Here the ground is flat, wet and green, and a long, low bank runs across it for no obvious reason. The bank is the Krummwall, the Crooked Wall, one of the oldest sections of the Danevirke, the great system of ramparts that the Danes built across the neck of the Jutland peninsula against their southern neighbours. The first banks go back to the early Middle Ages, and the line was added to and rebuilt for centuries, in timber, earth and brick, until the nineteenth century. UNESCO recognised the Danevirke, together with the Viking town of Hedeby, in 2018.
The nearby village of Hollingstedt matters for a reason that sounds odd to a rider: it was a port. The river Treene, now a gentle stream among meadows, once carried ships, and in the Viking age goods were unloaded here and hauled overland a short distance to Hedeby, the trading town on the Schlei inlet of the Baltic. It was a shortcut across the peninsula that spared sailors the long and dangerous trip around the north of Denmark, and the place made its money from tolls and trade. Today it is nearly silent, with a small museum and information boards.
For a motorcyclist, Schleswig-Holstein is wide, level and windy, a country of dykes, hedgerows, brick farms and long views. Roads here are straight and well surfaced, with small villages, level crossings and agricultural traffic, and the wind off the North Sea can push a bike sideways on open stretches. Summer evenings are long and light, and spring brings rape fields in brilliant yellow, though showers are quick and cold. It is easy riding with little of the drama of the Alps, but it has a beauty of space and weather.
Fuel is available at Kropp, about twelve kilometres off, and at larger towns such as Schleswig and Husum, but the villages in between have little. Expect simple north German food, with fish rolls, labskaus, and tea or coffee with a slice of cake in a village café. Stop at the bank for a few minutes, walk up onto it, and notice how the land falls away on both sides, then imagine it topped with a palisade and a watchman.