Cycling Liechtenstein, from the Rhine to the mountain huts

Liechtenstein makes a lot of sense by bike. The Rhine valley is flat, the villages are only a few kilometres apart and the mountains rise right where the flat ends. The tourist board speaks of over 220 km of cycle routes, which is a great deal for a country 24.7 km long. Here are the routes it suggests, ranked by what you’re after.

The flat Rhine valley, for everyone

The route I’d do first follows the Rhine. The tourist board calls it the Liechtensteiner Rheintalroute and presents it as part of the European EuroVelo network, running between the river and the Alps. It’s flat, runs beside the embankment and lets you take in both banks, Switzerland on one side and Liechtenstein’s villages at the foot of the mountains on the other.

Halfway along, level with Vaduz, you reach the covered wooden bridge to Sevelen, the last of the old wooden Rhine bridges. What to see along the river is covered in the Rhine in Liechtenstein. Carry on north and you reach Ruggell, which its municipal website calls the country’s cycling village, and the Ruggeller Riet, a protected fen worth a stop. The whole village is in Ruggell.

Castles and three countries, by e-bike

Two tourist board routes are designed for e-bikes. The Fünf-Schlössertour runs from castle to castle, and for me it’s the best mix of history and pedalling, because Liechtenstein’s castles nearly all sit high up and are hard work without a motor. The castles are described one by one in the castles of Liechtenstein. The Drei-Länder-Tour is a loop through three countries, with the novelty of crossing borders without getting off the bike.

I haven’t read the distances or climbs for these routes, because the tourist board publishes them on an interactive map I couldn’t access. I’d rather not invent them. What I can say is that for both I’d hire an e-bike at the Liechtenstein Center in Vaduz, which rents them from spring to autumn.

Mountain biking up to the huts

The mountains are a different story. The Gafadura-Tour climbs by mountain bike to the Gafadura alp above Planken, a remote idyll according to the tourist board, home to the Gafadurahütte at 1,428 m. The Pfälzerhütte-Tour goes higher still, to the country’s highest hut on the Bettlerjoch at 2,108 m. And the Rheintal-Bike is a mountain-bike route across the entire country.

My pick of the three is the Pfälzerhütte. It’s for riders with mountain experience, though. At the huts, remember, it’s cash only, in francs or euros. The hut itself is described in the Pfälzerhütte.

The whole country on one route

The Liechtenstein Trail is the waymarked route through the country. The tourist board’s hiking page speaks of about 75 km on foot in five stages, while its cycling page says you can ride through every municipality in 85 km. The difference seems to come from counting, or not, the two loops at Malbun and Vaduz, so I’d treat both figures as approximate. The full route is in the Liechtenstein Trail.

When to get the bike out

The services themselves set the season. The Liechtenstein Center hires e-bikes from spring to autumn and the mountain buses carry bike racks in summer. The weather plays along, as the Office of Statistics describes a mild climate for a mountain country, with summer daytime temperatures usually between 20 and 28 degrees, shaped by the Föhn, the warm wind of the Alpine valleys. The valley gets 900 to 1,200 mm of rain a year, and the mountains up to 1,900 mm, so I’d check the forecast before heading for the huts.

For a British rider used to hills at home, the valley will feel easy and the huts very much not. I’d build up with the Rhine route on day one and save the Pfälzerhütte for a settled day later in the trip.

Bikes, buses and where to hire

The combination that works best in the mountains is riding up by bus. In summer, buses on routes 21 to Malbun and 22 to Gaflei carry bike racks, and bikes travel at the reduced fare. On the flat, if you haven’t brought a bike, there’s LIEbike, the shared e-bike scheme, at CHF 2 per half hour, although LIEmobil warns it isn’t built for steep hills. The hire options, with prices, are in bike hire in Liechtenstein.