Swiss and Austrian Alps self guided motorcycle holiday

Today you will continue the self guided motorcycle holiday and head towards Interlaken. You’ll ride through the French countryside along some beautiful highways and byways.

As you approach the Doubs Nature Park, you can stop for lunch in Goumois. It is a small border town on the river Doubs. The restaurant has a lovely terrace overlooking the river and the bridge over it. If you prefer to have refreshment breaks more often, you can stop at any town along the way. Just keep an eye on whatever might be open.

Continuing your ride through the rolling hills, green pastures, dense forests and eventually mountains, you’ll arrive at your comfortable hotel in Interlaken. The town is in an excellent location between lakes Thun and Brienz, ringed by snow-capped mountain peaks. With the breathtaking backdrop of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, it is a fantastic setting for your picture-perfect holiday.

The best way to use your free day in Interlaken is to go on one of many train journeys. Get a copy of the train timetable, make your choice and off you go. The most popular journey is the Jungfraujoch – Top of Europe. However, many other trips are just as good.

You can also choose to head towards Lauterbrunnen. Here you can visit Trümmelbach waterfalls that tumble and cascade down inside the mountain.

Another option here is to take a cable car to Schilthorn. It overlooks the entire valley and affords the most stunning views of the three highest peaks – Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. The revolving Piz Gloria 360° restaurant offers a unique dining experience and a great Alpine menu. The restaurant was one of the locations where some of the iconic scenes from the James Bond 007 film ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ were filmed. And finally, in case you are still feeling energetic, there is a beautiful downhill walk to Mürren and Lauterbrunnen.

From Interlaken, your self guided motorcycle holiday continues towards the beautiful Engadin Valley. Today, except for the mileage, everything else is big. It’s a big ride, big mountains, big passes, big glaciers and hopefully a big lunch.

The Furka and Grimsel are back to back ascents and descents. It will provide you with a few hours of guaranteed smiles on your face. Both passes have many convenient places to stop and take photos. Also, on your way up Furka pass, you can stop and take a walk inside the glacier tunnel. This is an excellent place to have “the big lunch” as well. The mountain scenery around here, for some reason, appears to be more stunning than anywhere else in the Alps.

If you remember, when you get to Furka pass, have a look downhill over the car park barrier. There is a colony of jolly marmots forever disciplining the youngsters or sorting out their family disputes.

You’ll arrive at your hotel just in time to get ready for an evening meal.

Now it’s about the halfway point of your Swiss and Austrian-Alps self-guided-motorcycle-tour. In terms of distance, it will be a short transit day. However, in terms of riding, it will be genuinely a great day. You’ll have two options to reach your next destination in the Austrian Tyrol.

The more relaxing ride will take you along the Engadin valley and over the Ofen Pass. From here, you’ll enter Italy and continue towards the Medieval Renaissance town of Glorenza. This is a perfect place to stop, explore and relax a bit. Ice cream in the cafe on the square always hits the spot. Riding on your route will take you across the always windy Recshen plateau. At the Reschensee, you can make another break to see the submerged village with only the church tower sticking out of water.

Just down the road, you will cross yet another border and enter Austria. From here, if you wish to ride straight to your hotel, then just follow the valley road. However, if you want to make it a bit more exciting than at Nauders, take a left turn and ride a mini roller coaster called Martinsbruckerstraße (Martina pass). It will take you again to Switzerland, and from there, a bit further down the road; you’ll cross back to Austria.

And finally, if you wish to make it really exciting, you can go for the second option. Replace the Ofen with Stelvio pass, and you’ll have a ball. So if you decide to go for a ‘Full Monty’, then you could end up with four border crossings, refreshing ice cream, delicious lunch and plenty of beautiful photos.

For lunch, we recommend Alpengasthof Norbertshöhe in Nauders. Not bad for a short ride.

There are several options you can choose from today. One of the popular day trips from our guided tours is to ride over the Hahntennjoch pass. It is one of the smaller passes in the area but quite narrow, twisty, often cold and occasionally demanding. It takes about a few hours to do, and usually, that’s just enough. Combined with a lovely traditional lunch, it always turns out to be a good day. This is also an excellent opportunity to visit Innsbruck and take a stroll around the old town.

On your way back, the Oilers 69 biker café is an interesting place to have lunch and relax for a couple of hours. The café is located on a major biker route, so it is a perfect place to meet other bikers and do a spot of people watching.

Or on the other hand, you can just have a long lazy breakfast and do nothing for the rest of the day.

After two fantastic days in Austria, it is time to move on and head towards the Black Forest in Germany. Your route will take you over the Arlberg pass and along the beautiful Bregenzerwaldstraße.

En route, you’ll pass through several big ski resorts such as Zürs, Lech and Warth. There are many lovely places to stop for drinks and snacks. On our guided tours, we usually stop at the Jägeralpe Hotel in Warth. The rest of the journey will take you along the shores of Bodensee (Lake Konstanz) and deep into the Black Forest.

Your hotel for the night is a family-run biker friendly hotel located only a short ride from Lake Titisee. It is a lively lakeside town and a perfect place to go for a little pre-dinner stroll. The sunset boat trips around the lake are quite popular amongst our clients. Try to park your bike at the train station car park. You can store your surplus biking gear in the coin-operated lockers.

If you wish, extra days can be arranged to extend your stay in the Black Forest.

Following hearty frühstück (breakfast), you’ll head across the rural countryside of Germany and France towards Luxembourg. The ride will be a combination of motorways and country roads. But to keep it more appealing, it will include a section of the famous B500 as well as many other scenic back roads.

The good places to stop are Lake Mummelsee and the bakery in Scheibenhardt on the French-German border. At Mummelsee, there is a delightful traditional restaurant with an excellent menu. There is also a German-style fast food deli that serves all sorts of hearty snacks of various caloric densities (mainly high and very high). But those calories don’t count because they are holiday calories.

At the bakery in Scheibenhardt, you can opt for a healthier option and go for chicken fitness salad that’s big enough to feed a medium-sized family.

You’ll arrive at your hotel in Vianden just in time to get ready for an evening meal.

Today is the last day of this fantastic tour. So one last time, have a delicious breakfast and take a leisurely ride through Luxembourg, Belgium and France back to the UK. Your channel-tunnel will be booked for afternoon crossing.

Thank you for joining our Swiss and Austrian-Alps self-guided-motorcycle-tour and RidingWithUs.

We hope you had a great self guided motorcycle holiday and we also hope to hear from you again soon.