The American war photographer Robert Capa once said: "If your pictures aren't good enough, you weren't close enough." You might disagree with him when looking at the landscapes that open up to the south of the small town of Wels. Viewed from a distance, the panorama of the Alps spreads out like a widescreen film. There's something sublime about the expanse that you don't get from close up, at the foot of the mountains. It's early in the morning and the narrow road on which my companion Sandra and I are flying along, seemingly weightlessly, is a dream. Only slightly undulating and winding, almost car-free, it heads south. Like the runway of an airport, it shows us our destination in the vanishing point: the mountains, from whose silhouette the Traunstein stands out in the west like a freestanding molar.
This approach to the Alps on the Almtal cycle path was recommended to us by Astrid Pöcherstorfer-Wolf, a landlady from Wels and passionate road cyclist, who accompanies us out of the city the next day. The slim, lively woman in her late forties, who now, at the end of August, already has 10,000 kilometres of road cycling in her tanned, wiry legs, has just returned from the south of France, where she went on tours with her husband, didn't miss out on Mont Ventoux and did a few kilometres on Lake Como on the way home. "That was cool," she says. And "casual" is a word she likes to use. Astrid started cycling 14 years ago, she explains, because of her husband, who was already a racing cyclist. "He let me take part in the Glocknerkönig straight away. My, did I break down there. But today I'm stronger than him on the mountain, so I'll pay him back," she says and laughs. As we don't yet know the exact route today, we don't know whether we should laugh about it too or whether Astrid will be smashing us later on the mountain. But the woman from Wels doesn't have to prove anything to herself or us - and she'll be back at her restaurant by lunchtime anyway.
Another racing cyclist has the whole day to accompany us: Franz Müller, also a landlord, has the day off, his inn is closed on Tuesdays. The four of us leave the town and are soon cycling along quiet roads through undulating farmland, where pretty farms stand in the middle of orchards. The villages here are prettier, not as ordinary as those around Wels, where detached houses from the 60s and 70s dominate the scene.
Balcony with a view
Astrid, who rides ahead chatting with Sandra, soon has to say goodbye. So Franz leads us to the first mountain: the ascent to Weiß'n am Sattel. At the start there is a board with all the important data: starting altitude 453 metres, finishing altitude 763 metres, length 3.9 kilometres, as well as the average (8 per cent) and maximum gradient (13 per cent). There is also a board on which everyone can read off their average performance in watts with their recorded time and weight (cyclist and bike). You are given an assessment of whether you are a "motivated amateur athlete" (18 to 26 minutes) or should "look for a professional contract" (10 to 12 minutes). We don't want to compete, it's not his terrain anyway, says Franz with a smile, who started cycling in the club at the age of 15, but because he was already tall and strong back then, he has always been more of a time trialist. "Up to 20 kilometres, that was my thing," he says, and that he also rode C-licence races for a year: "But that was too hard for me."
The first ramp silences Franz, all we can hear is the triad of our breathing. At the top, everyone takes a souvenir photo, then we plunge into the descent, which leads us to the next climb and onto another viewing balcony - the most beautiful of the tour, a ridge with magnificent views on all sides. To the left, the view sweeps across the plain in which Wels lies, with the hills of the Mühlviertel region just visible in the haze on the horizon behind. If you look to the right, the Alps are close enough to touch. To the south, the Tote Gebirge mountains with the Großer Priel tower into the sky, followed by the nearby peaks of the Kalkalpen National Park. Mighty farms are scattered along the way, square giants with red-roofed hipped roofs whose large wooden gates, rounded at the top, close off the entrance to the courtyards. Such square courtyards consist of a dwelling house, stable, barn and shed and can reach a circumference of up to 200 metres. It is assumed that this type of construction is based on the plans of medieval castles and originates from Renaissance castles at the time of the Turkish invasions. Today there are no Turks storming over the hills, just three unarmed racing cyclists. From the viewing balcony, the little road descends steeply to the Enns and leads to the small town of Steyr with its beautiful town square and historic town hall, one of the most important rococo monuments in Austria. During the lunch break, Franz takes out a road map to give us route tips for the next few days and runs his finger over it. "Here you can extend the Hausruck route to the west, into the Kobernauss Forest. Beautiful," he enthuses, his eyes sparkling. "Or here, in the south, this corner of the Almtal is great, you're already in the mountains there."
Franz and Astrid had already agreed that morning that an even better connoisseur of narrow, tarmac paths was Wegerl-Pauli, as an editor of the Salzburger Nachrichten once called him because he knew all the secret paths in Upper Austria. "He never ceases to amaze even me," Astrid said. He was also the one who had been instrumental in making Wels one of the most important locations in Austrian cycling for years. The Tour de France ends in Paris, the Tour of Austria in the last two years not in Vienna, but in little Wels. And so, that evening, we sit down to dinner at Astrid's restaurant with the route expert and cycling promoter. Paul Resch, who is 67, turns out to be the President of the Upper Austrian Cycling Federation and Honorary President of the Wels Cycling Club. The 67-year-old, who still rides 6,000 kilometres a year on his racing bike, remembers well how he became a sponsor of the cycling club just over 20 years ago, when he ran a large bakery with his brother. The city's current professional team, which has its roots in RC Wels and was sponsored by Resch's bakery for a long time, the Felbermayr Simplon Wels team, is perhaps the best in Austria. And sponsor Resch already knew back then: "We need a criterium! "Criterium may be dubious from a sporting point of view, but it's ideal for marketing cycling, simply a good show," says the busy man. Today, the race is called the Welser-Innenstadt-Kriterium and has famous winners on the list, such as Mark Cavendish, Bernhard Eisel and John Degenkolb. Resch remembers with a smile that he was able to buy the sprint star of the 1990s, Mario Cipollini, for a start in Wels: "Back then, I printed a newspaper especially for the race, with Cipo on the cover in a one-piece suit with muscles printed on it. The year before we had 2,000 spectators, in the Cipo year 12,000 people came, including 5,000 women."
Climbing at the bathing lakes
But something is bothering Wegerl-Pauli: there is no race for everyone. "I dreamed of a 224-kilometre marathon that would connect the three Eurothermen Bad Hall, Bad Ischl and Bad Schallerbach," he says. After the first editions, Resch wanted Upper Austrian tourism to get involved and promote the marathon. Nothing came of it. Why? "We had a dispute," Resch remains terse. And yet they had the best conditions here: "You're already one kilometre outside the city on a paved road without much traffic, where else would you have that?"
Sandra and I leave Wels for the next day's tour not on foot, but by train. In twelve minutes, we are 30 kilometres further south-west to set off for the nearby Salzkammergut and add two wonderful mountain lakes to our tour programme: Lake Attersee and Lake Mondsee. We reach the northern shore of Lake Attersee early and look as far as its southern end, where the mountains emerge dimly from the mist. On the northern shore, the café staff begin to prepare tables for the guests. A few walkers enjoy the morning sun. The lake is calm, its water so smooth that the swans are reflected in it. The lakeside road is also still quiet and the traffic is still bearable in the morning hours. After a long, moderate climb and a wonderful descent, we cycle along a lakeside cycle path that almost touches the water. From there, the route is flat back to Attersee and steep to Traunsee even further east. We had already visited it two days ago on the Almtal cycle route recommended by Astrid; on the way back to Wels, she cycled towards us. And although we had been on small roads most of the time, Astrid turned off onto an even more lonely little road on the last few kilometres, the goods road into Schauertal. Another little road. Perhaps a tip from Pauli ...
Information on
Arrival by car
From southern Germany via A 8 to Salzburg, A 1 to Voralpenkreuz, then A 8 to Wels-West and B 1 to the city centre; from Munich 250 kilometres. Otherwise via Regensburg, Passau (A 3), in Austria A 8 to Wels-West; from Frankfurt/Main 540 kilometres. The 10-day vignette for motorways in Austria costs 9.20 euros for cars.
Arrival by train
By Eurocity to Salzburg, then by Railjet to Wels; from Frankfurt/Main in seven hours. Tip: The European rail fare costs from 39.90 euros per journey - while stocks last. An International Bicycle Card is required for cross-border bicycle transport. In Germany it costs 10 euros, includes a parking space reservation and is valid to the destination station.
Best time to travel
May to October. In Upper Austria, a changeable Atlantic climate mixes with a dry continental climate in summer. Clouds can accumulate in the Alps and thunderstorms can unleash (put some rain protection in your jersey pocket!), but the Föhn wind sometimes brings warm, dry weather to the edge of the Alps. The warmest region of Upper Austria lies between the cities of Linz, Wels and Steyr, towards the mountains it can get significantly cooler; the driest cycling months in the foothills of the Alps are September and October.
Food & Drink
Upper Austrian cuisine is famous for dumpling dishes, sausage and meat and Linzer Torte. The dumplings are baked, boiled, filled, eaten sweet or sour, as a main course, in soup or as a side dish and are then called grammelknödel, Krautknödel or Semmelknödel, for example. Fish is on the menu at the lakes of the Salzkammergut. Upper Austria is also known as the land of beer and cider. More than 50 breweries brew beers ranging from the popular Märzen to Lager. Cider, a fermented juice with an alcohol content of five to eight per cent, is made from pears or apples and used to be a farmer's drink that was served while working in the fields.
Restaurant tips
Olivi (Wels)
Hafergasse 3
Phone 0043/(0)7242/911900
www.olivi.at
In the centre of Wels, racing cyclist Astrid Pöcherstorfer-Wolf serves fine Italian cuisine and wood-fired pizza in a modern ambience.
Gösserbräu (Wels)
Kaiser-Josef-Platz 27
Phone 0043/(0)7242/60460
Good regional cuisine, including vegetarian dishes, served in the large beer garden in good weather.
Gasthaus zur Kohlstatt (Thalheim)
Ascheterstraße 40
(15 minutes walk from the centre of Wels)
Telephone 07242/44340
www.kohlstatt.at
Racing cyclist Franz Müller and his wife Eva serve good, down-to-earth cuisine, traditionally often with meat, but there are also delicious fish dishes.
Accommodation
Boutique Hotel Hauser
Bäckergasse 7
Wels
Phone 0043/(0)7242/45409
www.hotelhauser.com
The friendly hotel in the centre has a bike room, tools for the bike, a shower facility on the day of departure after a tour and offers racing cyclists packages: e.g. two nights in a double room with a very good breakfast and a sumptuous snack after the bike tour cost 169 euros per person. For more accommodation catering for road cyclists, visit www.wels.at/rennrad
Literature & Maps
Travel guide: "Upper Austria: Nature and culture between the Bohemian Forest and the Alps", 380 pages,
Trescher-Verlag 2018; 17 euros
Map: Car map "Upper Austria", 1:150:000, Freytag & Berndt 2017; 10.90 euros
Info
Wels Marketing & Touristik GmbH
Town Square 44
4600 Wels
Phone 0043/(0)7242/6772222
www.wels.at/rennrad
A road book with 14 road bike tours can be purchased there for 9.90 euros - included in the package for all those who book a road bike package in one of the road bike hotels.
Steyr's pretty old town is a lovely resting and turning point on our Tour 3
Typical Alpine foothills: farm south of Wels
Bike service
4Sports
Dragonerstrasse 67
Wels
Phone 0043/(0)7242/77703
www.4sports.at
Also road bike hire: from 29 euros per day, 130 euros for a week; aluminium frame with Shimano 105 groupset.
CFK Sporting goods trade
Innbachtalstraße 17
Kematen
(15 km west of Wels)
Phone (mobile) 0043/(0)43664/2148373
www.cfk.cc
Bike race
Tour of Austria
Since 2014, a stage has led through Upper Austria, in 2017 and 2018 the tour ended in Wels, this year it will start there on 6 July. Info at www.oesterreich-rundfahrt.at
Tour of Upper Austria
Takes place in June and runs over three stages. Information www.ooe-radsportverband.at, there under "Events".
Wels city centre criterium
The professional race starts on Wednesday, three days after the end of the Tour de France; in 2019 for the 21st time. Info at www.innenstadtkriterium.at
Wels Cherry Blossom Race
Austria's oldest road bike race takes place every year in April.
Info under www.radclubwels.at
Retro touristic ride
The Kirschblüten-Radklassik is a touristic ride without timekeeping, which starts at the end of April in Eferding, 20 kilometres north of Wels. Categories: "Vintage", with racing bikes from before 1987, and "steel racing bike", including modern ones. Distances: 50, 75 and 100 kilometres. Info at www.kirschbluetenradklassik.at
