The 17 Mineral Water Springs

You take a mouthful and your mouth puckers: the water has iron in it and bubbles that sting. That is borcut, the carbonated mineral water that comes out of the ground by itself all over the commune, and that people here have always drunk at the spring rather than from a bottle.

17 such springs were rediscovered, cleaned and laid out by the community, along a tourist route of nearly 60 kilometres running through several villages. Each has a bench, a wooden table, often a wayside cross and a board telling you what you are drinking; a central map board holds the whole circuit together, and small footbridges cross the water where the bank is soft.

Who brought them back to light

The work started in 2018, with the GreenIMPACT Panaci community initiative club: 48 secondary school pupils from the village school, supported by the Noi Orizonturi Foundation. They began with 5 springs and reached 17. The rest came from the village, with materials and labour from parents, neighbours and the town hall workers, while the children took samples to a laboratory to see whether the water really has the properties people have talked about for generations.

The first spring to be laid out was the one at Drăgoiasa, named „the spring of Saints Michael and Gabriel”. Since then each spring carries the name of a church or monastery feast of the area. The full list of the 17 names is published nowhere; you learn it by walking, from the boards.

Where you start

Only two of the springs are marked on the open maps, both in Panaci village: the spring of Saints Peter and Paul, and the spring of Saint Elijah. The rest are scattered across the commune, at the roadside and along the streams, so the simplest thing is to start from the first one, close to the centre of the village, and take the route from there.

Give yourself time. 60 kilometres are not done in one morning, and the circuit is meant as a walk in several stages, through the villages, not as a race from one end to the other.

Spring water and bottled water

Bottled mineral water also leaves the commune: three officially recognised sources are at Păltiniș, and the plant is at Panaci. Those are industrial catchments, a different thing from the springs laid out by the children. From these last ones you drink with a mug, on the spot, with no analysis certificate on show: nobody has published one, so we promise you no healing properties, only the taste.