The Kottenforst looks like an ordinary Rhineland woodland of oak, beech and hornbeam, with walkers, joggers and the odd horse rider, but in the second half of the first century and beyond it was a training ground for the Roman army. In clearings of the forest, the legion stationed at Bonna, today's Bonn, built a series of temporary camps as exercises, digging ditches and raising ramparts to practise the rapid construction they would need in the field. The remains of these camps, faint earthworks under the trees, are included in the Lower Germanic Limes, which UNESCO listed in 2021. Am Weissen Stein is one of the northern groups.
You need a sharp eye to read them: low banks and shallow ditches under the leaves, best seen in late autumn and winter when the undergrowth dies back. Information boards on the forest paths help, and the effort of finding them makes them more memorable than a museum case.
The Kottenforst covers part of the Ville, a low ridge between the Rhine plain and the Swist valley, south-west of Bonn. The roads through and around it are pleasant, fairly straight forest roads with good surfaces, popular with cyclists and local traffic, and the edges of the forest open onto the Vorgebirge, the gentle slope toward Bornheim and Alfter that is famous for vegetable growing and, in spring, asparagus. Head south into the Eifel and the roads become far more interesting, with valleys, curves and the Ahr wine region not far off.
Alfter and Bornheim are sizeable towns with fuel, shops and cafés, and Bonn, eight kilometres away, has everything a city can offer. Bonn's Rheinisches Landesmuseum is a good place to see Roman finds from the legionary fortress, and the city's old centre, Beethoven's birthplace and the Rhine promenade are easy additions to a day.
The forest smells of damp leaves and moss after rain, and it is surprisingly quiet once you are a few hundred metres from the road. On a warm summer day it offers welcome shade, and in spring the forest floor is carpeted with wood anemones. Stand at the edge of one of those faint ditches and picture a group of legionaries, sweating and cursing, digging a camp they would leave the next day.