Maramureș is one of the few corners of Europe where wood is still the language of the sacred, and the church of Saint Parascheva at Poienile Izei is a good place to learn it. It stands on a small rise above the Izei valley, a dark timber church with a steep, double-tiered shingled roof and a slender spire, built in the early seventeenth century and moved to its present spot later. Inside, the walls and ceiling carry painted scenes from the eighteenth century, and the one that always gets quoted is a vivid Last Judgment in which sinners get remarkably specific punishments.
The village is tiny, hardly two hundred metres from the church by the map, and the road through it is a lesson in how people here live. The houses have carved gateways, the hayfields are cut by hand in July and stacked in neat cones, and in the evenings you may see women in headscarves walking back from the hills with rakes. UNESCO lists a group of the wooden churches of Maramureș together, and this one belongs among them, which means you may share the yard with a few other visitors but rarely with a crowd. Ask in the village if the church is closed, because someone usually has a key.
The riding is the pleasure of slow, undulating valley roads rather than anything dramatic. From the Iza valley you follow a ribbon of asphalt through Botiza and on toward Rozavlea, passing carved crosses, small shrines and the odd horse-drawn wagon. The surface is mixed, with good stretches and ones that frost has chewed up, and you should expect to slow for sheep, geese, and unlit corners where hay carts have left straw on the tarmac. It is worth riding it on a clear morning when the mist lifts off the Rodna and Gutâi ranges, and summer evenings bring a smell of cut hay and woodsmoke that I still associate with the north of Romania.
For fuel, the realistic choice is Rozavlea, about nine kilometres away, or a larger town on the main valley road; the hamlets between do not have pumps. You will find food at family guesthouses, where plum brandy, smoked meat, and a pot of sour cabbage rolls arrive without much ceremony. A short stop is enough to see the church, but give the valley the afternoon.