Călugăreni lies in the Niraj valley in Mureș county, in the heart of the region known as Székely Land, and here the signs, the conversation and the church spires announce that you are in a Hungarian-speaking part of Romania. The Székelys are a Hungarian community who, for centuries, guarded the eastern borders of the kingdom, and their villages, with carved wooden gates and whitewashed churches, are among the most distinctive in Transylvania. In Hungarian, the village is called Mikháza.
Long before the Székelys, the Romans were here. Călugăreni is the site of an auxiliary fort on the eastern frontier of Roman Dacia, which ran along the foothills of the Carpathians in the second and third centuries. Archaeologists have excavated parts of the fort and the civil settlement that grew up around it, and an open-air display with information panels helps visitors understand what is otherwise a grassy field with low banks. It is part of the chain of Roman frontier sites that Romania has nominated for UNESCO listing.
The landscape here is gently hilly, with orchards, hay meadows and forests, and the Gurghiu mountains rising to the east. The area is rich in salt: at nearby Sărățeni, salt springs and salt lakes have been used since ancient times, and further east, Praid has a vast salt mine open to visitors, while Sovata has Lake Ursu, a salt lake where the water layers trap heat and create unusual warm temperatures near the surface. Bathing in these salty waters is a popular local pastime in summer.
The riding is relaxed and pleasant. The roads through the Niraj valley and into the hills are mostly good, with gentle curves and light traffic, and the road east to Sovata and Praid climbs into more forested country. From there, you can head into the Harghita mountains or north toward the volcanic Călimani. Watch out for horse carts and cows on the road, especially in the evenings when herds come home.
Miercurea Nirajului, about eleven kilometres away, has fuel and basic shops; Târgu Mureș, the county capital, has everything. The local cuisine is Hungarian in flavour: try a bowl of goulash soup, or kürtőskalács, a sweet chimney cake roasted over coals and rolled in sugar and cinnamon, best eaten warm from a roadside stall. Autumn, when the orchards are heavy with apples and the forests turn golden, is a lovely time to ride.