Doing so feels like descending into a lost world, with fresh bear footprints in the mud and steep banks of beech and elm on both sides. This gorge is accessible only by abseiling down the cliff face.
It has strong local roots, too: the owner’s great-grandmother was the sister of Elisabeta Rizea.ĭuring my stay here, I’m taken on one of the FCC’s newly created adventures, a three-hour scramble through Valea Ulmului. The village has recently seen the opening of Caezu, a guesthouse with a red-brick fireplace, homemade soups and potent plum brandy. It’s also working to attract visitors to Nucsoara. So far, the FCC has placed around 105sq miles of land under protection, with hunting banned in a further 200sq miles.Īt the same time, it’s tapping into ecotourism by offering travel experiences in and around the proposed national park, from cabins for wildlife-spotting in the mountains to an equestrian trail-riding centre and an organic farm. To call the project ambitious would be an understatement. Since 2009, the nonprofit organisation Foundation Conservation Carpathia (FCC) has been working to ensure the peaks, woods and wildlife become not just safe from further degradation but restored and defended. It has more large carnivores - bears, wolves and lynx - than anywhere else in the continent.
Logging and overhunting have been scourges here, but things are changing. This part of Romania is the site of a rewilding project that it’s hoped will eventually result in Europe’s largest forest national park. Yet, I’m here to do more than coo at the mountains. Within an hour, I’m swallowed up in a rustic fantasy of haylofts, butterflies and sunshine. On arrival at the city of Brasov, I’m greeted by thick drizzle before setting off by road past the rain-lashed outline of Bran Castle, famous as the possible inspiration for Dracula’s castle. The landscapes are savagely handsome, with snow-capped summits rising above rumpled highlands. I’m here as part of a week-long stay, hopping between the historical regions of Wallachia and Transylvania. This sense of pride in the land, and through it a way of giving travellers reasons to come calling, is encountered a lot in the Southern Carpathians. Ion hopes the money raised will fund new local hiking trails. The trees (mossy beauties all) are between 50 and 350 years old. Ion went on to select 2,544 individual beech trees - one for every metre of height of nearby Moldoveanu, Romania’s highest mountain - to be adopted by visitors, whose details and, should they wish, life stories are embedded in QR codes fixed to the trunks. On one of these strolls, an idea struck him, and a project was born. Two years ago, after his wife died suddenly, Ion found solace in daily woodland walks. We’re talking outside Nucsoara’s Orthodox church, its two pale domes luminous in the afternoon light. “When my friends and I were boys, these hills were our playground,” he says. The softly spoken local mayor, Ion Cojocaru, smiles as he stares across the valley. Barely a minute passes without the call of a cuckoo. Women in headscarves tend the onion beds, the occasional curl of woodsmoke drifts from a chimney. Every so often, a pothole-dodging car or horse-drawn cart winds along the road, stirring dogs from their slumber. The slopes around the village swell out in sage-green folds and its houses come with cherry trees, log piles and hand-tied grapevines. The capital city, Bucharest, is a three-hour drive south east, but may as well be light years away. Her cottage is found in Nucsoara, a remote village that still moves to older, quieter rhythms. In many ways, Rizea’s values and beliefs reflect the soul of the region. Still, what they could not take was our soul.” During the visit, Rizea told reporters, “They took everything from us. Despite being tortured, she remained true to her ideals, earning a visit to her hillside home from the long-exiled Romanian monarch, King Michael I, after communist rule was ended by an uprising in 1989. She helped partisan fighters in the surrounding mountains, a role that twice saw her imprisoned. When a Soviet-installed government took over after the Second World War, Rizea, like many locals, gravitated to the resistance movement. It now stands empty, looking out across the elder woods and hay meadows. For over seven decades, this was the home of anti-communist activist Elisabeta Rizea, who died in 2003, aged 91. The house has a neat timber balcony and a frieze of blue flowers at the eaves, but the plasterwork is crumbling. A well can be seen in the garden, sunlight patches the long grass and the wolf-prowled hills beyond. The little dwelling is half-hidden by pear blossom and lilac trees. This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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