Where the Lippe meets the Rhine, the Romans came and went. Wesel stands at that confluence, and the long straight valley of the Lippe was one of their invasion routes into Germania in the years around the birth of Christ, when the generals of Augustus pushed east of the Rhine and built camps along the river. The fields called Flürener Feld lie just outside the town, on flat arable land, and they are part of the Lower German Limes, the Roman frontier along the Rhine which UNESCO inscribed in 2021. What the listing preserves is below the soil: ditches, post holes and the faint outlines of military camps, visible mostly as crop marks from the air. On the ground you see a field, a hedge and the sky.
Wesel itself has had a rough history. It was a Hanseatic town and a Prussian fortress, with a great citadel whose gate, the Berliner Tor, still stands, and it was almost totally destroyed in the last weeks of the Second World War, when Allied bombing and the crossing of the Rhine in March 1945 left little standing. The Cathedral of St Willibrord, a Gothic church, was rebuilt, and the Rhine bridge, a long, modern steel span, has been replaced more than once. The town has a quiet, rebuilt feel with a pleasant river front.
This is a place for an easy day on a bike. The Lower Rhine is flat and open, with poplars, willow-lined ditches, pastures with black and white cows and long, straight roads crossing a huge sky. There are no bends to speak of, but the light on a clear morning, with mist lifting off the river, is beautiful, and the wind can be strong from the west. Winter brings flocks of Arctic geese, a sight and sound that many riders do not expect. The roads are well surfaced but narrow, and bicycles share them heavily, especially at weekends.
Wesel has fuel and supermarkets, being a town of over sixty thousand, and Hamminkeln just to the north has more. The riverside cafes serve simple German fare, and in spring asparagus appears on every menu.
Take the ride list south to Monheim, where the Roman fort of Haus Bürgel lies on the bank of the Rhine, and the story of the frontier carries on.