There is very little to see at first glance here, which is exactly what makes the place oddly moving. South of Bonn, in the edge of the Kottenforst near the Heiderhof quarter of Bad Godesberg and the town of Wachtberg, the forest floor hides the faint outlines of Roman practice camps. Legionaries stationed at the fortress of Bonna on the Rhine marched out here to train at the hard, boring work that won the empire its wars: digging ditches, throwing up earth ramparts and laying out a camp to the standard plan in a few hours. A handful of these training camps in the Kottenforst are part of the Lower German Limes, the Roman frontier along the Rhine recognised by UNESCO in 2021.
What survives are low banks and shallow ditches under the beech and oak, often only readable thanks to laser scanning from the air or an information board pointing them out. Walk slowly, look for straight lines where nature does not usually draw them, and you may catch the rounded corner of a rampart. It is quiet in the woods, with woodpeckers, jays and the smell of wet leaves, and only the distant hum of the city reminds you how close you are to a capital that once ran West Germany.
The riding is not epic, but it is useful and green. Heiderhof and Wachtberg sit on a gentle plateau between the Rhine valley and the Ahr, with small roads curling through fields, orchards and villages, and the Drachenfels and Siebengebirge rising across the river at Königswinter. Head south and you are quickly into the Ahr valley and the volcanic Eifel, where the real curves begin. Traffic around Bonn can be thick at rush hour, and the forest tracks themselves are for walkers and cyclists, so park at the edge and go in on foot. Spring and autumn are lovely, with mist in the trees on cool mornings.
Wachtberg and Bad Godesberg have fuel, bakeries and cafés in abundance, so practical worries are minimal. If you have time, combine the visit with the Roman collections in Bonn, where the LVR museum explains what the frontier looked like in its prime, or cross the Rhine by ferry at Bad Godesberg for a coffee in Königswinter and a look at the dragon rock the Nibelung saga made famous.