Many people have told me that being in Germany in late November and through the winter, I would simply not see the sun at all until February or March. Today, all of those people were wrong. Having the day off I had decided a few days ago that I would explore the Burg Nanstein ruins before it closed for the winter.

I headed to Landstuhl to find somewhere to park so I could hike up to the castle, but all the parking lots in Landstuhl proper had parking time limits, which I did not want to have to worry about. So, looking at the map, there was a small-ish kind of subdivision (probably a completely different village, but I couldn’t tell immediately) East of the castle that had trails and roads that lead up to the castle.

I started off in the almost crunchy leaves, after a couple of misinterpretations of the google directions, and made my way over to Burg Nanstein. It took a while for the ruins to start looming through the trees from the trail, but when they did, I got an excellent glimpse of the natural red limestone the original structure was built on. Unfortunately, the castle was already closed for the December break, and I won’t get to tour the interior until early next year.

My castle tour cut short, I decided to do the Eastern half of the 8-mile Landstuhl walking tour loop, which leads to the Heidenfelsen (Link with more info), and then back to a viewpoint.

Walking through the forests has a primeval feel. Everything that touches the ground becomes instantly ancient, and the fresh scent of the wet fallen leaves is invigorating. The thick leaf litter makes a soft crunch as you walk over it, and the sounds of Landstuhl off to the left are muted by the bare trees. Moss and ferns colonize rocks and trees alike, and the crows call to each other in the high tree tops.

I took the wrong trail for a few meters once or twice, but made it to the area of the Heidenfelsen. The only thing I had seen about it beforehand online was a carved stone with some figures, but I hadn’t looked into it any further. After taking a left on the trail, I could see a lake at the bottom of the ravine. The air quality got a little more humid, and I could hear a few songbirds flitting around. The forest floor is still quite green.

As I approached the Heidenfelsen itself, I heard the running water of a stream that was feeding into the lake below, and saw that the stream originated below the roots of a tree that had been cut down at some point. The figures didn’t look Christian, and I started suspecting this was a more ancient place than I had thought.

Whenever I encounter info signs I always try to read the German first; Romisches… Roman. “This is a Roman holy spring dating back to around the 2nd to 4th century A.D.” I sat in the area listening to the spring for a few minutes before looping back to my car.

Before going on this adventure, I stopped in at a petshop in Landstuhl to get Sensi a cat cave and a scratcher thing. Here she is stubbornly refusing to get in the new cat cave. I’m sure she will warm up to it eventually.