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.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 369 km round trip from Ileanda - roughly 7 h 46 in the saddle. On the way it passes Dumbrăveni - Dealul Podului 2, Zagra - Dealul Lupului, Livezile - Poderei and Vătava - Cetățele. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Ileanda is a village on the Someș, the big river of north-western Transylvania, at a point where the valley narrows between wooded hills on its way from Dej towards Jibou. The railway runs alongside the water, the road keeps company with both, and the hills on either side rise in long slopes of beech, hornbeam and pasture. La Căsoi is a local name for a spot among those hills; you will not find a monument here, just the landscape and whatever the season is doing to it.
Read the complete Ileanda - La Căsoi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ileanda - La Căsoi is where the day begins. Next is Dumbrăveni - Dealul Podului 2.
Above the valley of the Someș Mare in Bistrița-Năsăud county, the hill called Dealul Podului carries the faint remains of a Roman watch post, one of a string of small installations that kept an eye on the northern edge of the province of Dacia. Like many points on this frontier, inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2024, it is less a monument than a viewpoint with a story, a place where soldiers once scanned the horizon for movement in the free lands to the north. Today the horizon holds forested ridges, orchards and villages strung along the river.
Read the complete Dumbrăveni - Dealul Podului 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Dumbrăveni - Dealul Podului 2 comes up about 55 km into the recorded legs. Next is Zagra - Dealul Lupului.
Zagra is the last farming village before the land begins to climb in earnest toward the Rodna mountains, the highest range in the Eastern Carpathians north of the Prislop pass. Pietrosul Rodnei, at about 2,300 metres, is the summit, and the whole massif is protected as a national park and biosphere reserve, with glacial lakes, rocky ridges and alpine meadows that stay snowy into June. From the Dealul Lupului, the Wolf Hill, you look across a patchwork of hayfields toward those peaks, which look closer than they are.
Read the complete Zagra - Dealul Lupului write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 103 km into the recorded legs you reach Zagra - Dealul Lupului. Next is Livezile - Poderei.
Leave Bistriţa eastwards on the DN17 and within minutes you are in Livezile, a long village strung out along the valley of the Bistriţa river where the Transylvanian hills start to bunch up towards the Eastern Carpathians. Poderei is the name of a hillside here where the Romans kept watch over the northern edge of their province of Dacia, and the site is one of the many small components of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire listed in Romania in 2024. There is nothing to visit in the sense of ruins; what you get is the hill, the view up the valley and the knowledge that legionaries stared at the same ridges.
Read the complete Livezile - Poderei write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Livezile - Poderei, about halfway. Next is Vătava - Cetățele.
For about a century and a half, the Roman province of Dacia was a wedge of empire pushed north of the Danube, and its eastern edge ran along the curve of the Carpathians through what is now central Romania. In 2024, UNESCO added the frontiers of the Roman Empire in Dacia to its list, a long chain of forts, watchtowers and earthworks. Vătava, in the upper Mureș valley, is one of the sites, with traces of a Roman fortification on a hill called Cetățele, the little fortresses. Not much is visible to the casual eye: earthworks, a few stones, the outline of a position chosen for its view along the valley.
Read the complete Vătava - Cetățele write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vătava - Cetățele sits at 139 km, about halfway. Next is back through Livezile - Poderei.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Livezile - Poderei write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Livezile - Poderei comes up about 226 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Zagra - Dealul Lupului.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Zagra - Dealul Lupului write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 266 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Zagra - Dealul Lupului. Next is back through Dumbrăveni - Dealul Podului 2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Dumbrăveni - Dealul Podului 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Dumbrăveni - Dealul Podului 2, late in the day. Next is Ileanda - La Căsoi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ileanda - La Căsoi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 369 km.
Ileanda - La Căsoi → Dumbrăveni - Dealul Podului 2 is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Dumbrăveni - Dealul Podului 2 → Zagra - Dealul Lupului is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Zagra - Dealul Lupului → Livezile - Poderei is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Livezile - Poderei → Vătava - Cetățele is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Vătava - Cetățele → back through Livezile - Poderei is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Livezile - Poderei → back through Zagra - Dealul Lupului is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Zagra - Dealul Lupului → back through Dumbrăveni - Dealul Podului 2 is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Dumbrăveni - Dealul Podului 2 → Ileanda - La Căsoi is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.