The term gravel now has to stand in for all sorts of things. But with us, gravel really means gravel. You needn’t fear any bike & hike sections or detours onto the motorway here. Our carefully scouted routes prioritise fine gravel roads and surfaced forest tracks. We only switch to lightly trafficked roads for unavoidable connecting sections. That makes the route easy for you to plan and divide up. Our route is based on the free
CXB route planner. For this, the extensive toolkit of the open-source community was adapted specifically for gravel cycling: gravel roads are visually highlighted across Europe, so you can deliberately factor them into your planning. We tested the planner extensively around Berlin and, among other things, intensively while scouting Vienna–Berlin.
Directly in the tracks we also embed supply points such as supermarkets, petrol stations and shelters as POIs.
The elevation profile is comparatively relaxed; mostly you’ll be dealing with rolling hills. It gets steeper beyond the Austrian border and then again before the German border. Towards the end the challenge fades out in a gentle decrescendo.
Starting from Vienna Floridsdorf, the route runs through the Weinviertel and Waldviertel, on through central Czechia. Once the Zittau Mountains have been conquered, the descent into Upper and Lower Lusatia follows, finally reaching Berlin directly. As traditionally, the finish is the Tempelhofer Feld; on the final sprint the metres of descent will assist you.
For a comfortable and sporty ride on the route we recommend a well-maintained gravel, cyclocross or adventure bike. A hardtail MTB is fun too. A classic road bike with a maximum tyre width of 25 mm, however, is not suitable. In dry conditions an all-road bike will mostly be a good choice on this route; in rain and mud, on the other hand, you should make use of every available millimetre of tyre width. The route has various sections: wide forest tracks, fast descents on dusty paths and short gravel ramps that can be more coarsely gravelled towards the summits. With disc brakes you have sufficient braking power. Tyres between 35–45 mm wide and, depending on your off-road experience, a semi-slick or knobbly tyre are recommended — better safe than sorry. Anyone wanting more comfort chooses the wider tyres. The climbs are rather short but can be steep in places. We therefore recommend a 1:1 gear ratio.
The starting point is not far from the station Vienna Floridsdorf in the 21st district. It is easy to reach by regional trains, the S-Bahn and U-Bahn, as well as by bike from Vienna Central Station. Vienna itself is ideally connected from Berlin via the ÖBB (night) trains, as well as by long-distance coaches.
Long-distance coaches are also readily available at short notice, and taking a bike along is, in our experience, easily possible here. You can usually travel overnight and so arrive in Vienna in the blink of an eye.
Train & bike could be a dream couple, but in practice the sad rule is often: it’s complicated. In general you can travel, for example, with the ÖBB Nightjet (
https://www.nightjet.com) to travel. Booking directly with the ÖBB is usually cheaper than with the DB. In concrete terms it is
a) in our experience it is often easier to pack the bike in a special bag (e.g. tranZbag, Rinko Bag) — then it counts as a piece of luggage and no longer as a bike — than to snag one of the few bike spaces.
b) In the Nightjet you can reserve entire four-berth compartments relatively cheaply. There you fit quite comfortably with two people and two bikes.
The accommodation options in Vienna are countless.
On previous visits to Vienna we had very good experiences with the
Austro-Brazilian design hotel Rioca, and are happy to recommend it.
For the ’25 edition we as a team opted for the somewhat obscure option of staying right in the middle of the city at the
Campingplatz Neue Donau to stay overnight. On the very large site no reservation is expressly needed, so you can simply check in. The site is a little noisy but genuinely well located, with short, bike-friendly routes into the city centre and to the start. Since camping before the camp is a thoroughly authentic option, we can really recommend this choice.
The finish was around 1900 an old customs house on the Tempelhofer Feld. The little house no longer stands, but after a lap across the field you have every option to travel on by U-Bahn and S-Bahn to the central station.
