The Swabian-Franconian Forest is a country of ridges and ravines northeast of Stuttgart, and the Mainhardt area lies on its northern edge, where the hills drop to wide clearings of meadow. The Romans pushed their frontier through here in the second century, building a line of watchtowers, small forts and a wooden palisade, and at Mainhardt they placed a larger fort, with smaller fortlets such as the one at Herrenwiesen along the frontier line. A fortlet was a compact post for a handful of soldiers who watched the forest, signalled to the next tower and checked travellers at the border.
Little shows above ground, so the experience is mostly one of landscape, the straight line through the trees, a faint bank and ditch in the moss. Mainhardt itself, a village of nearly six thousand, has a local museum with Roman finds and a small archaeological park with reconstructed pieces of the frontier, and the Limes path runs through the woods for walkers and cyclists. The whole line from the Rhine to the Danube, the Upper German-Raetian Limes, is a UNESCO site.
For riders, this is among the best terrain in Baden-Württemberg. The roads through the Mainhardt Forest and over to the Löwenstein hills climb and dive through beech and spruce, with long, flowing bends, little traffic during the week and good surfaces. On sunny weekends in summer many motorcyclists come, and the local authorities have been strict on noise and speed, with cameras and sometimes random checks. Mist lingers in the valleys in the morning, and in winter ice can be a problem, particularly on shaded north-facing slopes.
Mainhardt has a petrol station, a bakery, a few inns and some small shops, and Schwäbisch Hall, a handsome medieval salt town about twenty-five kilometres away, offers more of everything, including a great open-air staircase in front of St Michael's church. Heilbronn is the larger city to the west. Try the Swabian specialities, Maultaschen, a kind of large stuffed pasta, or Spätzle with lentils, and a glass of Trollinger wine. Please respect the signs prohibiting motor vehicles on forest tracks, and keep to the public roads.