Giants appear in the place names of the northern Carpathian hills, and Casa Urieșilor, the House of the Giants, is one of them. Sita, a hill name rather than a village stop, lies about four kilometres from Spermezeu in the county of Bistrița-Năsăud, in a country of forest, hay meadows and scattered farms between the Someș valley and the first ridges of the Țibleș range.
Romanian folklore is full of such beings, huge ancestors who lived before the present race and moved boulders, dug lakes or threw stones at each other across valleys. Where a field of loose rocks or a strange outcrop catches the eye, someone has usually said that a giant left it. Alongside them there are fairies, the iele, whom you must not name after dark, and the strigoi, the restless dead, and a good deal of local life is still shaped by saints' days and the old agricultural calendar, with bonfires on the eve of St John in June.
For the rider the area is a collection of narrow valley roads linked by steep ridge crossings. The main road through Spermezeu is decent, but the side roads that climb toward the hill farms are patched and sometimes gravelled, and a sharp rain shower turns the clay to grease. Corners are tight, visibility is limited by hedges and hay, and you may meet a horse cart or a herd of cows in the middle of the road. A relaxed pace, plenty of space to stop, and a light touch on the brakes will see you through.
Spermezeu has some two and a half thousand people and a few shops, and you can find coffee and basic food, but fuel is better sought in larger towns such as Năsăud or Bistrița, so start the day with a full tank. Mobile signal can fade in the valleys, so carry a paper map or an offline one.
Autumn mornings, with mist in the hollows and smoke rising from chimneys, make the legends feel closer.