North of Osnabrück the land rises into a low, wooded ridge, the Ankumer Höhe, a moraine left by the glaciers of the penultimate ice age, and around it the countryside rolls gently with fields, hedges and old farmsteads. Berge is a village on the western side of that ridge, between Bippen and Fürstenau, in a district that Stone Age farmers settled thousands of years ago.
Their monuments are still here. The whole region between the Emsland and Osnabrück is scattered with megalithic passage graves, great boulders arranged into chambers by people who farmed this land five thousand years ago, and a signposted Route of Megalithic Culture links dozens of them. Many lie in woods or at field edges, mossy and silent, and they are free to visit.
Ankum, a few kilometres east, has a church so large for a small town that locals call it the Artland Cathedral, its tower visible for miles. To the north lies the Artland itself, around Quakenbrück, famous for its great half-timbered farmhouses with carved gables and inscriptions, built by wealthy farmers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The riding is gentle and pleasant, with smooth roads curving over the low hills and through woods. The Ankumer Höhe gives some of the few real bends in this part of Lower Saxony, and the views from the higher ground stretch across the flat plain to the north. Traffic is light, apart from farm machinery in season.
Fürstenau and Ankum are the places for fuel and food. Ankum's market square has cafés, and in late summer the farm shops along the roads sell potatoes, honey and sausage from their own animals. It is a quiet, contented corner of Germany, and it rewards a slow pace.