Preluci is the sort of place that does not appear in guidebooks and does not seem to mind. The name on the stop points to a stone, a crag or outcrop above the village, and the ride starts and ends here, which gives you a good excuse to look at it properly before you go. The country around is the Sălaj hill belt where it nudges toward the Someș valley, a mix of oak and beech forest, pasture, and villages strung along small streams.
Your neighbours at this end are modest: Băbeni a couple of kilometres off, Lozna and Letca not much farther. None of them is large, so do not count on a station or a restaurant in the immediate area. The nearest real town is Jibou, about fourteen kilometres away, and it is the sensible place to top up the tank and eat before you commit to the back roads. Jibou also has the Wesselényi castle with its botanical garden, one of the older ones in Romania, a pleasant hour if the weather turns.
The roads between these villages are the kind that reward a relaxed hand. Surfaces are mixed, with good stretches and a few that were patched by optimists, and in wet weather clay from the fields ends up on the asphalt. Slow down in the villages, where dogs, hens and the odd horse-drawn wagon treat the carriageway as a shared yard. In return you get long, quiet ridge sections where the only sound is your engine and the wind in the hay.
Good light comes early and late. At seven in the morning the hills have a blue haze, and the stone, whatever shape it takes, throws a proper shadow. Summer afternoons can be hot and thundery, and in these hills a storm builds fast, so keep an eye on the western sky. Autumn is the best season: the beeches turn copper, the roads are empty, and the villagers burn leaves in the evening. Come back through the same village on the way home and you will notice how different it looks with the light behind you.