Saarschleife
The Saar Doubles Back On Itself In A Near Complete Loop Below A Wooded Spur, Seen From The Cloef Terrace And From A Treetop Walkway That Spirals To A Tower Above The Canopy. The Most Photographed Landscape In The Saarland And The Image The State Uses Of Itself · Mettlach, Saarland
The Saar meets a wooded spur of rock at Mettlach and bends almost all the way back on itself, and the view down onto that loop from the Cloef terrace is the picture the Saarland uses of itself. It is a small state with one great landscape and this is it. Since 2016 the view has had a second storey: a treetop walkway over a kilometre long runs out through the canopy on a gentle ramp to a tower about forty metres high, so that people who could never manage a hill path get the same view, and it has made what used to be a lay-by stop into a half-day. Below, a steep path drops through beech to the water's edge and the ruins of Montclair castle sit on the spur inside the loop. Mettlach itself is a ceramics town, with the Villeroy and Boch works in an old abbey and an outlet that half the visitors are really here for. France and Luxembourg are both within half an hour, which is why the car park has three nationalities of number plate on a sunny Sunday.
Cloef viewpoint and the treetop walk above Orscholz, Mettlach, northern Saarland near the Luxembourg border, Mettlach, Saarland, Germany
The Cloef terrace is open ground, free, and accessible at any hour, including for sunrise and after dark. The treetop walkway charges admission and keeps daily hours year round, shorter in winter, with the last entry well before closing, and it shuts without much notice in high wind, thunder or ice - that is the one thing worth checking before driving out. The path down to the river and the Montclair castle ruin are open always and free. Saar boat trips from Mettlach are seasonal, running roughly spring to autumn. The Villeroy and Boch site keeps shop and museum hours with Sunday closing. Buses serve Orscholz from Mettlach station but sparsely; most visitors drive, and the car park fills on fine weekends.