Romania: Transylvanian Adventure

Twenty-two nights and around 4,300 miles across nine countries to Transylvania and back, which makes this the longest tour in the operator’s European range. Riders bring their own bike on the ferry, or hire one.

Harwich and the overnight crossing to the Netherlands start it, with a welcome meal and briefing, then France and Germany, taking in Baden-Baden and the B500 through the Black Forest. Austria follows, with the option of the ice caves at Werfen, which hold an underground glacier, or mountain biking down the ski runs instead.

Hungary’s national parks and a crossing of the Danube lead into Romania and a night at Timisoara, then east to Corvin Castle, a fifteenth-century Gothic pile that looks like a film set and has served as one, and to a stretch of inland sand dunes five hundred miles from any sea, near the Transalpina, the highest road in the country.

The Transfagarasan is the main event, built across the Transylvanian Alps on Ceausescu’s orders in the 1970s at considerable human cost, and once described by Jeremy Clarkson as one of the best roads in the world. The mountains it crosses hold around a third of continental Europe’s wild bears and wolves, with an optional bear sanctuary visit, and Brasov follows for two nights, a walled Saxon town with a Gothic church at its centre. Krakow and its underground salt cathedral come on the way home. The price is quoted per rider. Three weeks and nine borders is a serious undertaking, and the ride out and back is half the appeal rather than the cost of getting there.