The Upper Germanic Limes begins a few kilometres from here, at Rheinbrohl on the Rhine, and in its first miles it climbs straight up into the Westerwald. Watchtowers numbered WP 1/41 to 1/50 mark a short run of that frontier in the wooded hills behind Neuwied and Bendorf, near the villages of Stromberg, Anhausen and Heimbach-Weis. Do not expect towers. What remains is a low bank, a ditch you can trace through the beech trunks, and here and there the outline of a tower base marked by archaeologists.
It is the idea that gets under your skin. From this ridge the frontier ran some 550 kilometres across Germany to the Danube, a line of palisade, bank, ditch and timber or stone towers placed so that each could signal to the next. Soldiers stood here in Westerwald drizzle looking north into country they never conquered. The Limes is a UNESCO site, and in this corner of Rhineland-Palatinate it is signposted on walking trails rather than presented with big visitor centres, which suits its quiet atmosphere.
The riding in the Westerwald is honest, rolling stuff. The plateau is cut by deep little valleys running down to the Rhine, so roads alternate between fast straights across open farmland and tight descents through forest, often damp and leaf-covered in autumn. The Sayn valley below Bendorf is a lovely piece of road, passing Sayn Castle and the cast-iron hall of the Sayner Hütte, an early nineteenth-century ironworks that looks more like a cathedral of iron. Expect wind and rain more often than the weather forecast admits; the Westerwald has a reputation for it, and fog sits in the hollows on autumn mornings.
Fuel and food are easy in Bendorf and Neuwied, both proper towns down in the Rhine basin, and Neuwied has the Roman Museum and riverside promenade if you want more context. The hill villages offer the odd bakery and inn. A good plan is to ride up from the Rhine early, park at a forest car park, walk ten minutes along the trail to stand on the actual bank of the frontier, then drop down to the river for lunch.