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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
The stops in between: Vârful lui Pătru, Bănița - Jigoru Mare and back through Vârful lui Pătru. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,600 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
South of the town of Cugir, the land rises into the Șureanu mountains, a sprawling range of beech and spruce forests, high meadows and rounded summits in the heart of the Southern Carpathians. This is the country of the Dacians, the people who ruled much of present-day Romania before the Roman conquest in the early second century. Their capital, Sarmizegetusa Regia, and a ring of mountain fortresses lie in the Orăștie mountains to the west, and they are listed by UNESCO as the Dacian Fortresses of the Orăștie Mountains. Bătrâna, on the high ground above the Cugir valley, belongs to the network of ancient sites scattered across these hills, where Dacians and Romans watched each other across the ridges.
Read the complete Cugir - Bătrâna write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cugir - Bătrâna is where the day begins. Next is Vârful lui Pătru.
Roman soldiers rarely chose to live above two thousand metres, but on Vârful lui Pătru, a broad grassy summit of the Șureanu mountains in southern Transylvania, they did. A small fortification on the top, part of the network that watched over the passes after Trajan conquered Dacia, is often described as one of the highest Roman military posts anywhere, and it now belongs to the World Heritage listing of the Dacian frontier. Imagine a winter up here in a wool cloak, with the wind coming straight off the Carpathians, and the posting suddenly sounds like a punishment.
Read the complete Vârful lui Pătru write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vârful lui Pătru comes up about 63 km into the recorded legs. Next is Bănița - Jigoru Mare.
High on a limestone outcrop above the village of Bănița, in the hills of south-western Transylvania, stand the ruins of a Dacian fortress. Bănița is one of the six Dacian fortresses of the Orăștie Mountains listed by UNESCO in 1999, part of the defensive system built around the capital of the Dacian kingdom, Sarmizegetusa Regia, in the first century BC and the first century AD. The kingdom's last great ruler, Decebalus, held out against Rome in two hard wars before Trajan's legions finally conquered Dacia in 106, an event recorded in stone on Trajan's Column in Rome.
Read the complete Bănița - Jigoru Mare write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 153 km into the recorded legs you reach Bănița - Jigoru Mare. Next is back through Vârful lui Pătru.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vârful lui Pătru write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Vârful lui Pătru, late in the day. Next is Cugir - Bătrâna.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cugir - Bătrâna write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Cugir - Bătrâna. That is the ride.
Cugir - Bătrâna → Vârful lui Pătru is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Vârful lui Pătru → Bănița - Jigoru Mare is 90 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bănița - Jigoru Mare → back through Vârful lui Pătru is 90 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Vârful lui Pătru → Cugir - Bătrâna is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.