Here the Rhine bends through some of the emptiest farmland in western Germany. The fields at Flüren, north of Wesel, are flat enough to see a church tower from ten kilometres away, and the land runs in long, straight lines of willows, poplars and drainage ditches towards the Dutch border. This is the Niederrhein, a region where people have lived with floods for as long as they have farmed, and where the cycling routes are signposted better than the main roads.
Underneath the fields, the Romans left their traces. The Flürener Feld sites are listed as part of the Lower German Limes, the frontier on the Rhine, and what they are thought to preserve are the faint outlines of camps and installations that archaeologists have found through aerial photographs and geophysical survey. These are sites for the imagination. A rider can park at a field edge and look at a patch of wheat, and the knowledge that an army camped on it two thousand years ago is the whole attraction. The ride list, which links these fields with Monheim-Haus Bürgel, tells a story of a frontier that was dotted with forts at regular intervals along the river.
The weather rules the Lower Rhine. Winds off the North Sea cross the open fields without hindrance, and on a stormy day they can push a loaded bike off line, so keep a firm grip on the bars on the bridge crossings and the exposed dike roads. In winter, fog settles on the flat land and can last all day, and in late autumn the geese arrive in their thousands, crossing the sky in skeins. Spring is the best time, with cherry and apple blossom in the orchards and the first asparagus, which is a local passion.
Wesel has everything a rider might need, including supermarkets, stations and plenty of places for coffee. For quiet roads, the lanes along the Lippe and the dikes of the Rhine are best, avoiding the main highways which carry heavy lorries.
Pack rain gear, and be ready for a very big sky.