by ferry with a view of the blue church tower of Dürnstein Abbey. The former Augustinian canons’ monastery in Dürnstein is a baroque complex located on the western outskirts of Dürnstein facing the Danube. The church, which is elevated above the Danube, is fronted by the high baroque tower.
Dürnstein’s main street runs along the longitudinal axis of the former thoroughfare and connects the two town gates. It shows a closed, almost entirely 2-storey, eaves-standing development, consisting mainly of simple, repeatedly staggered winegrowers’ and farmers’ houses, most of which date back to the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century. The Kuenringer Tavern is a representative Renaissance building from the second half of the 16th century.
We leave the medieval part of Dürnstein in an easterly direction through the Kremser gate to reach the Domain Wachau. The Domain Wachau in Dürnstein is a cooperative of Wachau winegrowers that presses and markets the grapes of its members. In the Domain Wachau wine shop you will find their entire range of wines, all of which can be tasted.
The Kellerschlössel of the Domain Wachau is a small baroque pleasure palace with a wine cellar and press house located east of the village of Dürnstein in the vineyards at the foot of the Kellerberg. The 2-storey building on a cruciform ground plan with a central risalit and adjoining terrace to the west was built in 1720 for the Augustinian canons of Dürnstein by the Austrian baroque architect Jakob Prandtauer who also built Melk Abbey.
In Dürnstein, the rocks of the Schloßberg come right up to the Danube. The Danube then flows around an alluvial cone at the foot of the Loibenberg, the plain of Loiben, where a battle took place on November 11, 1805 as part of the 3rd Coalition War between the French and the Austrians and Russians, which is commemorated by a monument along the way.
Grüner Veltliner is grown in the vineyards on the valley floor of the Loiben plain, whose subsoil consists of sand and sandstone. Towards the east, the Loiben plain is bordered by the rocks of the Pfaffenberg, which reach as far as the Danube and at the foot of which lies a small hamlet, Rothenhof.
From Rothenhof it is not far to the Mautern Bridge, which connects the south bank of the Danube. The first Mautern bridge was built in 1463. It was the second Danube bridge to be built in Austria after Vienna. The current bridge with the two semi-parabolic girders was completed in 1895.
From the Mautern bridge, you can see Stein on the Danube, which has been inhabited since the Neolithic period. The first church settlement was in the area of the Frauenberg church, whose tower can be seen from the bridge. From the 11th century, a riverside settlement developed below the steeply sloping Frauenberg. Due to the narrow settlement area between the edge of the riverbank and the rock, the medieval town could only expand in length. St. Nicholas Church is located at the foot of the Frauenberg.
Linz Gate
Built around 1470, the Linz Gate, also known as the Bridge Gate due to its proximity to the Danube bridge to Mautern, is one of the remaining town gates in Stein, which forms the western exit from the town in the direction of Linz. Until the late 19th century, the bridge office building, the bridge toll and the timber store as well as the home of the carpenter responsible for the bridge were located in front of the gate.
Martin Johann Schmidt
The “Kremser Schmidt”, one of the most outstanding painters of the Austrian late Baroque/Rococo with international format, was born in Stein on the Danube, where he also spent most of his life and where his house in Steiner Landstraße is still preserved today. Schmidt mainly worked on churches and monasteries in the surrounding area. His domain was altarpieces.
Steiner Landstraße
The Steiner Landstraße runs parallel to the Danube, elongated and slightly curved several times, tangent to 4 squares opening onto the Danube, with a few narrow side streets rising to the north, from Linz Gate in the west to Krems Gate in the east. The special feature of Steiner Landstraße is that it is flanked on both sides by rows of closed two- to three-storey houses with a medieval layout and building core and a predominantly Renaissance building fabric.
Krems Gate in Stein on the Danube
The Krems Gate, a square, approximately 20-metre-high gate tower with a wedge roof, the core of which dates back to the 15th century and was rebuilt in Baroque style around 1700, was part of the town fortifications. You can reach the museum square from Steiner Landstraße through the arched passageway of the Krems Gate.
Provincial Gallery of Lower Austria
The building of the Provincial Gallery in Krems on the Danube changes its expression, its shape, with every step around the building. The torsion around the axis of the north-west corner of the building creates a series of hyper-parabolic surfaces. The connecting straight lines of two unequal squares in the ground and roof planes form distorted surfaces. The building makes a twist around itself, tapers upwards and provides a view towards the Danube via an incision.
Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter from the turn of the century who only became known through the USA in the post-war period. Alongside Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele is one of the most important artists of Viennese Modernism, which emerged as a counter-current to Naturalism and which opposed the latter’s prevailing maxim of faithfully depicting real circumstances with “art for art’s sake”. In the school year 1901/1902, Egon Schiele attended the Realschule in Krems and stayed with his “boarder” at Schillerstraße 12.
Stein Gate
Through the Stein Gate, which is considered the landmark of the town of Krems, we enter the old town of Krems on the Danube, which was surrounded by a ring of walls until the last third of the 19th century. The Stein Gate is a preserved town gate flanked on the outside by Trabant towers which, like the lower part of the gate, date back to the late Middle Ages.
Above the wide passageway through the mighty rectangular tower are 3 large painted coats of arms. In the middle is the coat of arms of the Habsburg monarchy at the time of Maria Theresa, the double-headed eagle, and on the left the coat of arms of the town of Krems, which shows an armed, red-studded, golden double-headed eagle with an imperial crown hovering above its head on a black background, which the Roman-German Emperor Frederick III bestowed on the town of Krems in 1463.
Cathedral of the Wachau
From the Hoher Markt in Krems, you can see the tower of the parish church of St. Veit above the roofs of the old town of Krems, which consists of medieval ashlar work up to the ridge height. The visible, baroque bell storey dates from 1687 to 1689 and has Ionic corner pilasters, round-arched sound windows and a multi-part onion dome with a lantern.
Gozzoburg
Gozzo Castle is a multi-part medieval town castle on the south side of a walled courtyard on the edge of the steep slope to Untere Landstrasse, which was extended by the burgher Gozzo in the 13th century with a narrow, high gabled wing facing the square.
The western part of the Gozzo castle in Krems, which faces the Hoher Markt, has a loggia on the street side with 4 high pointed arch arcades and a wider entrance arcade on rectangular pillars with round bar projections on the outer edges.
On the upper floor there is a group of early Gothic windows of the banqueting hall with profiled frames.
Gozzo Castle on the Hoher Markt in the historic center of Krems on the Danube is the end point of the e-bike tour from Melk through the Wachau valley to Krems. We take a seat in the Gozzo Burg restaurant and round off the e-bike tour through the Wachau with a meal and a glass of Wachau wine.
The private Bike Tour in Wachau Valley from Melk to Krems for 2 travelers is € 1.945,00, for 4 travelers it is € 2.437,00 and for 6 travelers it is € 3.115,00.
Hotel pick up and drop-off (locations in the Wachau Valley)
Transportation by car to Melk and to the pick-up point at the end of the tour
E-mountain bike rental
Guided cycle tour on the Danube Cycle Path from Melk to Krems on the Danube by 2 local guides
Entrance to the castle ruins of Aggstein
Ferry crossing of the Danube from Arnsdorf to Spitz on the Danube, from Weißenkirchen in the Wachau to St. Lorenz and from Rossatzbach to Dürnstein
Wine tasting at the Maritime Museum in Spitz on the Danube
Cold lunch with vineyard snack with Wachau wine at winery Mang in Weißenkirchen in the Wachau
Dinner with a glass of Wachau wine at the end of the tour in the Gozzo Castle, in the historic center of Krems
- Booking is done by phone +43 680 301 7720, whatsapp or email office@radler-rast.com.
- Bookings are confirmed after a 200 € deposit has been transferred to our PayPal business account using the link PayPal.Me/radlerrast.
The balance is due at the end of the tour and can be paid in cash or by card. - This tour is a private tour for 2, 4 or 6 travelers respectively.
- 2 people per booking is required.
- Minimum age is 16 years.
- Exact pick up times will be agreed when booking.
- Most travelers can participate.
- Biking the Wachau Valley requires good weather. If it’s canceled due to poor weather, you’ll be offered a different date.
Booking request
Departure details
- Traveler pick up is offered.
- We pick up guests from all Wachau valley accommodations, from train stations in Melk and Krems and from cruise ships that dock in the Wachau valley.
- If hotel or cruise pier is inaccessible by car due to restrictions, pickup will be held from a nearby location within short walking distance.
Return details
- Returns to original departure point