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.
From Curtea de Argeş it runs 117 km to Cârţişoara; allow about 2 h 50 of riding. The stops in between: Vidraru Dam and 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. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
For about 31 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.
The ride follows Transfăgărășan for 54 km.
The ride follows Transfăgărășan for 32 km.
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 about 31 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 85 km into the recorded legs you reach Balea Lake. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Cartisoara, mostly downhill.
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 closes the day.
Curtea de Arges → Vidraru Dam is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Vidraru Dam → Balea Lake is 54 km. This is the part worth slowing down for - look through the bends and use the pull-offs.
Bâlea Lake → Cartisoara is 32 km. Brakes and eyes forward; the views are behind the corners, not in them.