The Hochwald is the sort of place that NATO likes, and the reason is the sky. Uedem, six kilometres from Hochwald 13, hosts a major air defence and control site, a Luftwaffe installation that sits beside the forest and helps monitor air traffic across northern and central Europe. You will not see much of it from the road beyond fences and the odd radome, but it explains why the ridge, which stands higher than almost anything else on the Lower Rhine plain, was such a useful place to put a radar.
The forest itself is a mix of pine, beech and oak on sandy, glacially shaped ground. It stretches between Uedem, Kalkar and Xanten, and the roads cut through it in straight lines as if drawn with a ruler. The ride is gentle, with long, level stretches and the occasional gentle bend where an old estate boundary once ran. There is not a hairpin within fifty kilometres, so if you want a technical challenge you are in the wrong district, but the quiet and the predictable surface make it a restful place for an easy touring day.
Be aware that military zones sit in the district and photography near fences can attract attention from guards, so keep your camera aimed at the trees. Hunting also goes on in the forest in autumn and winter, and the rides are well marked with signs telling you when parts of the forest are closed. Fallen branches after a storm can block the lanes, and in autumn the leaves are slippery after rain.
Uedem has fuel and a few cafés, and Kalkar and Xanten both offer larger selections. If you want a proper meal after a ride, an old-fashioned Niederrhein inn in any of these villages will happily feed you pork schnitzel with fried potatoes and a glass of the local Altbier, a dark, bitter beer in the Düsseldorf style.
For the best of the forest, aim for a still morning in April, when the beech leaves are new and the light is green and thin, and when the ground is still soft after the winter.