Dinkelsbühl looks like a stage set, and the people who live there have worked hard to keep it that way. The old town, with its ring of walls, towers and gates, its half-timbered houses and the huge Gothic church of St George, survived the wars and the bombing that destroyed so many German towns, and it is one of the best preserved medieval towns on the Romantic Road. Each July the Kinderzeche, a festival that recalls the story of local children who saved the town during the Thirty Years' War, fills the streets with costumes and music.
The watchtowers on our list are older by more than a thousand years. Here, in Franconia, the Raetian Limes, the eastern part of the German frontier, left the forested hills of the Odenwald and Taunus behind and ran across open farmland. In the second century a stone wall, locally called the Devil's Wall, was built along part of it, while in other places a palisade and ditch marked the line. The watchtowers, numbered by early surveyors, stood a few hundred metres apart. The Limes was listed by UNESCO in 2005, and the line can still be followed in places as a low bank in the fields.
The countryside is quiet and pastoral, with orchards, hop gardens, cornfields and villages with onion-domed churches, and the riding is relaxed. The Romantic Road runs through, along the Wörnitz valley, and the surrounding lanes are narrow, lightly used and a pleasure for an easy day. The surface is generally good, but there are tractors, cyclists and the occasional slow farm vehicle. Late spring and early autumn are the best times, and midsummer afternoons can be hot and thundery.
Dinkelsbühl, ten kilometres away, has several fuel stations on its outskirts and a lot of cafes in the old town. Try a Franconian pork roast with dumplings and red cabbage, or a plate of local carp when it is in season, and finish with an Eisbecher, the German ice cream sundae. Parking is easier outside the walls, and walking round the town takes only a short time, so there is no need for hurry.