Burg Ulmen and the Sleeping Craters

Burg Ulmen is a medieval castle ruin that sits on the southern edge of the Ulmener Maar overlooking the town of Ulmen in the Vulkaneifel region of Germany. The oldest parts of the castle were built around the 11th century, and it very likely stands atop the remains of an earlier Roman settlement. In the Middle Ages the complex grew to include an upper and lower castle; the lower portion reached down toward the maar and was once linked with the town’s defensive wall. The castle was home to regional knightly families and because of its size was rarely taken by force until the late 17th century. After the last descendant died around 1800 it was abandoned, quarried for stone to build local houses, and suffered further damage in later centuries. In the early 20th century it was placed under preservation and is now freely accessible to visitors. From the ruins you can see the maar and the surrounding volcanic landscape, and there are some remains of walls, a cistern and foundation traces of the original buildings.

Sitting quiescently below the castle, the Ulmener Maar itself is a volcanic crater lake formed by a phreatomagmatic eruption roughly ten to eleven thousand years ago and is the youngest maar in the Eifel. It is up to about thirty seven metres deep and is ringed by a wall of tuff and ash that marks its explosive origin. You can walk around the shore of the maar on a path that gives views of the water, the forested slopes and the castle above.

Just to the north of the Ulmener Maar is the Jungferweiher, a much older maar that was re-flooded in the mid twentieth century and now serves as a shallow lake and bird sanctuary. A circular trail of roughly three kilometres runs around it and there are observation points where you can often see waterfowl and other wildlife.

Between these two maars there is the Ulmener Maar Stollen, an old water tunnel cut through the volcanic rock that historically helped manage water between the basins and is now a visitor attraction you can walk through. Inside the tunnel you can see layers of volcanic deposits and sediments that tell the story of the region’s geological past.

Walking from the Jungferweiher to Ulmener Maar around Ulmen usually combines the connecting paths through forest and low hills, passing through the tunnel and returning through woodland and open fields, giving close contact with both crater lakes and the volcanic terrain between them. This is great on a hot day because the cool of the tunnel offers some relief from the heat and humidity of the lakes. 

If you want something longer and more like a journey over passes and through changing landscapes, there is a long distance trail that begins at Ulmen and leads south through the maar region and down into the Ueßbach valley, eventually reaching Bad Bertrich with its thermal springs. This route takes you from the high volcanic plateaus past lakes, through forests and over gentle ridges into a warmer river valley and is often walked over two days.

Altogether Burg Ulmen and the surrounding maars offer a rare mix of medieval history and dramatic volcanic scenery. Walking from lake to lake here is not about high alpine passes but about moving through a rolling, crater shaped landscape where castles, forests, tunnels and dark blue lakes all sit within a few kilometres of one another, making it both rich in atmosphere and easy to explore on foot. It's pretty accessible for disabled people or those who just want an unchallenging but interesting stroll. 

Der Nette-Wasserfall

The Nette Waterfall lies in the Nette Valley in the eastern Eifel region of Germany, not far from the town of Mayen in Rhineland-Palatinate, in a quiet stretch of forested highland where it feels less like a landmark and more like a secret that reveals itself first through the sound of moving water, then a cool breath of mist, and finally the sight of the falls spilling over dark, layered volcanic rock. The Nette River rises in the volcanic highlands of the Eifel and flows northward to the Rhine, and at this point it cuts through ancient basalt and lava beds left by eruptions that ended roughly ten thousand years ago, with the hard rock forcing the water to drop in a stepped cascade rather than a single sheer plunge. The water descends in a long silvery sheet that breaks into ribbons as it meets ledges carved by centuries of erosion, swelling and roaring in the rainy season so that spray rises high into the air and feeds a broad restless pool below, and becoming gentler and more intricate in drier months when the texture of the rock and the many small channels of flow are clearly visible, yet always carrying a quiet power that makes people fall silent without quite knowing why.

This is not just a scenic waterfall but part of a rare volcanic river ecosystem, because the dark basalt absorbs heat and creates warm microclimates even in cooler months, allowing wall ferns, liverworts, and rare mosses to grow directly on the wet rock faces while alder and ash trees dominate the banks with their roots gripping the porous lava, and fire salamanders that prefer cool oxygen-rich streams are common in the pools below the falls alongside stoneflies, mayflies, and caddisfly larvae whose presence signals very clean water. The constant tumbling of water oxygenates the river and makes this stretch one of the most biologically productive sections of the Nette, while the surrounding forest thrives on the moisture as ferns cling to damp stone, moss coats fallen branches, birds gather in the canopy above, and sunlight filtering through leaves catches in drifting mist to form pale rainbows that hover briefly over the pool.

Local legend says the waterfall was once guarded by a Wassernixe (female water spirit or nymph) called Nette, from whom the river takes its name, who in Eifel folklore lured careless travelers too close to the edge during flood season so that those who respected the river were rewarded with good fortune and those who mocked it were swept away, and even today older residents say you should never throw stones into the fall because it angers the water. In the Middle Ages the falls powered small water mills that ground grain and crushed volcanic stone for construction, and remains of mill races and stone foundations can still be found along the banks.

Unlike alpine waterfalls that drop in bright dramatic plunges, Nette Waterfall is a volcanic cascade that is broad, dark, and muscular, where the water does not sparkle so much as glide over black rock polished smooth by centuries of flow, and after heavy rain the entire valley fills with mist and the falls become thunderous, echoing through the basalt gorge. It is one of those places where geology, ecology, and myth overlap, and people still come not only to admire its beauty but to sit nearby and listen, letting the steady rhythm of water wash through their thoughts, whether they stand on the trail above or on the smooth stones at its base, drawn by the quiet invitation to slow down, breathe, and remember how powerful something as simple as flowing water can be.

Masquerade Artwork (1979)

I have such fond memories of this strangely occult and pagan-themed book, which I remember leafing through with amazement whilst at Junior school. After decades mostly out of the public eye, the iconic treasure from Masquerade resurfaced on the market and now belongs to a collector once more. In November 2025, Sotheby’s offered the same golden hare at auction again. The pendant originally sold for £31,900 in 1988, but this time it fetched £82,550, well above its pre-sale estimate. It was bought by a private collector in Great Britain.

Masquerade is a beautifully illustrated puzzle book created in 1979 by the English artist Kit Williams. At first glance it looks like a whimsical fairy tale about a small hare named Jack who travels through a dreamlike world, but every page is quietly doing something else: hiding clues. Williams embedded riddles in the paintings, borders, and lettering so that careful readers could piece together a set of directions leading to a real, physical treasure.

That treasure was a small golden hare pendant, made of 18-carat gold and decorated with jewels. Williams buried it somewhere in the English countryside and announced that whoever solved the puzzle in the book could claim it. The idea captured the public imagination. Hundreds of thousands of people studied the illustrations with magnifying glasses, looking for patterns, hidden words, and visual jokes that might reveal the location. After nearly three years, the hare was found in Ampthill Park in Bedfordshire, though the circumstances of its discovery later caused controversy, since it was revealed that the finder had been tipped off rather than having fully solved the puzzle as intended.

The book itself became a cultural phenomenon. It essentially invented what is now called the “armchair treasure hunt,” a genre where readers try to solve elaborate puzzles from home using only what is hidden in a book. Even today, Masquerade is admired not just as a clever game but as a work of art, full of intricate, symbolic paintings that reward close attention.

Kit Williams, the creator of Masquerade, was born in 1946 in Kent, England. Trained as an artist, he wrote and illustrated the book entirely on his own, combining traditional painting techniques with a love of riddles, myths, and visual storytelling. After the success of Masquerade, he went on to design elaborate mechanical clocks for public buildings and continued working as a fine artist, producing detailed figurative paintings in oils. His reputation rests largely on how he merged art, story, and puzzle into a single experience, turning a picture book into one of the most famous real-world treasure hunts in history.

Ida Rentoul Outhwaite (1888–1960)

Ida Rentoul Outhwaite (1888–1960) was one of Australia’s most beloved illustrators, best known for her enchanting depictions of fairies, elves, and the natural world. Her work helped shape early 20th-century Australian children’s literature and remains admired for its delicate beauty and imaginative charm.

Born Ida Sherbourne Rentoul in Melbourne, she grew up in a creative and literary family. Her father, the Reverend Dr. John Laurence Rentoul, was a noted Presbyterian minister and academic, and her sister, Annie R. Rentoul, became a writer. The two sisters often collaborated; Annie writing the stories and Ida illustrating them. From a young age, Ida showed remarkable artistic talent; her first published illustration appeared when she was just 15.

Outhwaite rose to prominence during the Edwardian and interwar periods, when fairy art and children’s fantasy were enjoying great popularity. Her illustrations often featured ethereal fairy figures nestled in distinctly Australian landscapes; among gum trees, native flowers, and animals like koalas and kookaburras. This blend of European fairy imagery with Australian flora and fauna gave her work a unique identity.

Some of her most famous works include “Elves and Fairies” (1916), “The Enchanted Forest” (1921), “Fairyland” (1926), and “The Little Green Road to Fairyland” (1922). These books combined her luminous pen-and-ink drawings and watercolours with stories by her sister Annie or other collaborators. Elves and Fairies in particular was a landmark; one of the first large-format art books printed in Australia, and an expensive luxury edition at the time, now highly collectible.

In 1909, Ida married Arthur Grenbry Outhwaite, who became both her supporter and a frequent collaborator; some works were credited jointly to “Grenbry and Ida Rentoul Outhwaite.” Together they had four children, who occasionally served as models for her fairy illustrations.

Her art is characterised by fine, detailed linework and soft washes of colour, creating an otherworldly but tender atmosphere. Critics have often noted her ability to balance whimsy with a sense of quiet realism; her fairies seem to belong to the bush as naturally as any native bird. This helped root fantasy art in an Australian sensibility and made her a pioneer of what might be called Australian fairy imagery.

By the late 1930s, her style fell somewhat out of fashion as modernism took hold, and she produced fewer works after World War II. However, her illustrations remain iconic in Australian visual culture. Today, original Outhwaite books and prints are treasured collectors’ items, and her influence can still be seen in Australian fantasy illustration.

Kloster Antoniusstein & Wolfsschlucht

Hidden deep in the Brohltal valley, where steep cliffs of volcanic tuff and moss-covered stones bear the marks of ancient eruptions, lie the quiet remains of Kloster Antoniusstein, also known as the Tönisstein Monastery. Today, it is only a ruin; a hauntingly beautiful echo of a time when monks prayed in its vaulted halls and pilgrims climbed through the valley to seek healing, solace, and perhaps a miracle.

According to legend, the story began around the year 1388. A shepherd from the nearby village of Kell stumbled upon a strange vision: a burning thorn bush in which a Pietà appeared; the Virgin Mary cradling the body of Christ; while St. Antonius knelt in prayer before her. It was said that this miraculous sign marked the place as holy, and soon a small chapel was built there, dedicated to Mary, St. Antonius, and St. Wendelin. When it was consecrated in 1390, the valley began to draw pilgrims who came to see the sacred image and to pray in the solitude of the forested gorge.

By 1465, the site had gained enough renown that the Carmelite Order received permission to establish a full monastery on the spot. Over the following decades, the monks constructed a church and convent buildings out of the volcanic stone that surrounded them. They led a contemplative life, but they were also practical men, drawing water from nearby springs such as the Helpert source, which was already known by 1501 for its supposed healing powers. Centuries later, the same mineral waters would help turn the surrounding area into a spa region under the Elector-Archbishops of Cologne, linking faith and health in the fertile imagination of the Eifel landscape.

For several hundred years the monastery flourished quietly. Pilgrims came and went, the monks tended their gardens, and the sound of the nearby Tönissteiner Bach mingled with the chanting of psalms. But in 1802, everything changed. During the period of secularization that swept across German lands in the wake of Napoleon’s campaigns, Kloster Antoniusstein was dissolved. The Carmelites were forced to leave, and the property passed into state hands. The Prussian authorities later sold it in 1819, and without its caretakers the monastery began to decay. Stones were taken to build other structures, and the site slowly turned from sacred ground into a picturesque ruin.

What remains today are fragments of that once-spiritual world; walls up to eight meters high, traces of vaulted cellars, and outlines of the old cloisters. The ruins stand quietly amid trees and ferns, with the murmur of the Tönissteiner Bach flowing past, the same stream that once powered the monastery’s mill below. If you wander here, you can still sense the shape of the old church and imagine the lives that unfolded within its walls: the rituals of prayer, the echo of bells, the rhythm of devotion against the backdrop of volcanic cliffs.

The famous Pietà that inspired the founding of the monastery no longer rests in the gorge. It now resides safely in the parish church of St. Lubentius in Kell, a few kilometers away, still drawing quiet reverence from those who know its story. Visitors today reach the site by forest trails that weave through the Brohltal Geopark; paths that not only lead to the ruins but also reveal the geological wonders of the Eifel, where layers of ash and pumice tell the story of fire beneath the earth.

To visit Kloster Antoniusstein is to step into a landscape where nature and history intertwine. The forest reclaims the stones, ivy drapes over crumbling arches, and the sound of water echoes through the gorge just as it did six hundred years ago. It is a place of stillness, where the spiritual past feels close enough to touch, and where the silence of the monastery lives on in the whisper of the wind and the flow of the stream.

English translation:

Board 1 – Route U “Lower Brohl Valley” – Point U6: Tuff Wall and Cascades

National Geopark VULCANIC LAND EIFFEL
Brohltal Volcanic Park / Laacher See

Because of deposits from glowing clouds (pyroclastic flows) during the Laacher See eruptions, this valley was also filled up.

Over thousands of years, the stream has cut its way back into the deposits. When observing the tuff wall – also quarried in this area – one can recognize a repeated alternation between fine ash and coarse pumice layers.

The deposits occurred in surges, so that the flow was made up of multiple flow units.
In the nearby “Wolfsschlucht” (Wolf’s Gorge), one can observe in just a few hundred meters how smaller stream forms emerge from these flows, during the cutting process of the stream.

In this side valley, the stream cuts through ash streams from the Laacher See eruption down to the underlying bedrock.

Photo captions:

• View of alternating layers of material flows

• Light pumice pieces in the upper area of a flow unit

• Cascades of the Tönisstein stream

The valley continues downward over several small waterfalls, merging from several smaller sections where the stream has little gradient.

At a small slope, streams and creeks often form many winding bends, called meanders. Such formations can also be seen here.

In some areas, the valley forms a stepped structure, where the stream flows in cascades (from the Latin cascata = fall). At the foot of these cascades, the water often carves deeper into the soft ash layers and creates hollows and small caves.

The water flow accelerates locally in small rapids due to the unevenness of the bed. When such rapids occur in a larger river, they are called cataracts (from Greek katarrhous = waterfall). Famous, much larger examples are the Cataracts of the Nile in Egypt and Sudan.

Information and guidebook
for the Geo-Routes are available at:
Tourist Information Brohltal
Kapellenstraße 12, 56651 Niederzissen
Tel. 0 26 36 / 1 94 33
www.brohltal.de · tourist@brohltal.de

English translation:

Board 2 – Route U “Lower Brohl Valley” – Point U7: Waterfall at the End of Wolf’s Gorge

“Stream Fall” at the End of the Quarry Area

The small Tönisstein stream, coming from higher up, had difficulty cutting its way through the tuff into the water-rich Brohlbach, into which it flows.

Over its course, it has created three steps, between which there are relatively flat sections. The uppermost of these steps forms a waterfall, which the stream “overcomes”.

This wild-romantic waterfall step has gradually receded upstream over time, as can also be observed with larger waterfalls.

A famous example of such a retreating waterfall are the Niagara Falls in North America.

Photo captions:

• Cascades

• Cross-section through the ash flow in the Wolf’s Gorge

Above the waterfall step, the Tönisstein stream flows in a wide, flat bed of stream gravel about 2–3 m thick, which in turn lies on the surface of the ash flow.

Cross-section through the Wolf’s Gorge

This diagram shows how the Tönisstein stream has cut its way through the relatively soft tuff down to the Devonian bedrock.

The basaltic blocks that hikers can find along the stream-bed come from the reinforcement of the road embankment.