The Olt is one of the few rivers in Romania that cut straight through the Carpathians instead of going around them, and one of the places where it does it is the foot of the Cozia massif. A narrow gorge, a few kilometres long, runs between steep wooded walls, with the river dark and fast at the bottom, a railway and a road squeezed in beside it, and the ridge of Cozia towering on one side. The mountain itself is a rounded, forested block of crystalline rock, high enough to hold snow into spring, and much of it is protected as a national park, with beech, fir and oak, chamois on the high crags, bears in the forest and a good scattering of rare plants.
The riding is tied to that gorge. The national road DN7, the old main route from Sibiu south to Ramnicu Valcea and Bucharest, follows the Olt through the mountains, and it is a famous road for good reasons: wooded slopes, river views, tunnels and long open bends, though it is also one of the busiest roads in the country, full of trucks that make overtaking a gamble. Early morning on a weekday is the answer. The small town of Brezoi, with about six and a half thousand people, has fuel and supplies, and so do the spa villages down the valley at Calimanesti and Caciulata, where hot springs have attracted visitors for generations. From Brezoi a road turns west up the Lotru valley, a quiet climb along reservoirs toward the Transalpina, the great high road across the Parang mountains.
The Cozia monastery, which lies down the valley beside the river, is among the oldest and most important in Wallachia. Prince Mircea the Elder founded it in 1388, and he is buried in its church, a fine stone building with carved doors, painted interiors and a pronaos that is a landmark of medieval Romanian architecture. The monastery was a centre of manuscript copying, and its setting in a bend of the river, against the forested slope, is memorable.
Summer brings crowds and heat in the valley, and the best times are May and June or September, when the forest is green or golden. Winters bring snow and ice on the high bends.
Try trout from a mountain stream, and a bowl of ciorba de burta, the sour tripe soup, in a roadside inn.