Kropp is the town that this stretch of the Danevirke leans on. It is a modest place of about six thousand people, set just off the motorway that runs from Hamburg to Denmark, and in practical terms it is the closest place with proper services. The wall itself lies a few kilometres to the north, in fields and hedges near the villages of Dannewerk and Groß Rheide, and at this point it runs westward towards the marshy valley of the Treene, where the old defence simply ended in wet ground that no army could cross.
The idea of the Danevirke is that it closes a gap, and that gap is not a straight line. It is a corridor of firm sandy ground, a spine of low hills called the Geest, bordered on both sides by bog and water. Travellers and drovers from the south had always followed it, so the wall blocked the one dry road. The Ox Road, the old drovers' route from Jutland down to Hamburg, followed the same ridge, and herds of cattle once walked it by the thousand. In some places you can still follow the old trackway in the field edges.
The land is open and farmed, a patchwork of grain, maize and grassland, divided by hedgerows called Knicks, the typical banked hedges of Schleswig-Holstein. The roads that cross it are small and quiet, with long straights, the odd bend, and a series of low rises that give you a view over the plain. Wind is often the main issue. A west wind comes straight off the North Sea with nothing to stop it, so a strong headwind is a real possibility.
Kropp has fuel stations, a supermarket and a bakery, and Groß Rheide, a small village, has hardly anything. Fill up in Kropp before the last stretch, and carry something to drink. If you want a break, the quiet lanes around the wall are good for a leg-stretch and a view across the countryside. The skies here are wide, and in late afternoon the colours of the fields are rich.