The countryside around Vârful Runcului is the landscape that two of Romania's best-loved writers came from, and it shows in their work. Liviu Rebreanu, born in the Năsăud area in 1885, set his novel Ion, about a peasant's hunger for land, in villages very like these, and the poet George Coșbuc grew up not far away in the valleys north of Năsăud. The hill itself, a rounded summit above the Someș valley, carries traces of the Roman watch system that once guarded the northern frontier of Dacia, part of the World Heritage listing since 2024, but its real charm is the view of the farmland Rebreanu wrote about.
Fields of maize and wheat, hay meadows and orchards patch the slopes, and the villages, Negrilești, Ciceu-Giurgești and Reteag among them, keep a slower pace. Haystacks still stand in the meadows in late summer, built around a central pole, and storks nest on the electricity poles. The Someș Mare flows through the valley below, lined with willows and poplars, and in the evening the light turns gold on the hills.
The riding here is quiet and rural. The main road along the valley is straightforward and fast, while the tracks climbing to the hilltop villages wind and buck, with loose gravel and potholes. Traffic is light, but watch for carts, livestock and village dogs. The landscape is gentle rather than dramatic, and the pleasure lies in the slow rhythm of the villages and the wide views across the valley. It is gentlest of all in late May, when the meadows are full of flowers and the cuckoo calls from every wood.
Căianu Mic, about thirteen kilometres away, and Beclean, a little further, are the places to find fuel and shops. In the villages, you might be offered home-made bread, cheese and plum brandy, and hospitality is generous. The Rebreanu memorial house and museums dedicated to both writers can be visited in the area, and they offer an insight into the culture and history of this corner of Transylvania.