Friday 26 September 2025 – The day dawned bright and cold. Accuweather swore blind that the temperature hit freezing point overnight, but promised termperatures into double figures – just – by the end of a sunny day. We decided to head out on today’s walk at around 10am and headed down to breakfast, which, as yesterday was ample and tasty. The hotel is really quite large, as evidenced by the fact that they had a 50-strong coach party in on the day we arrived. However, they departed (praise be) and for at least one of the nights we’ve stayed here we were the only guests, which is a slightly weird experience. The staff seem to number about four, which is fine if you’re the only guests, but I hope they’re going to gear up a bit for the tours which we were told they’re expecting over the coming days. The hotel is a bit dowdy, but the food has been very good and the service very friendly, if not really Anglophone in any real sense of the word. English she is not spoke so very much in the hotel, but smiling, nodding and pointing at things kept our use of Google Translate to a minimum.

Leaving breakfast, we were accosted by a gent, speaking French, who asked us if we were headed to Casa Felicia. We were, and it turned out that he was the proprietor and had come to pick up our bags, so we quickly went and got them for him.

Our destination today was in Suceviţa, a walk of anything between 16 and 18km, depending on whose information you consulted. All sources, however, were united in setting expectations – a gentle rise and fall, but with a steep lump in the middle. Garmin plotted the course like this.

Using the Garmin data, ChatGPT told me that the gradient in the Lump was a stretch of one kilometre up a slope of one in six – quite steep. So one possible course of action would have been to be given a lift with our bags. But we squared our shoulders and headed forth on foot.

The route was described in our information as “the monk’s path” between the monasteries of Putna and Suceviţa. It was also on an established route, the Via Transylvanica. A fellow hiker (and subscriber to these pages), Ian, tells me that this is a 1500km hike across Romania, which he was now contemplating doing in a mere two months, a feat well beyond Jane and me. It’s exceedingly, possibly even excessively, well-marked

and these marks are accompanied by others, too.

Various searches suggest that the “m” is for “monastery” – specifically an indication of the route to the Suceviţa monastery. So that was encouraging. We saw the blue plus sign a lot as well, but I haven’t managed to find out which route it was the waymark code for. Whatever, the route led out of town on a concrete road

which led past kilometre posts for the Via Transylvanica.

Jane found out that there would be one of these approximately every kilometre, each with its own artwork on it, so we have a lot of photos of them; take it from me, they were there.

Soon, the concrete road turned into a forest track

but there continued to be facilities set up for people walking the route

although some needed a little attention, maybe.

Forest track it may have been, but it still led past posh properties with their own posh portals

and posh fences.

The going got wilder

and it was clear that there was a huge amount of logging traffic along the track. There was also evidence of horse traffic (we saw one cart being used to transport chopped up logs), and one could see from the hoofprint that the horseshoes actually had spikes to help with traction.

The heavy logging traffic meant that the going was quite muddy at times, and the track gradually increased in steepness as we went along;

There were watch towers at intervals,

we guessed to be able to look out for fires during the dry seasons. We also learned the Romanian for “Buen Camino”.

Eventually, the gradual increase in steepness became an extreme increase – we’d reached The Lump!

It was very steep in places

but, as you can see from the photos, the going underfoot was OK – not stony, slippery or treacherous, so actually the stiff pull up for the next kilometre was hard work but not at all daunting, as the hike out of Bran had been.

We reached the high point without incident and the track started back down again, at first gently,

and then not gently.

but again the going was largely good, just rather muddy in places, exacerbated by the tyres of the many mountain bikers who clearly use this track for some perverse kind of entertainment. The track levelled out, following the river

and then we reached the other side, where it again became forestry track.

Because we’d done The Exciting Bit, the track became a rather dull slog. Truth be told, the walk as a whole, with the exception of The Lump, was just a walk along a rather unvarying and not very interesting forestry track. But never mind, we’d made it.

Suceviţa, when we got there, was not dissimilar to Putna, in the very attractive houses to be seen.

Some were older and more traditional,

some more modern and ambitious.

Eventually, and to my relief, we reached a coffee bar and stopped for refreshments just outside the principal building in Suceviţa,

the monastery. We’d made good time, and so decided we’d go in and take a look rather than head off immediately to our accommodation. This monastery is different from the previous ones we’d visited in a couple of respects, the most immediate one being that they charge you to go in – 10 lei (about €2) per person. So you pay your money and walk through, and this is what lies within.

 

The outside is painted – we’d reached the first of the Painted Monasteries, which were actually the main reason we’d come all this way. Jane had seen a photo and on the strength of it we’d travelled to see some of these beautifully decorated buildings. The Suceviţa monastery is possibly the finest of them – and it indeed has a beautiful exterior.

Why the difference between this and, say, Putna monastery, which is imposing but plain on the outside? The Putna building predates the others, before the fashion developed to paint the outside. The frescoes of biblical scenes painted on the outside were a source of devotional inspiration to the largely illiterate villagers, and were also a visible declaration of Orthodox faith, resisting pressure from Ottoman, Protestant and Catholic neighbours.

The church is in a beautiful (and well-fortified) courtyard, too.

Going into the church,

past the graffiti of the centuries

you reach an impressive narthex,

which is rapidly followed by photographically a bitter disappointment. Photography inside the church is not allowed and there was a nun of very severe disposition there to enforce the ban. Actually, I could possibly have snuck a phone picture or two, but Jane gave me One Of Her Looks, so I didn’t. I had to content myself to what you can photograph from the door.

I find it ceaselessly annoying to have to pay to enter somewhere, only to find that photography is limited. They have their reasons, I suppose, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it and it left a sour taste in my mouth.  We tried to find an official book of photos of the inside – one standard tactic of milking the punters – and went into the shop. But the demeanour of the nun there made us feel we were invading her privacy, so we left.  Again, I suppose they have their reasons and want to maintain dignity, but I’d like to think that we were trying to make a contribution and were simply being rebuffed, and not with good grace.

Anyhoo…

We walked the half-kilometre or so to our accommodation and found it to be utterly charming, a green lawn surrounded on three sides by individual traditional houses making up the accommodation.

A guard cat was, as ever, on duty.

Our room looks comfortable and any autumn chill will be dispersed at the hands of its mighty heater.

The lady of the house made us welcome with tea and cake in the family dwelling making up the fourth side of the square. She, like her husband who transferred our bags, speaks French as her second language; this is what they learned at school, although these days English is taught. Jane’s expert French, from having lived in Paris, came in handy, and we established that dinner would be at 7pm, and would be with the other guests of the place. We met two of them in passing; they were two English ladies whom we had actually first seen in Putna, and so we knew we’d have some English conversation at dinner time.

As it happens, the other two guests were English as well, so Julia and Heather, Jeanette and her son Ian and we had a very congenial evening eating the delicious food cooked by Madame, making our way through a bottle of a rather tasty and fairly fiery apple liqueur, and talking mainly about our various travel experiences, both in Romania and elsewhere.

So now you know about the Painted Monasteries and have seen photos of one of them, possibly the most imposing of the lot. Tomorrow, we will be taken to visit another, in Moldovita, which should take up half the day. The other half is unprogrammed; one option is a scramble up a hill to see a view of the Suceviţa monastery from on high, but mere sloth is a possibility, too. We’ll have to see how the day pans out.