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.
240 km from Corabia to Corabia, about 5 h 04 of riding. It goes by way of Slăveni - La Cetate - auxiliary fort, Crâmpoia - Reduta Tătarilor, Gresia - La Biserică and back through Crâmpoia - Reduta Tătarilor. It crosses from Bulgaria into Romania - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules.
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 Slăveni - La Cetate - auxiliary fort.
Slăveni is farm country, and the fort here is the sort of ruin you have to meet halfway. "La Cetate" simply means "at the fortress", the name locals gave to a rise in the fields long before anyone excavated it, and what remains of the Roman auxiliary fort is mostly a matter of banks, ditches and the shape of the ground rather than standing walls. If you expect a Hadrian's Wall photograph you will be disappointed; if you like imagining a few hundred soldiers watching a very flat horizon, you will be fine.
Read the complete Slăveni - La Cetate - auxiliary fort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Slăveni - La Cetate - auxiliary fort comes up about 49 km into the recorded legs. Next is Crâmpoia - Reduta Tătarilor.
Out on the flat Romanian plain east of the Olt river, the village of Crâmpoia sits among endless fields of wheat, maize and sunflowers, and its name has a place in Roman history. A Roman earthen fort near the village stood on the Limes Transalutanus, the frontier line that the Romans built east of the Olt in the early third century, running from the Danube northward toward the Carpathians, a long earthen rampart with forts and watchtowers. The local name Reduta Tătarilor, the Tatars' redoubt, reflects a common habit in Romania of attributing old earthworks to the Tatars or other invaders, long after the Romans were forgotten. The site is part of the UNESCO-listed frontier of Dacia.
Read the complete Crâmpoia - Reduta Tătarilor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 97 km into the recorded legs you reach Crâmpoia - Reduta Tătarilor. Next is Gresia - La Biserică.
The Wallachian plain in southern Romania is about as flat as Europe gets: a vast expanse of wheat, maize and sunflower fields stretching to the horizon, broken only by lines of acacia trees, irrigation channels and villages strung along the road. Teleorman county, where Gresia lies, is in the heart of it. Two thousand years ago, this was frontier land. The Romans built a long earthwork rampart with forts and towers running north to south east of the river Olt, known as the Limes Transalutanus, to protect their province of Dacia. Gresia and the sites around it, including Roșiorii de Vede, Crâmpoia and Izbășești, lie along its line. Little survives above ground, and the remains need a trained eye or an archaeologist's map to spot, but the idea of a Roman frontier running through these fields adds depth to a landscape that can seem empty.
Read the complete Gresia - La Biserică write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gresia - La Biserică, about halfway. Next is back through Crâmpoia - Reduta Tătarilor.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Crâmpoia - Reduta Tătarilor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Crâmpoia - Reduta Tătarilor sits at 157 km, about halfway. Next is back through Slăveni - La Cetate - auxiliary fort.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Slăveni - La Cetate - auxiliary fort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Slăveni - La Cetate - auxiliary fort comes up about 191 km into the recorded legs. 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.
Corabia - Sucidava / Celei closes the day.
Corabia - Sucidava / Celei → Slăveni - La Cetate - auxiliary fort is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Slăveni - La Cetate - auxiliary fort → Crâmpoia - Reduta Tătarilor is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Crâmpoia - Reduta Tătarilor → Gresia - La Biserică is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Gresia - La Biserică → back through Crâmpoia - Reduta Tătarilor is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Crâmpoia - Reduta Tătarilor → back through Slăveni - La Cetate - auxiliary fort is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Slăveni - La Cetate - auxiliary fort → Corabia - Sucidava / Celei is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.