Joy Ride

Cycling through the medieval villages and rolling hills of Romania, Jen Murphy leans in to simpler pleasures.

- Jen Murphy

IT WAS A WARM JUNE afternoon in Bucharest. Rays of sun bounced off the glass of Romanian-produced rosé that I'd held up to clink above the table. Over a soundtrack of loud house music, Martha Butterfield, a vivacious 84-year-old with wispy silver hair, giggled naughtily and shouted, “Live your f@*#ing best life!”

She wasn’t giving a toast. She was reading from a piece of art hanging on the wall of the restaurant, Casa di David. But the words would have made a fitting mantra for my weeklong cycling adventure with Butterfield & Robinson, an active-travel company founded by Martha, her brother Sidney Robinson, and her husband, George Butterfield. Joie de vivre has been B&R’s driving force since its early days in the 1960s planning bike trips from Vienna to Paris.

While Western Europe itineraries remain among the company’s most popular, George, 85, thrives on forging tracks in less-discovered corners of the world. Romania, with its Easter-egg-colored Saxon villages, Gothic castles, medieval citadels, and forested valleys, is his latest obsession. Five-star accommodation is a feature of any B&R itinerary; in the past few years, the opening of properties like Bethlen Estates and Matca have allowed George to curate high-end trips there.

FROM LEFT The clock tower in the city of Sighişoara; the Museum of Recent Art, in Bucharest.