Hiking on the Palatinate Forest Trail - Today: Day 1 from Schweigen to Erfweiler

After we had completed our tour of the Palatinate Wine Trail in Schweigen-Rechtenbach, it was time for the "onward hike". The Palatinate Forest Trail, which begins in Kaiserslautern, ends in Schweigen-Rechtenbach. So we took the opportunity and hiked in the opposite direction towards the start of the forest trail.

The Palatinate Forest Trail starts off leisurely with green and white markings and leads for the first few kilometres through the vineyards of the Upper Palatinate before entering the Wasgau region, where it changes the national border for a few sections and continues on French territory. For whatever reason, the marking of the path is extremely poor in this area and there are only tiny stickers attached to the existing signposting of the French hiking trails. Sometimes they are even missing altogether. Here, it often only helped to check the map to see if we were on the right route.

We walked unagitatedly for kilometre after kilometre through the Palatinate Forest. Sometimes uphill, sometimes downhill, without meeting many people or sights. After 17 kilometres, we reached the first castle, Berwartseiten Castle, which was of course closed, just like the many other castles so far. A few minutes before we passed the Seehofweiher, which even has a small bathing area with refreshments.

We crossed Erlenbach, passed the Gertrudiskapelle chapel and reached the Drachenfels castle ruins. And lo and behold, who would be surprised, the ruin is closed for renovation work, like almost every other castle or ruin since the start of our tour. So just keep walking, there are supposed to be more castles.

We crossed Erlenbach and passed Schindhard to climb up to the Erfweiler Sattelfelsen. So at the end of today's tour we still got a bit of a treat. A beautiful path over the saddle with great views on both sides. Schindhard and Erfweiler showed their beautiful side from a lofty height. From here, the path descends to Erfweiler to the end of today's tour.

The Palatinate Forest Trail
The Palatinate Forest Trail has an official length of 142 kilometres and runs from Kaiserslautern to Schweigen-Rechtenbach, in the very southeast of the Palatinate Forest. It was opened in 2011 and runs entirely through the Palatinate Forest. The ascent and descent on the entire route are each about 3200 metres in altitude. Selected sights on the forest trail: Rodalber Felsenwanderweg, Gräfenstein castle ruins, Luitpoldturm, Falkenburgm Dahner Felsenland, Dahner Burgengruppe, Drachenfels castle, Deutsches Weintor. As we started the forest trail following the Palatinate Wine Trail, our route runs in the opposite direction to Kaiserslautern.

Check out the tour on Komoot:

Watch the video of this tour: