Tell us about your weekend ride

I did about 100k yesterday from Mainz to Frankfurt am Main and back. I first rode out along the route of an old Roman Road that I'd been meaning to do for some time. This used to lead from the large Roman legion city of Mogontiacum (Mainz) to their fortifications along the Limes in what is now Hessen, with a spur to the old town of Nida, whose location has been swallowed up by Frankfurt. There were Roman-era ruins still visible above ground in the 1960s and they just went and destroyed the archaeological record by building ugly tower block estates on it. That would no longer be possible today, fortunately.

Anyway, the first stretch of the old alignment is still called "Steinern Straße", or 'Stony Street', just like similar roads in Britain. Another very prominent name, which still recurs several times along the route, is Elisabethenstraße, a medieval name.

From Mainz-Kastel to Wiesbaden-Delkenheim and slightly beyond the route was very easy to cycle. While there were some small information signposts, I got the impression that the road hasn't been worked on much archaeologically. Not that roads are very easy to work on; finds tend to be made by people working in adjacent fields, etc. After Delkenheim, it became first impossible to ride by road bike (my tyres looked as if they were on a crosser after a while) and then impossible even by mountain bike. The track was extremely rutted and pitted and very waterlogged. I walked a kilometre or two until it became rideable again after the underpass under the A(utobahn)3. It was then called "Casteller Straße" through Hofheim-Diedenbergen. In Marxheim I went rather off-course because I couldn't quite remember where I should have gone to trace the road. It's not quuite clear to me how it passed by the well-explored Roman castle there:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kastell_Hofheim

It probably went past the older earthenwork castle, but then another, stone-walled castle appears to have been plonked right on its route. Perhaps it was diverted around it.

Anyway, I soon got out of Hofheim and rode to the motorway junction between the L3018 Hofheimer Straße and the A66, which squats a good length of the old road's route. Here’s a map of the route alignment from Hofheim to Frankfurt:

The problem the motorway arrangement brings is how to get around the subsequent motorway junctions. I went slightly wrong here again by going into Zeilsheim and out again, not having noticed the path around the northern side of the motorway junction. Then it was a case of riding parallel to the motorway, with a couple of naughty bits. The first was crossing a singletrack railway line northeast of Unterliederbach. It would appear that very few people make the detour south to the official level crossing. A train passed just as I got there. Crossing the Schmalkaldener Straße only a short distance further also required a detour.

Next I arrived at the Main-Taunus-Zentrum, an unbelievably silly out-of-town shopping centre, where I'd only been once, to see a film. I was not best pleased when I realised that my friends hadn't told me they wanted to drive fifty kilometres to see it, and it still ranks among my top ten least favourite travel experiences. Getting around the centre and the major A-road (B(undesstraße)8) took another long detour--first across the southernmost car park, onto a foot- and cycle bridge to Unterliederbach, then back north again along the east side of the B8, and then back on the route. You can see the various paths on aerial imagery. I'd looked at this before so didn't get lost here. Then it was straight ahead again, Roman road-style, except for a detour around a motorway service station, and another unmarked crossing of a singletrack railway line, which people clearly did all the time, to the effect that the sleepers were lighter-coloured than those either side of the crossing.

Unfortunately, the alignment became rather obscured around Schwalbach (north of the A66) and Sossenheim (south of the A66), specifically the crossing of the Sossenheimer/Siegener Straße. After getting across by following a northerly detour there was another short stretch called Elisabethenstraße. I then went wrong yet again. I should have carried on north-eastwards to Eschborn-Süd Station, through the station, and carried on along the other side, but I'd forgotten about that and did a long southerly detour before I was finally back on the route on a street called "Heerstraße" (in Praunheim), which means 'army road/street' and whose alignment was again disrupted by a motorway, the A5 this time.

The last bit was plain sailing apart from roadworks in a section of the Heerstraße, which meant a walk along the footway, but I was soon in the area known as "Römerstadt" ('Roman town'), even though there was no trace of it left thanks to the aforementioned vandalism brought to bear on its remains.

I didn't stay there long and rode into Frankfurt, did some shopping, and left it again along a more southerly route. This was partly along the route of the "Radfernweg 3" ('long-distance cycle route 3'). At first, it looked interesting where I picked it up, as a former road had been closed to through motor traffic, meaning a wide, well-surfaced (although not by German road-building standards; the tarmac was quite wavy in places) carriageway up to the bridge across the River Main to Sindlingen.

From there, the route became positively Sustrans-esque. At first I convinced myself that I should ride along it for research purposes, and it was initially quite nice to ride alongside the Main, but by Okriftel I'd become completely fed up with it, especially how it first takes you south when to get to Mainz you want to go due west via Hattersheim and not via Okriftel. Anyway, I rode to Eddersheim, then to Flörsheim (a nice straight bit of the L3006 for a good time trial interval into a headwind), and then to Hochheim, which it turns out is actually "hoch" or 'high' as it says in the name. There I was fooled by the signage that was aimed at keeping drivers out of the town centre and got diverted to the ring road, which meant a long detour through the town. Next time I'll know better. Then all was left was a quick ride to Kostheim, Kastel and then Mainz.

So, looking at this old Roman road was a very interesting exercise. Oddly enough, despite all the detours, having to walk some bits, only being able to ride quite slowly along some of it, and getting lost several times, as well as stopping to look around, I only took about two hours from Kastel to Frankfurt-Heddernheim (next to Römerstadt), and I was very surprised when I looked at my watch. With better knowledge of the route, I should be able to do it in much less than two hours. This section of the route is about 35-38k, I think. It must be much quicker to take the B40, cutting through Hochheim, which is bypassed, and then the L3265 via Hattersheim, to get to Central Frankfurt, but the Eschersheimer Landstraße, which I took into town, is actually a very good connection.

The Romans built their road so that it reached the foothills of the Taunus quite quickly, probably for military purposes given the location of the successive castles in Hofheim, but probably also because the environs of rivers back then were, of course, generally marshy and impassable, and staying well away from the Main was probably advisable. Despite the relative absence of marshes today, in some summers midges are still a serious problem along the Rhine and Main, and perhaps they carried diseases back then.

Permeability across western Frankfurt appears to be quite poor, so I imagine that I'd want to take this route when going there, then ride in along the Eschersheimer Landstraße, even though on the face of it this is a detour, and quite complicated in places, but it seems that the old Romans knew a thing or two about saving time. The general geography along the Main is also pretty difficult to negotiate, what with hills and extremely large chemical factories, as well as an unbelievably badly-laid out major road network.

tl;dr Roman roads were straight, modern roads are crooked.