Arsura is Romanian for a burn, a scorch, or a heat rash, and it turns up on rural maps wherever a hillside was cleared by fire. The name, though, tells a small story of its own, since a clearing burned for pasture or for planting is exactly the sort of place where people leave pottery, charcoal and traces of a settlement.
The ride title pairs the place with the Church of the Holy Archangels, and Romania has many churches with that dedication, including a number of timber ones in Maramureș, which lies a day's ride to the north and has a group of wooden churches listed by UNESCO in 1999. They are tall, narrow buildings, with steep shingled roofs and slender towers that look like pencils pointing at the sky. Even in Sălaj, the villages kept a tradition of wooden churches, though many have been replaced by concrete ones over the last century. If you spot a dark, shingled steeple among the trees, it is worth a detour.
The landscape around Hurez and Cizer is of low, forested ridges and shallow valleys, with fields of maize and hay and orchards of plum and apple. The roads are narrow and winding, with a mixed surface, and tractors, carts and flocks of sheep are common. In early summer, the air smells of cut grass and elderflower. In October, the beech woods turn yellow and gold and the roads are covered with leaves. Winter is cold, with snow, and the minor roads are rarely ploughed early.
Hurez is small. Take a little cash for farm stalls, where you can buy cheese, bread and honey.
On a still evening, the sound of church bells carries a long way in this country, and the smoke from the chimneys hangs low over the valley.