CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
264 km from Corabia to Corabia, about 4 h 42 of riding. The stops in between: Vallum - Troian, Afrimești - Urluieni and back through Vallum - Troian. It crosses from Bulgaria into Romania - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
At Celei, a few kilometres from Corabia on the Danube, the Romans built a bridge. It is a thing worth pausing over, because the bridge was built in AD 328, in the time of Constantine the Great, and it linked the Roman fortress of Sucidava on the northern bank with the province on the other side. The bridge was nearly two and a half kilometres long, one of the grandest engineering projects of the late empire, and it gave Rome a way to project power across the river long after the rest of the frontier had begun to crumble. A later emperor, Justinian, rebuilt Sucidava in the sixth century, and the fortress was in use for a very long time.
Read the complete Corabia - Sucidava / Celei write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Corabia - Sucidava / Celei is where the day begins. Next is Vallum - Troian.
The Romanian word vallum is a Latin leftover, and it means a rampart. Across the plain north of the Danube, in Teleorman county, a line of low earthworks stretches over the fields, and local people call it Troianul, Trajan's ditch, though no one is sure whether Trajan had anything to do with it. Folk memory has also attached the name of Novac, a legendary hero, to the same banks, and archaeologists suggest the line may have formed part of a Roman or late Roman defence of the Wallachian Plain, though the dating remains debated. What you will find on the ground is subtle: a long, shallow hump in a wheat field, a line of poplars following an old ditch.
Read the complete Vallum - Troian write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vallum - Troian comes up about 62 km into the recorded legs. Next is Afrimești - Urluieni.
Flat. That is the first impression of this part of southern Romania, in Argeș county, where the land stretches away towards the Danube in wide fields of maize and sunflowers, broken only by lines of trees and small villages. But across this plain, in the second century AD, the Romans built a frontier: the Limes Transalutanus, a line of earthworks and forts running north to south east of the Olt river, protecting the province of Dacia. At Urluieni, near the village of Afrimești, stood one of its forts.
Read the complete Afrimești - Urluieni write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 132 km into the recorded legs you reach Afrimești - Urluieni. Next is back through Vallum - Troian.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vallum - Troian write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Vallum - Troian, late in the day. Next is Corabia - Sucidava / Celei.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Corabia - Sucidava / Celei write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Corabia - Sucidava / Celei. That is the ride.
Corabia - Sucidava / Celei → Vallum - Troian is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Vallum - Troian → Afrimești - Urluieni is 70 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Afrimești - Urluieni → back through Vallum - Troian is 69 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Vallum - Troian → Corabia - Sucidava / Celei is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.