Two numbered watchtower sites on the Roman frontier sit here in the Westerwald countryside above the Rhine, near the villages of Melsbach and Rengsdorf. The paired label is archaeologists' shorthand, because the Upper Germanic Limes was a chain of towers placed within sight of one another, a few hundred metres apart. These two were part of the line that ran from the Rhine near Rheinbrohl across the hills of Rhineland-Palatinate and on towards the Taunus, and the whole frontier is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed in 2005 as part of the larger Roman Limes complex.
Today you are in rolling, mixed farmland and beech woods, between the Neuwied basin on the Rhine and the higher ground of the Westerwald. The road here is the kind of ordinary secondary road the German interior does well, with smooth tarmac, gentle bends and a lot of woodland shade. You will meet commuters heading to Neuwied in the morning and evening, and cyclists on warm weekends, but outside those hours it is peaceful. The Wied valley, a little to the east, makes a good detour with tighter curves and pleasant river scenery.
For services, Neuwied about six kilometres away is the answer: a town of nearly seventy thousand people on the Rhine, with fuel, food and everything else. Rengsdorf and Melsbach are smaller but handy for a coffee. Neuwied has a strange history of its own, having been laid out by the Counts of Wied in the eighteenth century with a policy of religious tolerance that attracted Moravian Brethren, among other groups. Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, founder of the rural cooperative bank movement, also lived and worked in the area.
If you stand at the site and look along the ridge, you can imagine a soldier doing the same thing, watching the barbarian side for smoke. It is a small and humble place, which is entirely the point. Ride on with a bit more respect for how long this land has been fought over and farmed.