Having crossed the Austrian border on a bike repeatedly this year I picked Salzburg as the destination for my first 300+ km ride ever. Nice weather all day with some light clouds acting as a welcome radiation shield, the best conditions for such an undertaking.

The traffic was very mild all day as well. I suspect that was in part due to the direction: tons of people take the direct route to the Alps but it’s not that common to go perpendicular to it. Along the way visited a number of places that had been on my bucket list – Rosenheim, the rather boring Chiemsee, Traunstein, and Wasserburg to name just a few. Incidentally the segment from the Taubenmark in Traunstein to Salzburg was approximately the route Thomas Bernhard describes on the first pages of his autobiography, though I didn’t pass through the village where the young author’s escapade ended with a flat tire. Salzburg too was every bit as beautiful as I imagined, just a tad stressful to navigate with the crowds of tourists on this sunny day.

(Route map.) Planned as a 294 km ride – which would have been my distance PR regardless – I still was a few kilometers short of that magical 300 km mark when I returned to Munich so I took the opportunity to explore some parts of the city I hadn’t seen so far and ride a small detour. Back at my door after almost 12.5 hours the Garmin showed 302.6 km with over 1700 m of altitude gained. One of the flatter routes I’ve done this year but the legs thanked me for it.

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