Ernzen was one of the more unusual stops of this part of our journey, because the village itself was not really what had brought us there. We came for the landscape around the Teufelsschlucht and the Dinosaurierpark Teufelsschlucht, in a corner of the South Eifel only a few kilometres from Luxembourg, and ended up spending the whole day there. Even before reaching the attractions, the place already felt different from the river towns and more populated areas we had been travelling through. The roads climb into a landscape of fields, woodland and sandstone, and the large car park at the edge of Ernzen sits high enough to give a good view across the valley. We arrived with our 23-foot-long motorhome and immediately found the parking arrangement easier than we had expected. The car park is enormous, so finding somewhere to leave a vehicle of our size was no problem at all. We stayed there for the entire day and had no issues. The only real drawback was the ground: it was very uneven, enough for us to notice it immediately, although for a daytime stop this was not a serious problem. The view compensated for it, particularly from the more open parts of the parking area, where the countryside drops away towards the valley. What impressed us most from a practical point of view was the payment system. Rather than an old machine with complicated instructions or coins, it was modern and straightforward, and we paid €4 for the whole day. For a place where we could leave the motorhome for many hours, with plenty of space and direct access to the surrounding attractions and walking routes, that seemed perfectly reasonable. Despite the size of the parking area and the popularity of the attractions nearby, we found it extremely quiet and peaceful. We felt quite safe there and never had any problems during the day. That contrast was one of the things we remembered most: this was not a tiny hidden parking place in the middle of nowhere, but a very large official car park serving a well-known attraction, yet once we were settled it still felt remarkably calm. There were also several possibilities for walking directly from the area, so there was no need to move the motorhome again once we had arrived. The main reason for coming to Ernzen was the Dinosaurierpark Teufelsschlucht. It is not simply a small children’s dinosaur attraction with a few models scattered around a playground. The park follows a long outdoor route through the landscape and uses life-size reconstructions to tell the history of life on Earth. More than 170 full-size models are spread through the grounds, covering hundreds of millions of years rather than concentrating only on the familiar dinosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. That makes the place work particularly well with a young child because the scale of the animals is immediately impressive, while there is also enough scientific information to stop it becoming boring for adults. The park has activity areas, places where children can explore and learn, and a research side that is much more serious than we had expected from a family attraction. It is recognised as a research institution and has been involved in real palaeontological work, including finds from the surrounding region. One of the most interesting connections with Ernzen is that the park does not simply import its dinosaur story from somewhere else. Fossil remains of a predatory dinosaur, Lophostropheus, were found near Irrel, less than two kilometres from the Teufelsschlucht, in rock around 203 million years old. These remains became the first dinosaur discovery from Rhineland-Palatinate, and the park now displays both material connected with the find and a life-size reconstruction of the animal. There is also a direct geological connection with Luxembourg: fossils associated with Dilophosaurus have been found in Jurassic sandstone across the border, while the sandstone around the Teufelsschlucht itself formed when this whole region was still beneath a sea roughly 190 million years ago. This was perhaps the most surprising thing about Ernzen. At first, dinosaurs and a dramatic rocky gorge seem like two separate attractions placed next to each other for tourism. In reality, they are connected by the geology of the region. The Teufelsschlucht as we see it today is much younger than the dinosaurs. It developed towards the end of the last Ice Age, around 12,000 years ago, when repeated freezing and thawing destabilised the edge of the Ferschweiler Plateau. Huge blocks of sandstone broke away, and one of these movements opened the narrow fissure that became the Devil’s Gorge. The cleft reaches around 28 metres deep, with high sandstone walls, narrow passages, mosses, roots and enormous fallen rocks creating a landscape that looks much older and wilder than its actual formation date might suggest. The rock itself, however, tells a much older story. Walking through the area means walking through sandstone that began as sediment on an ancient seabed almost 190 million years ago. That combination of very old rock and comparatively recent geological collapse makes the landscape around Ernzen much more interesting once you understand what you are looking at. The Teufelsschlucht is also unusually accessible as a proper walk rather than just a viewpoint. The short circular route is only around 1.6 to 1.8 kilometres, although it takes roughly an hour because of the narrow paths, steps and rocky terrain. Longer routes continue through the surrounding Felsenland and towards the Prüm valley. This also explained why we saw the car park being used not only by families visiting the dinosaur park but by people setting off into the countryside on foot. For us, having all of this concentrated in one place made Ernzen particularly convenient. We could arrive in the motorhome, leave it for the day without worrying about finding a suitable space, and have both the dinosaur park and a large network of walking routes immediately around us. The motorhome did not have to become part of the day’s logistics once it was parked. The €4 parking charge covered the whole daytime stay, the payment system worked well, and when we returned everything was exactly as we had left it. That might sound like a minor detail, but after travelling through many places where parking a seven-metre vehicle involved checking bay lengths, weight restrictions, complicated signs or noisy roadside locations, Ernzen felt refreshingly uncomplicated. It also helped that the surroundings did not feel urban at all. Even though we were visiting a major attraction, we spent the day surrounded by woodland, open countryside and the sandstone landscape of the South Eifel rather than shops, traffic and buildings. The enormous models in the dinosaur park fitted surprisingly naturally into that setting, particularly once the route moved through the trees. Ernzen therefore became much more than just “the place with the dinosaur park” for us. The dinosaur park was the obvious reason to come, especially with a four-year-old child, but the day also introduced us to a landscape that we probably would not otherwise have stopped to explore. The Teufelsschlucht, the ancient sandstone, the genuine fossil discoveries from the region and the quiet countryside all gave the place considerably more substance than we had expected. And from the motorhome point of view, our experience was equally positive: an enormous parking area where our 23-foot vehicle fitted easily, a pleasant view across the valley, a very modern and functional payment system, only €4 for the entire day, plenty of walking possibilities and, above all, an atmosphere that was exceptionally quiet and peaceful. The uneven ground was the only real negative we found. We spent the whole day there, felt safe, had no problems at all and left Ernzen remembering it as one of those stops where the attraction we had deliberately come to see ended up revealing a much more interesting landscape around it.
