The Lahnwanderweg (Stage 1)

In the last posts I mentioned how we discovered the Lahnwanderweg (Wanderweg means hiking trail), a trail of about 246 kilometers (roughly 153 miles) that follows the Lahn river from its source down to the Rhine. We decided to hike the whole thing, one Etappe (stage) at a time. When we first tried, heavy storms had put Stage 1 out of reach, so we started with Stage 2 and came back for the beginning on September 12, 2021.

The Lahnquelle

We started at the Lahnquelle (Lahn spring) by the Forsthaus (forester's lodge) Lahnhof, near Netphen on the Rothaarkamm. There is no waterfall and no fountain. The water gathers in a small pond, and that quiet pool becomes the river we first met in Wetzlar. Look for a red "LW" on a white background to stay on the trail.

The Heiligenborn

About two kilometers down the trail, a sign points the way to the Heiligenborn. Heilig means holy and Born is an old word for a spring, so this is literally the "Holy Spring," also called the Ilse-Quelle (Ilse spring).

Along the way we passed a carved wooden figure.

Tradition says the sick found healing in the spring's water, and in the Middle Ages it drew pilgrims from far away. A stone enclosure and a small pond there are said to be remnants of a medieval spa. People still come from all around to fill containers with the water, some of them with huge milk cans, and we watched them doing exactly that. It is also the start of the Ilse, a stream a little over 8 kilometers long that joins the Lahn in Feudingen.

From the spring the trail continues through the forest. Some of the trees carry numbered tags, like this one, number 38.

And of course there was a Fliegenpilz (fly agaric), the red-and-white toadstool straight out of a fairy tale. Beautiful, and poisonous.

Feudingen

Our hike ended in Feudingen, a village of about 2,400 people at the foot of the Hornberg, where the Ilse and the Rüppersbach meet the young Lahn. The welcome sign reads "Mach's Gud," which looks like a local spelling of Mach's gut ("take care"), and celebrates 800 Jahre (years). The village also has a 13th-century Romanesque church.

The trail details can be found here on AllTrails (about 8.7 miles with roughly 846 feet of climbing): https://www.alltrails.com/trail/germany/north-rhine-westphalia/lahnwanderweg-etappe-1-lahnquelle-feudingen-geschlossen

That was the beginning of the Lahnwanderweg for us. More stages are coming.