Tag Archives: Tourism

Suceviţa – a long walk to a dramatic reveal

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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.

 

 

 

Putna II – still damp, but not dreary

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Thursday 25 September 2025 – Once again, the weather was damp, and colder than yesterday, with temperatures in single figures during a rainy morning. Accordingly, we dedicated the morning to full-time sloth, only emerging into the afternoon when things looked a little less bleak, when we went for a walk. Obviously.

Our objective was another monastery in the vicinity, called Sihăstria Monastery. The attentive among you will have noticed a similarity in name with the hermitage we visited yesterday, Chilia Daniil Sihastrul. All will become clear in good time.

Getting to this monastery involved a walk of some 5km.  Our walk took us past MishuCoffee where we again indulged ourselves in a couple of flat whites before heading out of town on a road that took us past the tradesmen’s entrance to the Putna monastery that we’d marvelled at yesterday.

We passed another selection of the attractive cottages one finds here

as we broadly followed the Putna river upstream. We passed a building that in jest I suggested was the local hydro power station and when we got close,

lo and behold, that’s what it was. The Putna river is not, it must be said, in full spate, but there is evidence, in the form of storm drains, that there are times when it’s a powerful flow.

After about 4km, we came to a building which I was sure was the monastery we sought.

I mean, it looks pretty monastic, dontcha think? Google maps swore blind that we had another kilometre to go and, when we drew closer and looked at the other major building on the site,

it became clear that this was a building site, not a monastery. Quite what they’re building we don’t know – there were no signs on view and Google maps remains tight-lipped on the subject. So we walked on, along the road which was now quite muddy in places from all the lorries and other heavy vehicles rumbling along it. We passed a shrine

and then, in the distance, could see our real objective.

See what I mean about the limited flow of the Putna river?

As well as the central monastery building, there were several others to be seen (including a cafe, which came in handy),

including a very cute little churchlet, reminiscent of the stave churches we saw recently in Norway. Initially, I thought it was a modern construction in traditional style, but it is probably older than that – see below.

It was locked, but I managed to get photo of a bit of the interior.

The main buildings of interest on the site, though, were the monastery, of course,

and a neighbouring stone church,

which, like so many places here, had a guard cat on duty.

The stone church is small, but, as is frequently the case in these parts, has a very ornate interior.

Walls and ceilings are covered in devotional images.

supplemented with carved wooden panels.

Aurochs’ Heads, with sun, rose (lower left) and moon, which appear on the Moldavian coat of arms.

There are also beautiful decorative details on the outer walls, including niches with representations of Romanian saints.

Obviously, our main interest was the monastery itself, and, as with the Putna monastery, front porch and narthex

suggested that the interior would be quite something.

I was quite surprised at how light the monastery was inside – others we’d been in had been really gloomy. But this building had windows and, on researching it, this shows that it’s a modern building. A bit of history and terminology follows….

The main building is called the Sihăstria Monastery. “Sihăstria” means “hermitage”, so it’s the Hermitage Monastery. Yesterday’s hermitage was called  Chilia Daniil Sihastrul, which I said was Daniil Silhastru’s hermitage. Actually, Daniil Sihastrul means “Danny the hermit” so a better translation would have been “The cell of Danny the hermit”. I hope that clears up that bit of terminology.

The reason for the Sihăstria Monastery name is because the building is on the site of what was a hermitage in the mid-15th century, with several cells occupied by hermits who wanted even more silence than a monastic life afforded, and a small wooden church. The site’s popularity led to the building of the stone church in 1758 (with the wooden church being moved to the “apple orchard” – this could well be the one pictured further above). The timing was unfortunate as the site fell into disrepair under Austro-Hungarian rule (1775 onwards); the church was closed and the site was deserted for some 200 years. In the 1990s, the hegumen of the Putna monastery began to restore the area and found the tombstones of the area’s original founding fathers, and so restored, redecorated and reconsecrated the stone church. This attracted more monks and the church became too small. So, in the early 2000s, the monastery building we see today was erected. That’s why it’s so light inside – it was built in the Windows era. Thank you. Thank you for reading my joke.

The stone church is reportedly built of “river stone”, presumably the stone which created the remarkable formations we saw by the river on our walk.

It’s clear that the area is being developed. As well as the not-really-a-monastery building we saw earlier, there was a lot of heavy construction traffic along the road, and evidence of heavy work on the verges.

On the walk back to the hotel, we saw a couple of slices of northern Romanian life: a traditional horse and cart;

and a dock fight,

a combination of a dog and cock fight, as farmyard animals noisily settled a dispute.  We also passed an enigmatic building,

the “Panzer Club”, which looks like it was once a place of ill-repute but which now simply looks disused. We stopped by at the mini-mart in the village petrol station and, having drunk the hotel dry of tonic, bought some so that we could indulge ourselves in G&Ts with dinner.

We’ve had a pleasant time in Putna. We’ve been able to relax a bit but still managed to absorb a lot of the culture and history of the area as well as learning something of its Orthodox religious background. And this despite some less-than-optimal weather. However, the weather is once again on the turn. Although summer has, I fear gone for this year, at least the sun is forecast to make a reappearance tomorrow, which is good, since we have an 18km walk tomorrow, involving a rather abrupt and steep lump in the middle. Today we ambled about 12km, which was at least some practice at getting ourselves back into the hiking mindset. Let’s see if we can complete tomorrow’s walk without whinging, eh?

Zărnești to Putna – getting to the start of Phase III

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Tuesday 23 September 2025 – The start of the third and final phase of this trip was reached via a long car journey, as we had to travel 400km to the northernmost reaches of Romania. The delightful but incomprehensible Ioana had set up our breakfast for us prompt at 8am and so we had our various egg orders there for us, amid quite a spectacular spread, including little sausages, slices of bigger sausages, ham, various cheeses, tomatoes, cucumber, chicken goujons and some croquettes of some description. There was also bread and jam, so we were able to construct ourselves toast and tea to go with the eggs, and we left the rest of the spread substantially untouched. The lounge area is a nice place to breakfast in, anyway.

Prompt at 9, our driver arrived to whisk us away. He could speak English, but largely chose not to, instead concentrating on getting us to Putna, our destination, as efficiently as he could, allowing for three stops for breaks on the way. The stops were all at petrol stations, and I noticed with a little amusement the slightly old-fashioned nature of these places. They still offered squeegees at the pumps to clean the windscreens,

and the shops offered things that no self-respecting British service station offers any more:

stuff that motorists might actually need, like oil and windscreen wipers. One of the service stations had a guard cat.

On the way over, I contented myself with reading the papers (and dozing – Ed), and Jane tried to capture photos of the passing landscape – not easy when you’re whizzing past it at 80kph.

To start with, the scenery was distinctly agricultural,

as we were crossing a large (and, as you can see, very flat) plain. Corn or maize was a major crop, as were sunflowers, which, having flowered, were patiently lined up in the fields awaiting their doom.

Another major crop was potatoes, as evidenced by this not untypical lorry load.

There were also churches, of course,

various roadside decorations

and many interesting buildings, which were of course, vanishing into the distance behind as soon as one realised that there might have been a photo there if we’d been able to stop. Jane did register that several roofs featured the same sort of wooden tiling that had adorned the barn we’d seen as we left Măgura.

The towns featured, as one might expect, some unattractive communist-era apartment blocks, but Jane particularly noted that the rural villages appeared to have escaped unscathed; there were lots of buildings of wood or brick, which (while in some cases in need of renovation) displayed wonderful architectural details and ornamentation – including crosses on every possible high point – which we imagine might have characterised pre-communist Romania.

One signpost we passed outlined why we were headed on this long journey.

Keep reading. All will become clear in good time.

We got to Putna, which, incidentally, is less than 10km away from the border with Ukraine, at around 4.30pm and checked into our accommodation, the Pensiunea Mușatinii.

With time to kill before dinner, we decided we’d go for a walk. Obviously. The nice man on reception applauded this move on the basis that today’s nice summer weather was emphatically going to end tomorrow. So, off we went, with the main objective being, of course, to visit what Putna is best known for whilst the sun was shining,

En route, we passed the village’s very handsome church

and some attractive houses.

We puzzled a little as to what the thing was outside the house above – Jane had noted several of them in the towns and villages that we’d passed through. We walked by another one

and closer examination showed that it was a well.

Soon, we reached the gateway to Putnas’s main attraction:

and indeed its rather handsome portal.

In we went, and were greeted by this magnificent building.

This is the church part of Putna’s monastery. The monastery premises house this and several other photogenic corners.

The monastery was founded by Stephen the Great in 1466 and consecrated in 1470 as one of the first and most important monastic establishments of his reign. It houses Stephen’s own tomb along with those of his family and other Moldavian rulers. Over the centuries the monastery has suffered damage from fires, earthquakes and invasions, but it has been repeatedly rebuilt and strengthened, preserving its role as a stronghold of Orthodox faith and Moldavian culture. It’s one of several monasteries for which this area is well-known, among monastery buffs at least, and our plan over the coming days is to visit a few more, each of which has its own story to tell.

We wanted to get a brief look at the monastery while the weather was decent, hence the swift visit today. We got back to the hotel in the nick of time to get dinner before a coachload of bloody tourists arrived to cause utter bedlam.

Tomorrow, as the weather propects are uncertain, we plan to look inside the monastery’s church and museum. We may also get to see some of the other significant buildings around here. You’ll have to come back and find out.