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.
A 386 km round trip from Băneasa - roughly 6 h 47 in the saddle. The stops in between: Corabia - Sucidava / Celei, Afrimești - Urluieni and back through Corabia - Sucidava / Celei. It crosses from Romania into Bulgaria - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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.
Read the complete Vallum - Troian write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vallum - Troian is where the day begins. Next is 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.
Read the complete Corabia - Sucidava / Celei write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Corabia - Sucidava / Celei comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Afrimești - Urluieni.
Flat. That is the first impression of this part of southern Romania, in Argeș county, where the land stretches away towards the Danube in wide fields of maize and sunflowers, broken only by lines of trees and small villages. But across this plain, in the second century AD, the Romans built a frontier: the Limes Transalutanus, a line of earthworks and forts running north to south east of the Olt river, protecting the province of Dacia. At Urluieni, near the village of Afrimești, stood one of its forts.
Read the complete Afrimești - Urluieni write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 193 km into the recorded legs you reach Afrimești - Urluieni. Next is back through 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.
back through Corabia - Sucidava / Celei, late in the day. Next is Vallum - Troian.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vallum - Troian write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Vallum - Troian. That is the ride.
Vallum - Troian → Corabia - Sucidava / Celei is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Corabia - Sucidava / Celei → Afrimești - Urluieni is 132 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Afrimești - Urluieni → back through Corabia - Sucidava / Celei is 131 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Corabia - Sucidava / Celei → Vallum - Troian is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.