Minett Trail, 90 km from station to station across the red lands

Most of Luxembourg’s long-distance trails leave you worrying about the car or the bus back. The Minett Trail doesn’t. Its ten stages run from railway station to railway station, waymarked in both directions, and since second-class trains are free within the country you can walk a single stage on a Saturday without planning anything. For me it’s the most honest way into the Minett, the old mining south, because you walk right where the iron was dug out.

What it is and where it came from

It’s 90 km according to the operator, from Clemency to Esch-sur-Alzette and then in two branches, one to Dudelange and the other to Bettembourg. The trail’s website explains that the idea came out of the Minett’s bid to become a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Work began in early 2017, the bid went in in September 2019 with the southern communes, UNESCO recognised the reserve on 28 October 2020 and the trail opened in 2022, the year Esch was European Capital of Culture.

No new paths were cut. The network already used by walkers and mountain bikers through the reserves and former mining areas was reviewed and joined up, to tell the region’s shared story along a single route.

What will I see along the way?

Mining landscapes at every stage of recovery. The route crosses opencast workings such as Prënzebierg and Giele Botter, stretches of woodland, the Fond-de-Gras valley riddled with tunnels, the Haard-Hesselsbierg-Staebierg reserve at Dudelange, the new district of Belval and the towns of Pétange and Dudelange. The website sums it up with an idea I share, that here you see nature taking back what was forcibly taken from it.

The trail’s photo gallery also features the Ellergronn and Lalléngerbierg reserves and the Léiffrächen at Kayl, with the National Miners’ Monument.

To sleep close to everything, search places to stay in Esch-sur-Alzette on Booking.com and filter by area before price.

Part of a worldwide network

The Minett biosphere reserve belongs to UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere programme, which counted 738 reserves worldwide in 2023, according to the trail’s website. What these reserves have in common is that they show the human footprint on nature and test ways of lightening it, and in southern Luxembourg that footprint is the extraction of minette ore, which carried on until the late 1970s. Walking the Minett Trail means seeing that history on the ground, with wildlife back on the old mine faces. For a British walker used to national trails through protected countryside, it’s a very different kind of landscape, and to me all the more interesting for it.

The stages, one by one

Nine of the ten are rated medium and run from about 6 to 12 km, so each fits into half a day. The exception is Pétange to Differdange, 16.63 km and nearly five hours, rated difficult. Three are tagged as family-friendly, Clemency to Pétange, Belval to Esch and Schifflange to Bergem. The table gives the operator’s distances and times. With just one day, I’d walk Tétange to Rumelange in the morning and head into the National Mining Museum in the afternoon.

To sleep close to everything, search places to stay in Esch-sur-Alzette on Expedia and filter by area before price.

The Kabaisercher, sleeping in history

This is what sets the route apart from any other in Luxembourg. There are eleven hikers’ lodges in places chosen for their history and restored with the national order of architects and engineers. They include an old school in Linger, a railway carriage at the Fond-de-Gras, a house above the Crosnière stream in Lasauvage, a 12-bed bungalow in Belvaux, a hut shaped like a railway carriage beside the Schifflange reserve, a recycled-cardboard cabin in Bergem, in the commune of Mondercange, the gateway of the Parc Merveilleux in Bettembourg, the old ironworks office in Tétange, Maison Gonner in Rumelange and the Floater, a steel and timber pontoon on a pond in Dudelange.

There’s a second version of the route, eleven stages from lodge to lodge, with GPX files to download. The Kabaisercher need booking ahead, and on 14 July 2023 the whole project won a Luxembourg Tourism Award in the gîtes category. The country’s other rural stays are in holiday cottages in Luxembourg.

Practical tips

Dogs are welcome on a lead, to avoid disturbing nesting birds. The MoveWecarry service moves your luggage between stages if you drop it before 10:00, delivering it before 16:00. If you’d rather have company, the website lets you book a guide who explains the region’s history. And for a night away from the lodges, hotels in Esch-sur-Alzette sit halfway along the route.

If you are short on time, see the best tours in Esch-sur-Alzette and pick one that fits your day.

Where the bus does not go, a car does: compare car hire in Luxembourg before you arrive rather than at the desk.

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