Maps and guide books covering the Danube in Austria

If you plan to do a self-supported cycle tour, it will be very helpful having a good guide book or at least a set of maps. While there are many books and maps available, the two most recognised ones are the "Danube Bike Trail 2" guide book (by Esterbauer) and the "The Danube Cycleway, Vol. 1" guide book (by Cicerone).

We recommend purchasing the "Danube Bike Trail 2" guide book. It provides route maps at a scale of 1:50,000, additional written route instructions, city maps where needed as well as lists of (probably all) accommodations and camp sites along the cycle path, including phone numbers and price proximates. You will also find information about selected places of interest along the way as well as unique details about the path's surface and traffic. The guide book is revised about every two years. Hence we recommend to purchase a new one.

By the way: In case you book a self-guided cycle tour, your local tour operator will provide a very similar looking but stripped-down guide book. Surprisingly, we realised that these guide books sometimes only show the cycle path on one side of the Danube. The tour operator also kicked out the traffic and surface information. Hence it sounds reasonable to additionally order the original Esterbauer guide book - to know all available cycle paths and to see what the paths will be like (for example in terms of hilly-ness, potential motor traffic, surface).

There is also the "Donauradweg Danube Bike Trail" book, published at Freytag & Berndt. However, the provided maps come at a scale of 1:125,000 only.
A free map (to download as PDF file and to have sent by mail) is offered by an Austrian Tourist Agency. The maps come at a more or less useless scale of 1:175,000, no surface and no traffic information. The only reason that we can think of to order or download these maps is to support your planning well before the cycling.

Additionally recommended literature for the culturally interested reader:

Here are a few books that you might be interested in as well. They cover specific places along your way in more depth:

Maps and guide books in other languages:

While those come in a language that is easier to understand, have in mind that the maps might be not as precise as in the Bikeline maps. We recommend to check before ordering.