Rumelange, Aale Kierfecht

The Auto-Pédestre starts at the station in Rumelange, where you can decide whether to head straight towards nature or spend a little more time in the town of Rumelange. If you initially choose the green option, you enter the Haard-Hesselsbierg-Staebierg nature reserve, the largest in Luxembourg. Here you will witness former mining waste heaps and see the red of the iron ore. The path mainly runs through the forest, but you will also be back in the hustle and bustle of the town in no time.

This hiking route is a mixture of nature and industrial culture. You will pass the mining museum "Musée des Mines Rumelange" and the old lime kilns, where quicklime was produced in the past. From here you leave the small town of Rumelange heading towards the "op der Heed" plateau. Before entering the forest, you will pass a conveyor belt transporting limestone from the open pit mine 300 m away to Rumelange. Along the way, you will also see further remains of iron ore mining, such as the remains of the cableway that formerly transported the ore, as well as several mine entrances in the "Welteschgrond". At the end of the hike, you will reach the destination of the conveyor belts encountered earlier: the Cimalux cement factory.

Want to discover the places where steel was forged and where ore and slate were mined? Interested to find out exactly when and how Luxembourg was powered up with electricity? Follow us and use your LuxembourgPass to take advantage of discounted prices on your industrial tour. Our journey into the industrial past starts in the south, before heading north and finishing up in the Mullerthal region in the east of the country. You should allow two or three days to complete the tour.

The Minett Trail leads trough the Minett Region on 90 kilometres. You can split the trail in ten stages on which you can discover little villages and bigger cities, but also hike through eight nature reserves. These charm visitors with their old woods and former open pit mines whose cliffy rock faces, red rocks and pit brows are unique in Luxembourg. On this alternative trail section you hike through the nature reserve "Ellergronn" close to Esch-sur-Alzette and past the National Mining Museum in Rumelange, always close to the rich industrial past of the country. This route is only part of the official route to Kayl-Tétange and thus also leads through the nature reserve "Léiffrächen" - named after the patron saint of miners and a nearby place of pilgrimage, where there are said to have been miraculous apparitions: Children who fell into a trance are said to have seen the Mother of God here.