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 Corund it runs 415 km to Corund; allow about 9 h 10 of riding. The stops in between: Village of Dârjiu, Hoghiz - La Cetate, Cincșor - Cetate and Codrul secular Șinca. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Păuleni - Dealul Silaș
Corund is a village where almost every house seems to sell pottery. Stalls line the main road through this Székely community in Harghita county, piled high with plates, jugs and bowls in white, blue, green and brown, painted with flowers and birds. Pottery has been made here for centuries, using local clay, and the craft is still alive, though much of what is sold today is made for tourists. Păuleni and the hill called Dealul Silaș lie nearby, an archaeological site among many in this land of rolling hills and forested ridges, with little to see on the ground.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Păuleni - Dealul Silaș is where the day begins. Next is Village of Dârjiu.
2. Village of Dârjiu
Dârjiu is a Székely village of around eleven hundred people in Harghita county, and at its heart stands one of the fortified churches that UNESCO lists among the Villages with Fortified Churches in Transylvania. Most of those villages are Saxon and Lutheran; Dârjiu is Hungarian-speaking and Unitarian, which makes it something of an odd one out and all the more interesting. A ring of thick walls and towers encloses the church, built so that villagers could shelter from raiders, and the tradition of storing smoked bacon and grain in the fortress towers lasted here long into modern times.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Village of Dârjiu comes up about 39 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hoghiz - La Cetate.
3. Hoghiz - La Cetate
Where the Olt river bends around the Perșani mountains, between the Saxon villages of southern Transylvania and the Székely country to the east, the land rises into wooded hills, and near the village of Hoghiz, on a terrace above the river, lies an archaeological site known simply as La Cetate, the fortress. The Romans guarded this stretch of the Olt with forts, part of the defensive system of their province of Dacia, and the name hints at an old fortified place that once watched over the valley.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 80 km into the recorded legs you reach Hoghiz - La Cetate. Next is Cincșor - Cetate.
4. Cincșor - Cetate
Between Sibiu and Făgăraș, the Olt flows through a broad valley, with the long wall of the Făgăraș mountains rising to the south, the highest in Romania, culminating in Moldoveanu at 2,544 metres. On the north bank, near the Saxon village of Cincșor, known in German as Kleinschenk, the Romans built a fort to guard the river crossing and the road along the valley. The site, known locally as Cetate, the fortress, lies in fields near the village, with only faint traces visible.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Cincșor - Cetate, about halfway. Next is Codrul secular Șinca.
5. Codrul secular Șinca
Codru is an old Romanian word for a deep forest, and the Codrul Secular Șinca, the ancient forest of Șinca, is exactly that: a stand of old-growth beech and fir on the northern slopes of the Făgăraș mountains in Brașov county, where trees have grown, died and fallen for centuries without being cut. It is part of the UNESCO listing of the ancient and primeval beech forests of Europe, a chain of protected forests across many countries that together tell the story of how beech spread across the continent after the last ice age. Walking among trees that are hundreds of years old, with fallen trunks covered in moss and fungi and the canopy closing high above, is a humbling experience.