Strâmtură means a narrowing, and the name fits. Just outside Gâlgău, a small Sălaj village on the Someș, the valley pinches between wooded slopes, and the Roman frontier made use of exactly such pinch points to control movement along the river. The site listed as Valea Strâmturei belongs to that northern Dacian line, and like most of its neighbours it is earthwork and setting rather than standing masonry. You come for the geography and the sense of a border that ran through these quiet hills nearly two thousand years ago.
The river road is the backbone of the ride. Along the Someș between Dej and Jibou the road follows the water through a series of tight bends, with the railway on one side and steep woods on the other, and it is one of the nicer stretches of ordinary national road in northern Transylvania. Trucks use it, so pick your overtakes, and watch for gravel washed out of side valleys after rain. Spring brings the river up brown and fast, while October turns the beech and oak on the gorge walls to copper.
Gâlgău itself is tiny, around eight hundred people, with a shop and not much else, so plan your fuel. Ileanda, eight kilometres away, is a little larger, and Dej, about nineteen kilometres back east, is the dependable choice for a full tank and a cooked lunch. The villages on this stretch keep wooden churches and old peasant houses with deep eaves, and a slow ride through them reveals more than any museum.
If the ride is the variant that continues to Brâncovenești, you will be swapping Roman earthworks for a castle of the Kemény family on a bluff above the Mureș, a good contrast for one day. Either way, take a minute at the narrows with the engine off. You will hear the river, a train perhaps, a dog somewhere up the slope, and you will understand why a garrison commander once thought this was the place to stand.