Redange-sur-Attert was one of the most straightforward motorhome stops of our journey through Luxembourg. After the castles, industrial towns and more unusual landscapes we had been exploring elsewhere in the country, Redange offered something rather different: a small regional centre surrounded by rolling countryside, with an official motorhome area that was simple, functional and completely free during our visit.
We stopped at the motorhome area on Rue de la Piscine on 4 September. There are only eight official pitches, and this is important because parking a motorhome in the surrounding spaces is prohibited. The area is popular enough that we would not rely on arriving very late and still finding somewhere legal to stay. For us, however, it worked very well.
The pitches themselves are generous. Even with our 23-foot-long motorhome we had plenty of room, and the paved surface made manoeuvring easy. The main imperfection is that the ground is noticeably uneven, so it is not one of those places where every vehicle will naturally sit perfectly level. For us this was not enough to cause any real difficulty, particularly considering how much space there was within each marked pitch.
What impressed us most was how functional the whole arrangement was. During our visit, parking and the motorhome services were free of charge, and the service point was clean and worked properly. After travelling through so many places where an official motorhome area can mean a complicated payment system, narrow bays or a surprisingly high fee for little more than a piece of tarmac, Redange felt refreshingly simple. There was nothing luxurious about it, but everything we actually needed was provided without unnecessary complications.
The intercommunal swimming pool stands directly opposite the motorhome area, making the location particularly recognisable. That also means this is not an isolated rural aire hidden kilometres from everything else. Redange is a small town, but the parking sits within an area that has ordinary services nearby and the centre can easily be reached without moving the motorhome again.
That practicality fitted Redange rather well. The town is the administrative centre of the canton that carries its name, and it has long played the role of a service centre for the surrounding rural region. Redange replaced Ospern as the canton seat by an ordinance of 12 October 1841, consolidating a role that it still holds today. The modern commune also includes Lannen, Nagem, Niederpallen, Ospern and Reichlange.
The landscape is very different from the industrial Minett we had just been exploring farther south. Redange lies in the valley of the Attert, a river that eventually joins the Alzette. The surrounding countryside is a mixture of meadows, farmland, small woods and gentle hills rather than mines, blast furnaces or heavily urbanised valleys. It is one of those parts of Luxembourg where the relatively short distances within the country become particularly noticeable: travelling for less than an hour can produce a surprisingly complete change of landscape and atmosphere.
Redange also has an unexpectedly distinctive local character because of the Kropemann. According to the local legend, this sinister water creature hides in the Attert and uses a long hook to pull children into the river if they venture too close to the bank. What began as the sort of cautionary folklore found in many European regions has become almost a mascot for Redange.
There is a Kropemann monument in front of the town hall, another wooden representation of the creature, and the figure even has its own annual festival on the last Sunday in September. It is an unusual detail, but one that gives this otherwise quiet administrative town a surprisingly memorable identity. A place that might initially appear to be simply a convenient stop on the road suddenly has its own very particular monster associated with the river running through it.
The Attert and the surrounding countryside are also important to the way the area can be explored. Several cycling routes start from or pass through Redange, including the national PC17 cycle route and local circuits through western Luxembourg. The terrain is sufficiently open and gently rolling that the town works well as a starting point for exploring the region without needing to drive from one small village to another.
One of the more interesting routes is named after the Jhangeli, the narrow-gauge railway that once crossed this part of Luxembourg. The railway connected Noerdange with Martelange on the Belgian border and operated from 1890 until 1953. It was built partly to serve the communities and industries of western Luxembourg, including the important slate-producing area around Martelange.
The arrival of the railway changed Redange considerably. It provided a direct transport connection through a rural region where moving people and goods had previously been much slower. Businesses developed around the station and the railway became such a familiar part of local life that its nickname survived long after the trains themselves disappeared.
Today, much of that railway world has vanished, but not completely. At Niederpallen, which belongs to the commune of Redange, part of the former Jhangeli station has been restored and preserved. An original passenger carriage is also displayed there. The old railway therefore survives not only in photographs and historical accounts but in the landscape and in cycling routes that reuse or follow parts of its former corridor.
This is one of the details we increasingly liked about travelling through Luxembourg. Places that appear very small often contain an unexpected piece of transport, industrial or political history. Redange does not have the monumental railway infrastructure of a large European city, but its little narrow-gauge line once connected a string of rural communities and helped shape the local economy.
For families, there are also several easy outdoor possibilities around the town. The Um Hounig recreational area lies between Redange and Ell, with a pond and woodland paths. A newer accessible walking route near Redange makes a loop of just over two kilometres through the Hounig forest. It has a firm surface, very limited gradients and an accessible wooden pontoon beside the water, making it suitable for small children, pushchairs and people with reduced mobility. It is also described by Luxembourg’s official tourism service as dog-friendly.
For us, these sorts of routes are often more useful than a conventional town-centre attraction. Travelling with a four-year-old child and our dog, having somewhere where we can simply walk without organising tickets, fixed visiting times or a long indoor tour makes a stop far easier to fit into the day.
The town is also closely connected with Jean-Claude Juncker, who was born in Redange in 1954 and later became Prime Minister of Luxembourg from 1995 to 2013 and President of the European Commission from 2014 to 2019. It is another example of how a small Luxembourg town can have a significance far beyond its physical size.
Despite all of this, Redange never felt like a destination trying to impress visitors with a long checklist of monuments. Its value for us was more practical. The motorhome area did exactly what an official municipal stop should do. There were eight proper places rather than an ambiguous corner of a car park, the pitches were wide and paved, the services were clean and functional, and during our visit everything was free. The uneven surface was the only real inconvenience we found.
The small number of spaces is worth remembering. Because parking outside the eight authorised motorhome bays is prohibited, once those spaces are occupied there is no simple solution of just moving a few metres farther along the car park. Redange is therefore one of those places where arriving reasonably early makes sense.
Our experience was nevertheless extremely positive. We had no difficulty fitting our 23-foot motorhome, everything worked, the location was useful and the swimming pool directly opposite made the area easy to identify. There was no need for complicated planning once we arrived.
Redange-sur-Attert therefore became another example of something Luxembourg does particularly well for motorhome travellers: small towns that provide simple municipal facilities without trying to turn every stop into an expensive campsite. It was not one of the most dramatic places on our route, and that was not really why we liked it. It was useful, easy and functional, while the surrounding Attert valley, the strange Kropemann legend and the history of the little Jhangeli railway gave us considerably more to discover than we had expected from what initially looked like a purely practical stop.