Kadenbach, Arzbach and Eitelborn are three small villages on the broad, wooded plateau of the Westerwald, a short way north of the Lahn valley, and the four watchtowers here sit in a short run along the Roman frontier. Numbers 1/78 to 1/81 belong to the first section of the Upper German-Raetian Limes, running from the Rhine towards the Taunus. The frontier was a palisade with towers placed within sight of one another, and the signal system relied on fire at night and smoke or flag by day. In this area the Romans picked ridges and shoulders of hills so the view ran for miles over land that was then forest and scrub.
Arzbach is a clay village, like its neighbours, and potters have worked here for centuries using the same pale stoneware clay that made the area famous. The land is gentle farmland with orchards and low hills, where the lanes between villages are well suited to relaxed riding. You can string together loops of fifty kilometres on small roads that ignore the main traffic, with just enough climb to make it interesting and long views north to the high plateau. The weather, as everywhere on the Westerwald, is changeable, and winter can bring black ice on the exposed ridges. Midsummer evenings are the kindest time.
Fuel is not available in the hamlets themselves in any dependable way, so aim for Bad Ems on the Lahn, a few kilometres to the south, or Höhr-Grenzhausen, which has enough people to support several pumps and an excellent range of bakeries. The ridge top itself has a quiet, open feel, with big skies and the odd buzzard turning slowly over the fields.
The tower mounds are low, and you will probably see the information board before anything else. It is worth treating the stop as a short pause, with a look along the line and a moment to think about how thin the frontier was in real life. A few hundred soldiers watched a long border, and the system depended on discipline and signals more than on force. Later in the day, drop down to the Lahn, where the road follows the river between wooded slopes and the air smells of water and old stone.