Detour #21: Transfagarasan Highway, Romania
Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have a lot to answer for. Before Top Gear visited Romania, the Transfăgărășan Highway was near enough a secret.
But since the trio tore up this truly magnificent mountain pass it’s become somewhat spoiled. Like the Stelvio Pass before it, primetime publicity means that the best time to drive the road is at dawn when those too idle to see the sunrise haven’t arrived yet.
The road is only open from June to October when it becomes one of Romania’s most popular tourist attractions. So to avoid the coaches, cars, cyclists and motorcyclists, you need to make an early start.
If you do you will be rewarded with one of Europe’s best drives, a road that’s strangely sympathetic with nature, yet at times brutally at odds with it. Over almost 60 miles you will follow valley floors, scythe up mountainsides and blast through concrete tunnels.
It was one of Nicolae Ceausescu’s biggest engineering projects, constructed by the military for the military, but today this legacy is left to petrolheads.
I’ve been there once, way back before Clarkson and co. The road formed a stage of the Midnight Sun to Red Sea Marathon Rally, and I’m afraid to say that my memories are of an intense frustration. Such are the steep climbs that this road rewards power and power is something that my car simply didn’t have.
I was driving a Toyota Prius - the first hybrid to take part in the rally - and having exhausted its battery early on and mistakenly put in some low grade fuel, all I could focus on was trying to lose as little time as possible. So I can’t comment on the views, the drift-friendly corners or the long straights. I just wanted to get it over with.
So I guess I’ll just have to go back soon. In a more powerful car of course.
Words Nik Berg Twitter | Instagram
Photography Jaramir Kavan, Euegen Zaycev / Unsplash
Roadbook
Class: Mountain pass
Name: D97C Transfagarasan Highway
Route: Bascov to Sibiu
Country: Romania
Distance: 60 miles