Corabia - Sucidava / Celei and Reșca - Romula / Cetate
Plan this ride
Recorded distance
268 km
Riding-time estimate
4 h 43
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
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.
From Corabia it runs 268 km to Corabia; allow about 4 h 43 of riding. On the way it passes Vallum - Troian, Reșca - Romula / Cetate and back through Vallum - Troian. It crosses from Bulgaria into Romania - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Corabia - Sucidava / Celei
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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Corabia - Sucidava / Celei is where the day begins. Next is Vallum - Troian.
2. 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Vallum - Troian comes up about 62 km into the recorded legs. Next is Reșca - Romula / Cetate.
3. Reșca - Romula / Cetate
Romula was once among the more important towns in Roman Dacia, and the ground at Reșca, in Olt county, is where it stood. The settlement grew near the river Olt on the road between the Danube frontier and the interior, and it rose to the rank of a colony in the later empire; the later name, Romula Malvensis, ties it to the province of Dacia Malvensis that was formed in the third century. Today you see fields, a few low mounds, and the faint outline of an old fortification, with finds from the site kept in nearby museums rather than at the roadside.