A carriage took its name from Landau, which tells you something about the town's old self-importance. The Landauer, with its folding two-part roof, is said to have first been built here in the early eighteenth century, around the time the French and the Habsburgs were scrapping over the fortress. Landau was French for long stretches, and the great military engineer Vauban gave it a star-shaped citadel in the 1680s. Most of the walls have gone, but the street plan and some of the gates remain, and the town still feels more ordered than its winegrowing neighbours.
Today it is the cheerful, slightly academic capital of the southern Palatinate, with about forty thousand people, students, a big covered market and a pedestrian centre full of cafés. The vineyards begin a few hundred metres beyond the last houses. The Pfalz is Germany's second-largest wine region, and the grapes around here are mostly Riesling and Burgundy varieties, plus a lot of Dornfelder, a dark red that locals drink in half-litre glasses without any fuss.
For a rider, Landau is a base more than a destination. The Wine Route rolls south from here through villages like Siebeldingen and Birkweiler, on narrow roads between vines, with the dark wall of the Palatinate Forest to the west. Traffic is thick on weekends in autumn, when every second tractor is hauling grapes and every second car is looking for a parking space. You will do better on a weekday or at breakfast time, when the hills are quiet and smell of damp earth. For something with more bend in it, turn west up the valley toward Annweiler, where the road climbs into red sandstone country and the castle of Trifels sits on its crag. Richard the Lionheart was held there in 1193, a fact the locals take as a kind of personal compliment.
There is no shortage of fuel or food in Landau, which makes it the right place to sort out the bike, find a hotel and sit down to a plate of Saumagen, the stuffed pig's stomach that the Palatinate loves and outsiders approach cautiously. If that is too bold, ask for Flammkuchen, which the French side of the border claims too.
The weather is mild, among the warmest in Germany. Almond and peach trees flower in March, wine festivals fill the summer and the vines turn copper in October.