Just east of Nijmegen, where the Netherlands suddenly remembers how to make hills, a wooded slope near the village of Berg en Dal hides the remains of a Roman industrial site. De Holdeurn was where the Tenth Legion, Legio X Gemina, stationed at Nijmegen in the late first and early second centuries, made roof tiles, bricks and pottery, stamped with the legion's name and shipped all over the region. The kilns and workshops have been excavated, and the site is one of the many places that make up the Frontiers of the Roman Empire – the Lower German Limes, listed by UNESCO in 2021.
The landscape explains why the Romans liked it. The hills here are an ice-pushed moraine, piled up by glaciers during an ice age, with clay deposits and wood for fuel close at hand, and the river Waal nearby for transport. Nijmegen grew from a Roman base into a town and claims to be the oldest city in the Netherlands. The Museum Het Valkhof in the city has a superb collection of Roman finds from the area, including objects from De Holdeurn.
For riders, this corner is a rare treat in a flat country. The roads around Berg en Dal, Groesbeek and the Duivelsberg climb and dip through beech woods, with short, steep gradients and proper bends, and they are popular with cyclists too, so ride with consideration. To the north, the Ooijpolder spreads out between the hills and the Waal, a landscape of dykes, meadows, side channels and grazing cattle, where narrow dyke roads give long views across the floodplain. Over the border to the east, the German roads around Kranenburg and the Reichswald forest add more variety.
There is twentieth-century history here as well. Groesbeek, a few kilometres to the south, was one of the landing zones for American paratroopers during Operation Market Garden in September 1944, and the National Liberation Museum and the war cemeteries in the area tell the story of the bitter fighting that followed through the winter of 1944–45.
Practical needs are easily met. Hengstdal, a district of Nijmegen just four kilometres away, and the city itself have fuel, cafés and shops. On a fine day, the terraces in Berg en Dal and along the Ooijpolder are lovely places for a coffee and a slice of apple pie, the Dutch answer to every question, before heading back into the hills.