Bike used

Specialized Sequoia Expert (heavy-duty gravel bike)

Favourite cycling route

Allow me to introduce you to a signposted and mostly traffic-free bicycle tour to the West of Luxembourg following the bicycle routes PC 1, PC 13, PC 12, PC 17, Wisen West Tour and PC 15 clockwise (the complete loop from Luxembourg city is 115 km long but can be reduced to 72 km with train connections in Kleinbettingen and Colmar-Berg).

The first 10 km from the capital are mostly about leaving the urban area, but slowly fields are replacing built up areas. In Garnich you’ll encounter the first climb to Hagen (if it is too hard for your fitness level, you can still follow the PC 12 bicycle route to Colmar-Berg instead).

You’ll cross the towns of Steinfort, Eischen, Hovelange, and just after Noerdange PC 12 splits with PC 17 and goes through the localities of Niederpallen and Redange before gaining 270 metres of altitude within a distance of 10 km to get to Rambrouch and Koetschette. The route continues down to Arsdorf where it becomes only signposted as Wisen West Tour and reaches one of the parts on some gravel tracks (there’s a total of 4 km that are easily rideable with a trekking or gravel bike; if you’re planning the trip with a road bike, there are some other ways around so check the map). After a slope up and another down, the tour will take you to Rindschleiden, the smallest village of the country which is worth a stop.

Your climb out of Rindschleiden will be rewarded by a long slope down towards Useldange (again, there will be a couple of short segments of unpaved roads), where you’ll get back to the cycling route PC 12 which follows the Attert river to Colmar-Berg. Follow the PC 15 bicycle route along the Alzette river back to Luxembourg via Mersch or catch the train.

Ironically, this route gets close to and is the north link of .

After Steinfort the route goes to the forest and crosses a nature reserve where the cycleway is built on a disused railroad and the scenery to the Eisch valley is impressive

Tristan Schmurr, Cycle fan

Highlights and comments

After Steinfort the route goes to the forest and crosses a nature reserve where the cycleway is built on a disused railroad and the scenery to the Eisch valley is impressive; an information board teaches you what a Lapis Devorandum is. After the next village (Eischen), you’ll cross the longest cycling tunnel in the country which won’t keep you indifferent (see top photo).

A few hundred metres to the route in Hovelange, allow yourself a visit to d’Millen in Beckerich, where the pond next to the mill is the home of rare species of dragonflies or enjoy a good meal. 

After a sight at Noerdange’s old railway station museum and Niederpallen, you’re set to imagine the sound of steam trains that used to go up to the Ardennes.

The meadow scenery on the slope down between Koetschette and Arsdorf is amazing, you’ll understand why the local cycling route is called Wisen West Tour. Arsdorf is also a link to the Stauséi.

Rindschleiden is worth a stop: despite being tiny, it has a café, St. Willibrord church whose origin takes us back to the 10th century, a museum and the Randschleider Pad, which is a meditation path.

Useldange is also worth a stop to visit the castle (free entry), debate if the mushroom houses are not acorns and enjoy another drink or meal.

On the way back to town on PC 15, you’ll bump into another castle ruin in Pettingen and can contemplate some murals in Mersch at the railroad underpass.

Watch out for the scenic viewpoints along the way! There are also a few places to refuel your supplies on the way (cafés, restaurants and a couple of petrol stations).

Tips for train connections

If you’d like to reach the tour from Kleinbettingen, get to rue du Moulin from the train station and continue on the way until you reach another asphalt track going over a railroad bridge, turn left and you’ll reach the tour after a few hundred metres.

Once in Colmar-Berg, you will be next to the train station and it’s clearly signposted.

When cycling from Capellen to Belair takes less time than Belair to Kirchberg, you know there’s a problem

Tristan Schmurr, cycle fan

Why I ride

I grew up near Strasbourg where cycling was already popular last century; it gave me a freedom of movement in my early life. It’s my primary means of transport, lifestyle and philosophy, which allows me to slow down and to free myself from the fast pace of a Western lifestyle.

It went to the next level when I started a job in Capellen in 2009 (12 km one-way) and cycled every day, regardless of the weather (beating the elements is so rewarding!). I started to take different and interesting routes on the way back home, sometimes reaching over 100 km (this is the “Tristan syndrome”): instead of taking the shortest route I take a long detour to explore the country, shake off the fatigue and stress from work, stay fit, discover the forests, fields, lakes, hills and valleys that make up this beautiful country. Bonus: I earn a good night’s sleep.

As Ernest Hemingway so eloquently said: “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.”

What is missing from the cycle infrastructure in Luxembourg?

Regarding Luxembourg city: when cycling from Capellen to Belair takes less time than Belair to Kirchberg, you know there’s a problem: the most annoying part in town for me is the tendency of putting traffic lights everywhere. Between the detection sensors that are not triggered by bicycles and those you need to beg for crossing permission, wait for the whole cycle to finish before you get your few seconds long green light (sometimes repeat the operation 3 times just to cross one single intersection). When I cycled in Eindhoven, Netherlands, they put sensors to trigger the red light on the main road when you approach a crossing which turns green before you get to the intersection (in most cases you won’t even need to stop). Priority at intersections would be the best cycling promotion the authorities could do if they want people to adopt soft mobility. Personally I prefer to avoid the city because it’s so tiring to wait in the middle of the (sometimes empty) traffic.

It’s really good if you can avoid rush-hour and busy roads.

But in parallel I can see missing bicycle-friendly links between areas while there are also plenty of paved rural tracks which could be signposted as only locals and adventurers would get the idea of following them. They should signpost as many ways as possible to build a dense network, which would not only incite people to go outside, it can also ease the creation of thematic cycling routes through the network and finally also make diversions easier when some works are being done on cycleways.