The Westerwald is a low, rain-washed plateau of beech, meadow and clay pits, and the Roman Limes cut straight across it. This stretch, marked by the surveyors' numbers for two watchtowers, lies close to Höhr-Grenzhausen, where the Limes was a palisade and ditch with timber towers every few hundred metres, replaced later by stone. You will not find tall walls. What you find is a gentle bank in the woods, a mound where a tower stood, and a signpost telling you that soldiers once watched the horizon from this exact spot.
The Upper Germanic Limes starts at the Rhine near Rheinbrohl and runs east and south for hundreds of kilometres, and in 2005 it was added to the UNESCO list as part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire. It was a border of observation and control more than of defence, a way to see who crossed and to tax what they carried, and the straightness of the line is its most striking feature, since it ignores hills and valleys in favour of an engineer's ruler.
Höhr-Grenzhausen is a name worth remembering for another reason. This is the Kannenbäckerland, the jug-bakers' land, where the local clay has been used for stoneware since the Middle Ages, and the town has a ceramics museum and several working studios. The grey salt-glazed stoneware with blue patterns that you see in German pubs came from here. Clay and woodland make the area feel earthy and quiet, and the smell of wood smoke from a kiln on a cold morning is hard to forget.
Riding is calm and pleasant on the minor roads of the Westerwald, with moderate bends, forest sections and quick changes of light. The surface is mostly good, though shaded corners stay damp and leaf-covered in autumn, and there are logging lorries on weekdays. May and October are the best months. The area is crossed by marked hiking trails, so you may meet walkers on forest tracks, and a slow ride will serve you better than a fast one.
Höhr-Grenzhausen, two kilometres away, has fuel, supermarkets and bakeries, and Hillscheid and Simmern are smaller villages with a shop or two. Bring a rain jacket, because this plateau collects clouds.