The almost 12-kilometre route is adorned with beautiful forests and the Kalltalsperre dam halfway along the route. The flora offers a varied landscape for nature lovers, but the route is also historically significant.

Highlights of the tour

• Church of St. Johann Baptist
• Western Wall
• Kall Valley Dam

The tour starts at the church of St. Johann Baptist in Lammersdorf, which was built in 1902 in neo-Gothic style and still fascinates today with its colorful paintings, magnificent wooden altars and black marble columns. It is one of the few churches to have survived the Battle of Hürtgenwald in 1944/45 almost unscathed.

Even before the route plunges into the deep green of the Simmerath Forest, it passes parts of the former Westwall. The 630 km long defensive line was intended to protect Germany from military attacks from the west during the Nazi era. With over 18,000 bunkers, tunnels, countless trenches and anti-tank barriers, it was praised as the largest fortification of all time and was considered insurmountable, which proved to be a misjudgement. In Lammersdorf, American and German troops fought heavy battles along the ramparts from September 1944. Today, the humps of the listed site fortunately serve much more peaceful purposes and form important retreats for numerous rare animal and plant species.

The trail dips into the Simmerath forest and winds its way towards the Kalltalsperre reservoir. Here we come across two lively streams typical of the Eifel landscape, the Kelzerbach and Saarcher Bach. After a few kilometers, the Kalltalsperre dam comes into view and the trail leads us along the southern bank of the dam.

The route bends to the south and we leave the wooded areas around the dam to enter the fields and meadows east of Lammersdorf. The route then makes a wide loop back to the starting point in Lammersdorf.

A brochure with all the circular hiking trails in the municipality of Simmerath is available at the Rursee-Touristik offices, at Simmerath town hall and for download at www.rursee.de.