Pétange, Bei der Gemeng

We first follow the railway tracks ("Schwarze Wee") and then go north through the village until we reach the cycle path. We bypass the wooded Lamerbierg and come to Clemency. From there, the route runs along the Belgian border and past Grass to Kahler. We continue west and follow the edge of the Buchholzerbësch up to just before Hagen, where we leave the cycle path. Following the railway tracks, we reach Kleinbettingen station, the destination of our bike route.

The path first crosses Pétange. At the edge of town, it follows the course of the Chiers stream until it meets the national cycle route PC12 Piste cyclable de l'Attert. Further on, the hike passes Clemency and along the border with Belgium. Across fields and near the forest, the route leads to the entrance of Kleinbettingen, on Kahler street. Here you leave the cycle path, go under the motorway, and reach Kleinbettingen station. Except for a small section along the Chiers in Pétange, which can easily be bypassed, this route is suitable for pushing prams, bicycles, or similar. © Editions Guy Binsfeld

The Minett Trail is a 90-kilometer-long hiking route running across the Minett region. In ten stages, you can experience smaller and larger towns as well as eight nature reserves. These impress with old forests and former open-pit mining areas. Due to the steep rock faces, the red earth, and mine entrances, they are unique in Luxembourg. On this section, you hike through the Prënzebierg - Giele Botter nature reserve, down into the Fond-de-Gras and through the sleepy village of Lasauvage, which lies directly on the border with France. You wander through dense forests and renaturalized mining areas, discovering how nature has reclaimed the landscape. Along the route, you find many remains of the turbulent past in the mining area: sections of the former "Bremswee" of the "Buggies" – those mine carts used to transport the precious ore from the mining area. In the Prënzebierg - Giele Botter area, you can admire terraces created by human hands, where mining has deeply carved into the rock. You might even discover mine entrances now inhabited by bats. Additionally, the path is rich in old witnesses of industrial history: power poles, remnants of a railway network, and more. From the village of Lasauvage towards Differdange, the route also follows the "Crosnière" stream.

The south of the Grand Duchy was occupied like the rest of the country following the invasion of Nazi Germany on May 10, 1940; However, there were occasional battles as units of the French army occupied the area for advanced defense purposes. After the rapidly changing conditions in the following days however, they withdrew and so the entire Minett region, like the rest of the country, came under occupation by the III. Reich - a situation that would last until liberation on September 10, 1944. The region also played a role in the liberation in 1944, as the south of the country was the first to be liberated by the advancing Western Allies. Today there are a number of monuments honoring this historical moment, but also, for example, the "Liberty Road", the route of liberation that leads from Normandy, France, to Bastogne in Belgium. There are several memorial sites here in Pétange; at the train station, the railway employees who died during the war years are remembered. A monument is dedicated to the victims among the civilian population, as well as to individual members of the resistance, but also to the resistance against the III. Reich as a whole. Pétange also has a memorial site that commemorates a specific individual fate: the "Square Hyman Josefson" commemorates the first fallen US soldier who died during the liberation of the country.