High above the Sebeș and Cugir valleys, where the Șureanu foothills fold into long grassy shoulders, the Romans kept watch over the southern approaches to their province of Dacia. The name on the map, Muncelu-Lăutaorea, belongs to the ridge country above Pianu de Jos, and it is one of the many small frontier points that archaeologists have tied to the Roman defensive system here. Do not expect walls to lean on. What survives on these hilltops is usually a faint platform, a ditch you notice only when the light is low, and a view that explains everything about why a sentry was posted there.
The riding is the reason to come up. The lanes that climb out of the Pianu side are narrow, patched and occasionally graded gravel, so treat them as farm roads rather than touring tarmac, and expect a horse cart or a flock where the hedges close in. In return you get orchards, beech woods, hay meadows that still get cut by hand, and long looks south toward the Șureanu and Parâng ranges. Late spring and early autumn are kindest; July afternoons can bring heavy thunderstorms that turn clay tracks slick in minutes.
You are also close to one of Romania's great roads. Șugag, about thirteen kilometres away, sits on the DN67C, the northern end of the Transalpina, which follows the Sebeș river up past its reservoirs before climbing over the mountains to Novaci. If you have a spare day, this is the side from which to start it, and the gorge sections above Șugag are lovely even if you turn back before the high pass. The Transalpina's top section closes for the snowy months, so check before you commit.
Practically, villages like Pianu, Șugag and Jina have small shops and the occasional terrace bar, but for a reliable fill head for Cugir, the industrial town some eighteen kilometres off, or Sebeș on the main road to the north. Câlnic, on the same ride, adds a Saxon fortress-house to the day, and Alba Iulia's star-shaped citadel is not far beyond. Carry water up the ridge, keep your speed down through villages where dogs sleep in the road, and save the photographs for the evening, when the hills go gold and the old Roman logic of the place becomes obvious.