Rheinbrohl, on the Rhine, is where the Upper Germanic Limes begins, and from there it climbs the hills of the Westerwald and heads east and south for roughly 550 kilometres to the Danube. Watchtowers were numbered along the way, and WP 1/30 is one of the early ones, in the first section after the Rhine, in wooded country a couple of kilometres from the village of Melsbach. The Romans built the frontier in the second century, with timber towers first and stone later, and it marked the edge of their empire for around a century and a half.
Today, you are more likely to find a grassy mound or a low bank than anything grand. Reconstructed towers and a replica palisade give a sense of how it looked, while on the ground, the line shows up as a ridge among trees. UNESCO listed the Upper Germanic-Raetian Limes in 2005, as part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire, and the fact that you can still follow it for such a distance, through forest and field, is striking.
The country here is soft and green, with rolling hills, beech and oak woods, and small valleys, and the Wied river runs close by on its way down to the Rhine at Neuwied. Villages are quiet and tidy, with half-timbered farmhouses, and fields of rape and grain. In spring, the meadows are full of flowers, and in autumn, the woods are warm with colour. Mist hangs in the valleys on cool mornings.
The Westerwald is good for easy riding. The roads follow the contours, with long bends and gentle gradients, and traffic is light outside weekends. There are many small turns onto farm tracks, so watch for mud and gravel. Fuel is available in Neuwied and in larger villages, with a few bakeries and inns along the way. About two thousand people live in Melsbach, so do not count on much there. Dress for a change in weather, since showers come off the hills quickly, and leave time for a walk along the line of the old frontier, with a flask of coffee.