Easy hikes and walks around Dierfeld

Beautiful valley along the stream. The Alfbach is integrated into the hiking trail "Strohner Schweiz"

Very well preserved former train station on the former Maare Mosel Railway.

Unfortunately, the town of Hasborn was only served by the Maare-Mosel railway until 1988. Today, there is a beautiful cycle path on the former railway line. The stations on the line were sold and are now used for other purposes.

Idyllic and wild at the same time

Wild and idyllic at the same time 👍

At the Mückeln monastery pond, the seating area offers a nice opportunity for a rest.

In the beautiful Alfbach valley, about 1.5 km east of Mückeln, the vanished village of Schutzalf was located until the end of the 19th century. The former hamlet, consisting of three or four houses and a chapel with a brother's apartment, was located between the Sprinker Hof and the Sprinker Mühle, both of which were owned by the Augustinian monastery of Springiersbach, which was founded at the beginning of the 12th century. Schutzalf served as a place of pilgrimage at the time, and a fragment of the cross was kept in its chapel. The year 1545 is said to have been inscribed above the entrance to the chapel. According to oral tradition, the remains of the altar stones from the Schutzalf chapel can still be found on a meadow by the Alfbach. Schutzalf also included the former monastery pond, located 600 m west of it, which the local community of Mückeln transformed into a unique wetland biotope. For many years, to be precise since Schutzalf was abandoned after the death of the last resident in 1882, the stones in the meadow were the only thing that reminded people of the vanished place.

The Alf (also: "Alfbach") is a nearly 52 km long, orographically left tributary of the Moselle. The Alf rises about 1 km northeast of Hörscheid in the Volcanic Eifel. From its source at 549 m above sea level, the Alf initially flows in a southerly direction. The first town on its route is Darscheid, past whose eastern edge it flows. The next towns directly along its course are Gillenfeld and Strohn. In its upper reaches up to Strohn, the Alf flows for a long time in a wide and broadly gravelled valley, which is followed from near Steiningen to just before Udler, which is also outside the valley basin, briefly by the A 48 motorway and then for a longer period by the A 1 motorway, and a little later, starting at the Mehren industrial estate and ending at Gillenfeld, the Maare-Mosel cycle path, which runs there on the route of the former railway line from Wittlich to Daun. In the following middle section, which continues southwards to Bausendorf, the course of the Alf is quite winding and is more deeply embedded in the Eifel hills; there are only mills on the river. While the direction of the river was predominantly south up to Bausendorf, it turns east there and flows through the towns of Kinderbeuern and Bengel, south of the Kondelwald. Around 3.5 km downstream from Bengel, it abruptly turns north, as the ridge with the Reiler Hals blocks the further route eastwards to the Moselle, which is only 500 m away. After the Alf has taken in the Üßbach from the northwest, by far its largest tributary, whose partial catchment area even exceeds its own up to that point, it breaks its way eastwards for less than three kilometres through the Moselle mountains and then flows into the Moselle from the left in Alf in the Cochem-Zell district at 92 m above sea level. After a 52 km long course with an average bed gradient of 8.8 ‰, the Alf flows into the river 459 meters below its source.