It’s now been ten months and counting since my bike ride down the Rhone river valley and I’ve started thinking about another bike ride along one of Europe’s river valleys.

The Danube has always been on my list of potential long-ride rivers. Eighteen hundred miles from Germany’s Black Forest, it flows gently eastward to the Danube Delta via Romania and Ukraine where it empties into the Black Sea. But that would be too much of a stretch for me now at somewhere around 45 or 50 days cycling. And I wouldn’t want to be including Ukraine on any itinerary anyway!

I started to think again about a Danube bike ride when I came across an ad last year for a boat cruise from Amsterdam to Vienna. I had no idea of the boat’s route but realized there had to be a connecting waterway from the Rhine to the Danube. A quick look on Googlemap showed the Rhine meeting the River Main at Mainz. The Main then flows east to a wide, modern canal which cuts south allowing passage to the Danube which flows eastward to Vienna and beyond.

That sparked the idea for a long bike ride to include the Danube, the Main and the Rhine. I’d be retracing some of my route on the Rhine which I did in 2023. I had missed the section between Karlsruhe and Cologne on that trip as I was short of time and had taken a train. I could do that part now. And of course the long stretch through Austria. I knew I wanted to go in the Vienna – Amsterdam direction so that I would end in Amsterdam, which I know well from years ago.

One small detail…the Main – Danube canal is made of concrete, is wide and straight – functional but uninteresting. 100kms or thereabouts. I later read that there is another, older, canal – the Ludwig route – between these two rivers. Built of stone and clay in the 19th century using traditional building methods, it is narrow and twisty and passes through small villages and hamlets, used in the days of mules and horse drawn barges. That would be more interesting for sure. So that would be my connecting route between the two rivers. And Vienna would be a great starting point – I’d be cycling upriver on the Danube across Austria, then via a series of locks north on the Ludwig Canal, downriver on the Main and finally down the Rhine to Amsterdam via the Amsterdam – Rhine Canal. A little over 1,000 miles.

Sounds like the start of a plan.