Zalău is the county town of Sălaj, a modern small city of about sixty thousand people that grew fast in the communist period, and the countryside around it is far more interesting than the blocks of flats. Brusturi, a few kilometres off, sits in the hills that lead up toward the Meseş mountains, and the name on our list points to a Roman fort called Certiae, one of the line of military posts that kept watch on the northern edge of Dacia, along with a ruin the locals link with an old legend of robbers.
Trajan's conquest of Dacia in the early second century turned this part of Transylvania into a Roman province, with roads connecting the garrison towns, and Napoca, now Cluj, was one of its main cities. The Romans stayed until the 270s, when the emperor Aurelian withdrew the army and the administration south of the Danube. A good deal of Romanian national identity is wrapped up in this story, which is why the Roman remains are marked on tourist maps and signposted in the villages.
The countryside here is rolling, green and agricultural, with hay meadows, plum orchards, small vineyards and villages where Romanian and Hungarian communities live side by side. Riding is easy and relaxed, though not fast: the main roads out of Zalău are busy with lorries, and the minor ones are potholed, with some stretches of broken surface that appear around a bend. In spring the orchards are in blossom, and in autumn the harvest brings tractors onto the roads. Keep an eye out for horse-drawn carts, which are still common and may have no lights.
Zalău has everything a rider needs: several fuel stations, supermarkets and restaurants serving good, hearty Romanian food, such as stuffed cabbage rolls, soups sharpened with sour cream and polenta with cheese. Smaller villages have fewer services, so fill up before you go. The Sălaj County Museum in Zalău holds finds from the Roman sites and is a good place to make sense of the scattered ruins.