The Upper Germanic Limes does not start with a bang. Near Bendorf, on the slopes where the Westerwald drops toward the Rhine at the Neuwied basin, it is a matter of reading the woods: a low bank here, a shallow ditch there, and the spot where a Roman watchtower once stood, numbered by archaeologists as WP 1/51. The towers were placed within sight of each other, timber at first and later stone, so that a signal could pass along the frontier faster than any rider. Standing here among the beech trees you are close to the northern end of a border that ran more than five hundred kilometres to the Danube.
Bendorf itself is a working town of some seventeen thousand people, spread along the Rhine with industry by the water and older villages tucked into the side valleys. Its suburb of Sayn is the reason many people stop: the ruined castle above the valley, the Sayn palace with its butterfly house, and the Sayner Hütte, a nineteenth century iron foundry hall whose cast iron frame was a landmark of early industrial building. Stromberg and Heimbach-Weis are the closest villages to the tower site, quiet and residential.
The roads up from the Rhine are what make the area fun. The Brexbach and Saynbach valleys cut into the Westerwald with tight, wooded climbs, damp patches under the trees and the odd gravel spill from a farm track, so take the first run steady. Higher up, the plateau opens into fields, small villages and long straights between bends, and on a clear day the views back over the Neuwied basin and across to the Eifel are wide and calm. Weekends bring a lot of bikers onto these valleys, and the local police know it, so expect controls in summer.
Fuel is easy in Bendorf and in Neuwied across the river, and there are bakeries and Turkish snack bars in town for a cheap lunch. The forest paths to the tower area are walkers' territory, so park at a village edge and go on foot. If you have time, the Roman fort at Niederbieber on the Neuwied side was one of the biggest on this stretch, and the modest finds and markers there give the tower sites around Bendorf their context. Late afternoon is the best hour, when the sun comes in low under the beech canopy and the river below turns to brass.