There is a hill above Ighiu called Măgulici, and from its slopes you look straight across the Mureș valley toward Alba Iulia, the old Roman Apulum. That view is the whole point. Apulum was the base of the Thirteenth Legion and the largest Roman centre in Dacia, and the hills around it were dotted with watch posts and small sites that kept an eye on the roads in and out. The frontier lists name a site on Dealul Măgulici, and while there is little to see on the ground beyond the lie of the land, standing there makes the Roman geography readable.
Ighiu itself is a commune of over six thousand people with small shops, and it lies in a pocket of vineyards and orchards between the Mureș and the Trascău mountains. The wine country around Alba Iulia has been planted since Roman times, and on a warm afternoon the slopes smell of grapes and dry grass. The roads up from Ighiu and Șard toward the hills are narrow and broken in places, and the last bit to any viewpoint will likely be gravel or grass.
The best riding nearby heads north and west into the Trascău, where the limestone gorges of Râmeț and the valley toward Întregalde give tight, slow, scenic roads with rock walls close on both sides. Further on lie the Apuseni proper. It is not fast country; it is the kind of riding where third gear is plenty and you stop often because the view keeps changing.
For fuel, meals and a proper bed, Alba Iulia is minutes away. Its star-shaped Alba Carolina citadel, built by the Habsburgs in the eighteenth century, is one of the largest of its type in Europe, and it was in this city that the union of Transylvania with Romania was proclaimed on 1 December 1918, still the national day. Walk the walls in the evening, then ride back to the hills in the morning light, when the Mureș valley lies under a thin mist and the old legionary town reappears as the sun burns it off.