There's a moment on the Transfăgărășan, around the sixth or seventh hairpin, when you stop thinking about distance and simply give in to the views. By the time you reach Bâlea Lake at the top, you'll have climbed 1,550 metres from the valley floor, one of the finest three hours on a bicycle anywhere in Europe. Six days later, the Transalpina still manages to top it.

Seven days. Two legendary passes. A handful of fortified Saxon villages in between, a UNESCO-listed church at Biertan, the medieval citadel of Sighișoara, and six nights in beautifully restored guesthouses where the hosts do the cooking. It is a hard tour, there is no other way to say it, but the kind of hard you don't regret.

Urdele Pass: The Top of Romania

Day seven caps the tour off. You crest Urdele Pass at 2,120 metres, the highest paved road in Romania. What's ahead is a long open descent into Wallachia, the mountains dropping away behind you, your legs finally quiet. At the end, somebody usually asks if we can do it again tomorrow...