CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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.
235 km from Curtea de Argeş to Curtea de Argeş, about 5 h 40 of riding. On the way it passes Vidraru Dam, Balea Lake, Cartisoara and back through Balea Lake. The highest point is about 2,050 m. Bâlea Lake is open in summer only - check it is open before you set off.
A mountain highway from Curtea de Arges, Romania to Cartisoara, Romania, via Vidraru Dam. Key character: hairpins; Carpathian peaks; alpine lake. Surface: paved.
For 33 km this is Transfagarasan Highway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it — expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 17 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go. Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
Curtea de Argeș was one of the first capitals of Wallachia, in the fourteenth century, and its great monument is a monastery that everyone in Romania knows. The cathedral, built in the early sixteenth century by Prince Neagoe Basarab, is a white stone building covered in carved lace, with slim towers and delicate patterns that look more like ironwork than masonry. A legend tells that the master builder, Manole, was made by the prince to wall his own wife into the structure so that it would stand, and that he fell to his death trying to escape the roof. The tale is told in ballads, and every Romanian child knows it. The church also holds the tombs of the country's kings, including Carol I and Ferdinand.
Read the complete Curtea de Argeş write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Curtea de Arges is where the day begins. Next is Vidraru Dam.
The Vidraru Dam closes off the Argeș river in a deep, narrow gorge in the Făgăraș mountains, and it is one of the most imposing pieces of engineering in Romania. An arch dam about 166 metres high, completed in the mid-1960s, it holds back a long, dark lake, whose surface reflects the steep, forested slopes around it, and the view from the top of the wall is dizzying. A statue of Prometheus stands on the edge of the dam, with the lake behind him, and a bungee platform has made the dam a place of some notoriety.
Read the complete Vidraru Dam write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vidraru Dam comes up 28 km in. Next is Balea Lake.
Bâlea Lake sits at 2,042 metres in the heart of the Făgăraș mountains, a small, cold glacial lake in a bowl of bare rock, and it is the high point of the Transfăgărășan, the road that Romanians say is the best in the world. It was built between 1970 and 1974 on the orders of Nicolae Ceaușescu, who wanted a military route across the Carpathians after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Thousands of soldiers and labourers blasted it out of the rock, and the cost in lives is said to have been high, so every hairpin has a story attached.
Read the complete Balea Lake write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
55 km in you reach Balea Lake. Next is Cartisoara.
Cârțișoara is the village at the northern foot of the Transfăgărășan, at roughly six hundred metres above the sea, where the road from the Făgăraș mountains reaches the Olt valley. Behind it rises the highest range in Romania, a wall of ridges and glacial cirques topped by Moldoveanu, around 2,544 metres, and in front lies the gentle farmland of southern Transylvania. The contrast is sudden: a few kilometres of fields and orchards, and then a wall of forest and rock that climbs out of sight.
Read the complete Cârţişoara write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cartisoara, about halfway. Next is back through Balea Lake.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Balea Lake write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Balea Lake sits at 111 km, about halfway. Next is back through Vidraru Dam.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vidraru Dam write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Vidraru Dam comes up 138 km in. Next is Curtea de Arges.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Curtea de Argeş write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Curtea de Arges closes the day.