Cycling the Danube - From Vienna to Budapest

Myself and Dan have been close friends ever since spending a year as flatmates whilst both studying for our Masters in St Andrews, Scotland. Dan himself will admit he is not a traveller who embraces spontaneity and instead prefers to plan everything in advance. In this case he organised a trip I am very jealous of having read the book that inspired this journey.

Tom

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“Dan, are you being serious? This is such a bad idea!”

Those were the warm, loving words which greeted me when I told my sisters of my plan to cycle along the Danube from Vienna to Budapest - a distance of roughly 195 miles.

Now, I can understand their concern. I had never done any cycling on this scale before, and I privately shared their fears that my bicycle would fall apart in the middle of nowhere, leaving me stranded and alone. However, I pushed these thoughts to the back of my mind and proceeded with a Micawberish sense optimism that everything will be turn out alright in the end!

I was partially modelling my journey on the travel writings of Patrick Leigh Fermor. In the early 1930s he walked from Holland to Constantinople, primarily following the River Danube. One of my teachers at school had introduced me to his books, and when I finally got around to reading them, I had a desire to follow in his footsteps - even though I knew to completely replicate his journey would likely be impossible.

Unlike Leigh Fermor, who often turned up on doorsteps unannounced to ask for a bed for the night, I wasn’t brave enough to rely on serendipity (sorry!). With a guidebook in hand, I scrolled through a well-known hotel booking site to find accommodation which had bicycle storage and would be reasonably priced, without being a total dump. Because the route is so commonly cycled (it follows the EuroVelo 6 route), I was pleased to learn that there were plenty of options of accommodation which fitted my criteria.

After a couple of days exploring Vienna’s museums, churches, and cemeteries (seriously, the Vienna Central Cemetery is well worth a visit, even though it’s not particularly central.) I began my epic adventure. I picked up my rental bicycle from the Vienna Explorer shop and set off along the Danube.

If you’re looking for stories of mishap and disaster, I’m afraid that this blog post is not for you. The route was so well maintained and signposted that it was almost impossible to get lost – I think I was ‘lost’ for a total of 5 minutes on the entire trip, when I accidently crossed the border into Hungary instead of crossing a dam to stay on the Slovakian side of the river.

“It can’t really be this easy”, I thought as I cycled towards my first stopover in Bratislava, averting my eyes from the naturist beach on my right (I’ve been trying to erase the sight of naked old Austrian men from my mind ever since!).

The route even had service stations designed specifically for cyclists, although I quickly found that the food & drinks were massively overpriced – much like their motorway counterparts! Whilst the route is long and mostly out of the shade, because it is flat even a novice of long-distance cycle rides would be able to tackle it without major difficulties.

The route itself was varied. In all I cycled along tarmacked paths beside the river, gravel trails in wooded forests, country roads though Austrian villages, Slovakian highways, and two ferry crossings in Hungary. Thankfully, only a few miles of the route were on roads, yet by British standards these roads were far from busy - and I was slightly disappointed when I had to leave the wonderfully smooth surface of a Slovakian highway for the gravel path of a dyke when the paths diverged.

My personal highlight was reaching the bridge at Esztergom, on the Slovak-Hungarian border. This was where Leigh Fermor ended his first book, ‘A Time of Gifts’, and to where my teacher had travelled on his motorbike in 1990, not long after Hungary had gained its independence from the USSR. Whilst I still had another day of cycling to reach my final destination of Budapest, I decided to have a rest day here. I spent an afternoon sitting on the walls of the magnificent domed basilica, looking down onto the glorious river below me. As the evening drew in, I put down my book and postcards, and sat there contemplating how far I had come (by this stage it was roughly 140 miles) and feeling immensely thankful that I had been able to take part in this adventure.

I was expecting to arrive in Budapest exhausted, all too keen to get off my bicycle and spend a few days relaxing. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Budapest. I could easily write an entire blog post about my experiences there – from the passionate football fans marching to the Puskás Aréna, to the waitress in the Central Café who recited a love poem to me as I sheepishly drank my coffee. But in all that time, deep down, I really missed my bicycle.

I had followed the Danube down from Vienna, with only the bicycle as the constant company in my travels, and more than anything else I wanted to know, “What’s next?”. My mind wandered. “Where will the Danube go after Budapest, and what is there yet to see?”. Obviously, this question could be answered simply by pulling out a map, yet that did not satisfy my curiosity. I really wanted to get back on my bike and see for myself where the river would take me.

Maybe one day I’ll continue my journey along the Danube – perhaps even making it to Constantinople. But for now, I can look back with great fondness at the beauty of creation that I witnessed in this adventure.

Oh, and yes. The Danube really was blue.

Posted: 27/06/2022

Written by: Daniel Charlton