The southern Kottenforst is the Bonn locals' own backyard, and on a fine Sunday it feels like it. Tracks and rides cross the woodland in all directions, and the people on them are walkers, joggers, riders and families on bicycles rather than motorbikes. The name on the label, with its mention of a pond-like hollow called Maar, hints at the wet, clay-lined depressions that dot this plateau and hold water after rain. Underneath lie old Roman remains too, including part of the Eifel aqueduct that carried water toward Cologne, though you will see it only if you know where to look.
The roads around the woods are the ones to ride. Lanes out of Alfter, Röttgen and Ippendorf thread between fields and tree lines with a few tight bends, and the surface is generally decent, though it suffers in the freeze-thaw months. To the east you catch glimpses of the Siebengebirge, the volcanic hills across the Rhine, with the Drachenfels as the best known. That gives the route a lovely backdrop on clear days. The one drawback is commuter traffic, which makes the early morning and late afternoon slow.
Fuel is easy, since the stop lies about five kilometres from both Alfter and the centre of Bonn. The city has more than three hundred thousand people and a certain faded grandeur from its time as the capital of West Germany, between 1949 and the move to Berlin. It is also the birthplace of Beethoven and, rather less loftily, of the gummy bear, since the Haribo company was founded in Bonn in 1920. You can follow either legacy, but the sweet shop is faster than the museum.
Come here for a quiet loop and a bit of rest rather than for thrills. The forest has good shade in summer and a lovely carpet of wild garlic in spring, and the smell, if you stop and let it reach you, is surprisingly strong and green. The ponds hold frogs and dragonflies, and the whole place feels more rural than a stone's throw from a federal city has any right to be.