In the hills of the Westerwald, east of Koblenz, the Roman frontier ran from the Rhine up across the high ground towards the Taunus, and archaeologists have numbered every tower site along it. Watchtower WP 1/77, near the villages of Kadenbach and Arzbach, is one of them, now marked by a low mound or reconstructed foundations in the woods. The frontier here was a palisade of timber and later an earth bank and ditch, with towers every few hundred metres, and the whole system is part of the Upper German-Raetian Limes World Heritage listing.
The surrounding area is the Kannenbäckerland, the land of the jug makers, where grey stoneware with blue decoration has been made for centuries from the rich clay deposits of the region. Höhr-Grenzhausen, the main town, has a ceramics museum and many potteries, and salt-glazed jugs, mugs and crocks from here were once exported across Europe. The Westerwald itself is a landscape of rolling hills, forests and small villages, cooler and wetter than the Rhine valley below.
For riders, the Westerwald offers quiet, flowing roads through forests and villages, with gentle climbs and views over the hills. The roads down to the Rhine and the Lahn are steeper and twistier, with hairpins and lovely views over the river valleys, and Koblenz, where the Moselle meets the Rhine at the Deutsches Eck, is a short ride away. On the minor roads you will mostly share the tarmac with tractors and the odd post van.
In Höhr-Grenzhausen, six kilometres away, you can refuel and then browse a ceramics museum and potteries welcome visitors; you might take home a grey and blue stoneware jug as a souvenir. The villages have inns serving Westerwald food, potato dishes, game in season and Döppekuchen, a hearty potato cake with bacon. Koblenz, a short ride away, has the dramatic Deutsches Eck at the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle, and a cable car up to the Ehrenbreitstein fortress, one of the largest in Europe, with a view that makes the ride worthwhile.