The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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A 157 km round trip from Hochfeld - roughly 3 h in the saddle. On the way it passes Alpen-Drüpt, Kalkar-Bornsches Feld, Kleve-Keeken and back through Kalkar-Bornsches Feld. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Scenic road chapters
Duisburg-Werthausen → Alpen-Drüpt
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 29 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Chapter facts
Length
34 km
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Duisburg-Werthausen
Werthausen sits on the left bank of the Rhine in Duisburg, across the river from the steelworks, harbour cranes and bridges of one of Europe's great industrial cities. It is an unexpected place to look for Rome, but the Lower Rhine was the frontier of the Roman Empire for centuries, and the line of forts, fortlets and watch posts along it is now inscribed on the UNESCO list as the Frontiers of the Roman Empire, the Lower German Limes. The site at Werthausen is one of these components, part of the chain of military posts that watched the river between the legionary bases at Neuss and Xanten.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Duisburg-Werthausen is where the day begins. Next is Alpen-Drüpt.
2. Alpen-Drüpt
On the flat farmland of the Lower Rhine, between Alpen and Rheinberg, there is little to catch the eye: fields of maize and potatoes, poplars along ditches, brick farmhouses and the occasional windmill. Yet this was once the edge of the Roman world. The Rhine formed the frontier of the empire, and along its banks the Romans built legionary fortresses, forts, watchtowers and temporary camps. Alpen-Drüpt is one of the sites included in the Frontiers of the Roman Empire, Lower German Limes, inscribed by UNESCO in 2021; like many on the list, it survives mainly below ground, known from aerial photographs and excavations rather than standing ruins.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Alpen-Drüpt comes up 29 km in. Next is Kalkar-Bornsches Feld.
3. Kalkar-Bornsches Feld
Kalkar sits on a low terrace a few kilometres from the Rhine, close to the Dutch border, and everything about the landscape here is flat, wide and bright. The label points to the Bornsches Feld, a field on the edge of town that belongs to the Roman Lower Germanic Limes, the frontier that followed the Rhine itself rather than a wall or a palisade. UNESCO added the whole line to its list in 2021. Here, as elsewhere along the lower river, the Roman forts and camps stood on the river bank, the water served as the barrier, and what remains today is mostly in the ground and in the museums of Xanten, a little way up the Rhine.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
58 km in you reach Kalkar-Bornsches Feld. Next is Kleve-Keeken.
4. Kleve-Keeken
Here the Rhine stops being a German river. Just downstream of the village of Keeken, the great river crosses the border into the Netherlands, and a few kilometres further on it divides, with the Waal carrying most of the water west and the Pannerdens Canal leading to the Nederrijn and the IJssel. In Roman times, this was the northern frontier of the empire, the Lower German Limes, and Keeken is one of the sites listed as part of the UNESCO frontier, with traces of Roman military installations along the old river course.