There is nothing to climb at Ruffenhofen, and that is the clever part. The Roman fort here, on gently rising ground above the Wörnitz near Weiltingen and Wittelshofen, has never been rebuilt in stone. Instead, the outline of the walls, gates and the buildings of the settlement around it has been traced across the fields with hedges, trees and mown strips, so the whole place reads like a plan drawn in plants. From the little viewing hill you can see the shape of a garrison that has been underground for seventeen centuries.
The fort sat just behind the Raetian Limes in western Middle Franconia, a cavalry and infantry post watching a frontier that was then the edge of the empire. Geophysical surveys mapped it in remarkable detail without much digging, and the Limeseum next to the park explains what they found with a refreshingly modern touch. It is worth an hour, especially if you have been riding past Limes signs all week without quite knowing what you were looking at.
The country around is soft, rolling farmland, wide skies and small villages with steep red roofs. The great landmark is the Hesselberg, the highest point in Middle Franconia at 689 metres, a long whaleback hill that rises out of the plain a few kilometres to the south and can be seen from everywhere. A small road climbs most of the way up, and from the top the view runs across the Ries crater towards the Swabian Jura. Local roads here are narrow and well surfaced, with sudden ninety-degree bends at field corners and the occasional tractor; they reward a relaxed pace.
For fuel and supplies, Wassertrüdingen is nine kilometres away and Dinkelsbühl, about fifteen to the west, is the better reason to make a detour: one of the best preserved medieval towns in Germany, with an intact ring of walls and towers on the Romantic Road. Weiltingen and Wittelshofen are small villages with a church and an inn rather than a full service stop. On a summer evening the light across the planted fort turns gold, the swallows hunt low over the hedges, and the only sound is the wind in the wheat. Hard to imagine a legionary feeling quite so peaceful here.